Pages: 164 Price: $9.95 ISBN: 978-0-19-531122-8
Me, Myself, and Them by Kurt Snyder with Raquel E. Gur, M.D., P.H.D, and Linda Wasmer Andrews was created specifically to educate adolescents with schizophrenia about their disease, common misconceptions, and treatment through a series of real life accounts and medical facts. This book is part of a series from the Adolescent Mental Health Initiative created by the Annenberg Foundation which is striving to inform young people diagnosed mental illness that there is hope and many treatment options to alleviate symptoms. In this title, the collaboration of authors, which includes one who lives with the disease, a professor of psychiatry, neurology, and radiology, and a freelance health and psychology writer, results in a personal account that provides an in-depth understanding of the symptomology and many faces of schizophrenia. The outcome is a life story that detail the debilitating challenges and effective treatment and life-style strategies that will bring both respect for the severity of the symptoms and optimism to readers who are having the experience as well as family members and friends. Because the overarching message of this easy read is hope in spite of a diagnosis that is typically assumed to be completely debilitating, I believe that undergraduate and beginning graduate level trainees in mental health professions would benefit from having this book as an important casebook in their libraries. This is also a must-read for high school counseling staff and university student affairs staff responsible for freshmen orientation given the unique stressors associated with transition from high school to college and/or the world of work which may serve as triggers for the onset of this serious, mental health diagnosis.
The book primarily focuses on the life story of the author Kurt Snyder and his experience with the disease, schizophrenia. Snyder is currently a database administrator for the state of Maryland and President of his local volunteer fire department. His current life represents the best of the good news for those who experience schizophrenia directly or indirectly. Snyder, who wasn't correctly diagnosed with schizophrenia until years after the onset of the first symptoms, writes a first person account of his experience over a 14-year period, which began with his transition from high school to college. The crux of the content is a story depicting psychological episodes and his persisting struggle to discern reality from the "story-line" of paranoid ideation that his mind created. Snyder's descriptions starkly portray the slow and creeping way schizophrenia entered his life as an uneasy anxiety and progressed to acute paranoia and memory loss with full-blown psychotic episodes. Readers are pulled into the initially isolated and frightening world of his disorder. The story ends on a road to increased self-awareness, heightened cognizance of the importance of self-care, and eventual recovery.
The storyline is further enriched through the infusion of mini-stories that show the multi-faceted nature of the disease through cases having subtly different presentations of the standard symptoms. The glossary defines important terms and phrases to help readers understand communication with professionals and assist them in the use of appropriate language in constructing questions about assessment, treatment, and service delivery. The content provides descriptions of life experiences are written in language that is an easy-to-read with a step-by-step guide to understanding how the disease "feels," the types of schizophrenia (for example: Paranoid, Disorganized, Catatonic), the symptoms associated with it (such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thoughts and speech, disorganized behavior, catatonic behavior, flat affect, alogia, avolition, and anhedonia), the most effective professional treatment (perhaps including psychological an behavior therapy, hospitalization, antipsychotic medication, psychosocial rehabilitation programs) and relevant self-management skills (including talk about problems, alter how "change" is perceived, exercise, relaxation).
The book is a must-read for not only high school students, but also novice mental health professionals and other members of the general populace who wish to better understand the schizophrenia. After reading this book, high school counseling staff and university student affairs orientation staff will be cognizant of the importance of providing more comprehensive guidance to all students as they move toward the major developmental shift from late adolescence to early adulthood. Parents and students will be more aware of normal transition experiences and resources to assist them when the experiences become debilitating or create major, negative, changes in personality and interpersonal relationships. This book undermines the unsubstantiated beliefs that are the underpinnings of the stigma too often attached to schizophrenia. Instead, the authors' stories reinforce the concept of not only surviving the disease, but the hope of thriving toward optimal levels of life success in spite of the diagnosis.
Although the book is highly recommended as a means to gather insight about schizophrenia and is to be considered an excellent casebook, there are some limitations to be considered. The content shifts back and forth between a poignant life story description and the presentation of the basic literature addressing the disease without explanation. With the special client cases and additional resource information highlighted in gray boxes periodically intermingled within the sudden shifts in focus, the content flow is not always easy to follow or integrate. The inserted drawings and artwork may or may not provide readers with some sense of the perceptual distortions that are associated with those with the disease; there is no narrative to describe the artists. The ambiguity of the artwork's association with schizophrenia (p. 78a), raises questions about the authors' reason for its inclusion in this text. In addition, the authors chose to insert schizoaffective disorder (p. 16) as a point to consider, when this diagnosis is distinctively different from schizophrenia and its discussion here may lead readers to believe otherwise. The rationale for the organization is clearly indicated in the chapter titles; however, readers must be cautioned to anticipate the necessary transitions in thinking to integrate the information provided.
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