Surviving Mental Illness: Stress, Coping, and Adaptation - Softcover

"First-person accounts of what Hatfield and Lefley call the subjective side, or the inner experience, of severe mental illness....A valuable contribution."-- (05/24/1993) "This book is a must for all who are engaged in the care and treatment of the seriously mentally ill. "-- (05/24/1993) "I needed a supplement to Abnormal Psych Textbook to make subject matter come to life." --Jacqueline Santoro, Ph.D., Ithaca College "Hatfield and Lefley have given us a unique and superb rendering of the patient's experience suffering from schizophrenia. The book encompasses both scholarly reviews of the literature and scientific analyses of experiences as well as practical advice on how to respond to patients when they are psychotic and how patients can attempt to avoid relapse. The combination of professional exposition and first-person accounts is especially effective. Perhaps the most novel are the chapters dealing with the sufferer's experience with the helpless onslaught of thinking disorders and emotional turmoil." --John A. Talbott, M.D., University of Maryland at Baltimore "A very valuable book for those who treat mental illness, those who suffer from it, and their families." --H. Richard Lamb, M.D., University of Southern California "Surviving Mental Illness is another ground-breaking book by Hatfield and Lefley. This time they focus on the persons who suffer from schizophrenia rather than on their families.... Across all of their writing, they focus on the people who cope, adapt, and achieve competence rather than on psychopathology. The book provides new perspectives (phenomenology, stress, coping, and attribution) for theorists to construct their theories, a new approach for clinicians to build their craft (the use of multiple first-person accounts), and a new arena for psychological research (the human person who has the disorder rather than a disease without personhood). The book is based on the value of respect for those who struggle with these disorders. It places the person as the focus center of theory, research and service. If this weighting of the person impacts researchers and service providers, it will have served its purpose. Because a number of my graduate students are working in these areas, Dr. Hatfield was kind enough to lend an early copy of the manuscript to my students. I have never seen such a commotion about a book. Students formed a waitlist to read it, and passed it to one another as though it were some sacred but forbidden text. The book is rich with implications for theory and research, and filled with practical insights and suggestions. This is a wonderful book for faculty and students to gain real-life perspectives and insight into people with serious mental illnesses. The material would enrich any course in psychopathology and treatment. Its unique perspectives balance the frequently remote, often incorrect, and only tangentially informative theories about the people who suffer from schizophrenia that is usually found in abnormal psychology textbooks." --Robert D. Coursey, Ph.D., University of Maryland

In a unique attempt to synthesize the patient experience in an era of revolutionary change in medication and psychosocial treatment of schizophrenia, this volume is founded on autobiographical accounts of persons suffering schizophrenia and related disorders. Personal statements are drawn from a variety of sources including consumer newsletters, professional journals, personal conversations, and book written by former patients. Presented in a conceptual framework of self theory and coping and adaptation, material is arranged to present common patterns of inner experience and illuminate behavioral patterns that have puzzled mental health practitioners. Topics range from the patient's sense of mental disturbance as it affects the emotions, the sense of self, relationships, and behavior, to acceptance of the illness and growth toward recovery. This book will prove useful to psychiatrists, social workers and psychiatric nurses who wish to increase their empathetic understanding of those they treat. It also serves as a useful textbook in courses dealing with the psychopathology and clinical skills in training.