Susan Sheehan (1)Recensioni

3.5 stars

This is a straightforward profile. There's not any analyzing from the author about what the subject, Carmen, did, that was right or wrong; it just states the facts and readers draw their own conclusions.

I found Carmen's attitude toward life in general to be a very typical poverty mindset - very shortsighted, a bit defeatist, lacking ambition. And for those in poverty, it's normal to be surrounded by others in the same situations, with all the same values, which is a dangerous place to be.

A few drawbacks:

It is very hands-off in the storytelling, presented without bias, mostly. This could be a good thing in some ways, but it lacked a fire, if you will, and that made the book more frustrating to get through.

There's profanity, and many sexual references, including child marriage/abuse, and drug abuse.

It's a look at the welfare system of the 1960s and 1970s, which is interesting to me, but I think most people will benefit from reading a more modern account to understand the current situation.

Clear a spot on your calendar because this book will completely absorb you for 48 hours! A writer follows the frustrating and jagged path of a schizophrenic woman through the New York mental health system over decades. Originally appearing as serial articles, the text was never given a vigorous re-edit, so the chronology is a little confusing. However, I think this enhances the merry-go-round heartbreak of this woman's life: institutional admissions, bad drug therapy, huffy exits, broken beginnings, failed ventures, and exasperated family. The family in this case is thankful to push for more openness about the nature and social responses to mental illness. If you have anyone in your life who ever struggled to stay mentally healthy for any reason, you should read this book.

I remember reading this in the New Yorker when it came out. It should have more readers, especially since forensic anthropology is a hot topic on the tube these days. A book with a hero (the anthropologist whose meticulous labors gave a name to every one of 22 heaps of miscellaneous bones) and a villain (the cocksure and slapdash pilot who snuffed out the lives of these 22 young men, his own included).

MIA Search and Recovery in Papua New Guinea.
Deals with one aircraft and large passenger compliment

Interesting story. Although it is a bit dry and clinical in places, the story is sometimes humerous and Sylvia says some pretty funny things. It is amazing what was done to her in the name of psychiatry.

When I found this book at the library in 2009, I wasn't expecting anything miraculous or amazing. I had tried to read books on schizophrenia and schizophrenics before, and had been sorely disappointed. What I found surprised me.

Susan Sheehan's tale of the life of one schizophrenic woman in a New York psychiatric hospital is enlightening and heart-breaking. It was amazing. The beauty of the book is that Sheehan seems to be the only person who doesn't judge Sylvia Frumkin (real name: Maxine Mason). Frumkin's decent into madness is chronicled as well in the book as you would imagine it being captured in a film documentary.

It is colorful. It is beautiful. It is probably the most wonderful book that most people have never heard of.

This is a difficult book to read. It's filled with a lot of back history of the mental health system in New Jersey in the late 70's. On the other hand, Sheehan tells a truely sad story of a woman suffering from schizophrenia being shuttled from hosptial to hospital, doctor to doctor, medicine to medicine with no one knowing exactly how to help her. The book is a remarkable expose of how uncaring the health industry, and the world at large, is towards treating and caring for mentally ill people.½