A Road Back from Schizophrenia by Arnhild Lauveng

Lauveng's memoir is an important book to read both for those with mental illness and mental health professionals as well as families and caregivers. Emphasizing a personal approach to clients is not unique to Lauveng, but this chronicle of her specific experiences carries extra weight.' -Kirkus Reviews 'A fine addition to a mental illness memoir collection.' - Library Journal 'Dr. 'Drawing on her own terrifying experiences to address the carefully constructed definitions and understandings of the disorder, challenges some entrenched ideas about schizophrenia, especially the idea that she had to live with her condition for her entire life, and she deconstructs and examines in different combinations the ideas of how it affects different individuals. A powerful memoir for sufferers, their families, and the professionals who care for them. Lauveng, though sometimes critical of mental health care, ultimately attributes her slow journey back to health to the dedicated medical staff who took the time to talk to her and who saw her as a person simply diagnosed with an illness-not the illness incarnate. Today, however, she calls herself a 'former schizophrenic,' has stopped taking medication for the illness, and currently works as a clinical psychologist. When she was diagnosed with the mental illness, it was emphasized that this was a congenital disease, and that she would have to live with it for the rest of her life. She paints a surreal world-sometimes full of terror and sometimes of beauty-in which 'the Captain' rules her by the rod and the school's corridors are filled with wolves. Painful recollections of moments of humiliation inflicted by thoughtless medical professionals are juxtaposed with Lauveng's own understanding of how such patients are outwardly irrational and often violent. Lauveng illuminates her loss of identity, her sense of being controlled from the outside, and her relationship to the voices she heard and her sometimes terrifying hallucinations.

A Road Back from Schizophrenia gives extraordinary insight into the logic (and life) of a schizophrenic.

For ten years, Arnhild Lauveng suffered as a schizophrenic, going in and out of the hospital for months or even a year at a time.

A Road Back from Schizophrenia by Arnhild Lauveng