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Title: I am Not Sick I Don't Need Help! by Xavier Amador, Anna-Lica Johanson ISBN: 0-9677189-0-2 Publisher: Vida Press Pub. Date: June, 2000 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Title says it all
Comment: The title says it all. As an advocate for people with mental illness, daily I get calls from family members asking, "Why won't my loved one accept--seek--help." Amador's book answers that question: Because the person is suffering from a brain disorder, they think, "I'm not sick; I don't need help."
Mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are brain disorders. As such, they may impact the person's ability to make viable judgement about treatment and, in many cases, even preclude the victim of the illness from recognizing they have a treatable medical condition. And, if you do not think you are ill, why would anyone accept treatment?
Amador's book explains in layman's terms the aspects of mental illness known as "lack of insight". At one time, lack of insight was considered to be the results of stigma, and indeed there is stigma surrounding mental illness. Today, science recognizes in some people lack of insight is the result of brain dysfunction itself. Simply put, the brain can recognize when the leg is broken, but the leg cannot take over for the computer of the body and recognize when the brain is not functioning correctly.
Amador does not stop with the explainations. Instead, he gives easy to follow advice on how to help someone you love with amental illness who does not recognize his/her own need for treatment. This book is a bible and a tutorial for people trying to help their very ill relative.
Rating: 5
Summary: We are not sick, we DO need help!
Comment: We are a family of readers and of all the books on mental illness that we have read and purchased, this is the first one I have taken time to rate because it is the best. I have purchased two copies. It has been the most helpful in dealing with our mentally ill relative. It has given us insight into his feelings and impressions. The only thing we have control of is our own feelings and responses. Xavier Amador has written to us and for us. We recommend "I am Not Sick I Don't Need Help!
Rating: 1
Summary: Very Little Information Actually Offered
Comment: This is really a poor book and I'm sorry I wasted the money on it, for this main reason: there is really very little information to be gleaned from it. I believe the amount of real information and guidance offered would be more suitable for a pamphlet, not an entire book. The little bit of information there is, is strewn throughout, and the remainder of the book is puffed up with anecdotes of different patients and reiterations of patients and their symptoms already met with in the book. It is also written in a discursive, teasing manner, attempting to encourage the reader to keep on reading ("Some readers may be tempted to skip this section...however, I strongly urge you to go back... and read the three chapters" p. 1). Many times the book is annoying for its inability to get to the point succinctly. Once again, I believe this stems from the fact that there are so few points to be made, and if these points were set out at once, there would not be enough to fill an entire book.
For instance, in Chapter 6, Dr. Amador tells the story of Samantha, "a patient who had been admitted to the hospital four times in the past year" (p. 60), so that most of the hospital staff have a poor prognosis for her future. However, Dr. Amador "is optimistic about stopping the revolving door Samantha was stuck inside," because, he says, "I had been doing a lot of listening and what I had learned gave me a foothold with Samantha and good reason to have hope." He then immediately ventures off into what it means to listen, and offers his important seven guidelines for good listening. In the next 20 pages, he further explores these seven guidelines and puts them into scenarios with 2 other patients, Matt and Vicky. But as far as I can see, he never mentions Samantha again, or how this listening has helped her prognosis (or her revolving door).
Dr. Amador suggests that if you give the patient goals - such as staying out of the hospital, or finding a job - this will help the patient want to stay on medication. However, these are positive goals (and obviously not very exciting goals for most schizophrenic patients). But Dr. Amador never really addresses how listening and forming goals will help patients who suffer from negative symptoms - patients who are really somewhat apathetic and may not even have or want goals.
What the book is good at is helping the reader understand that a patient's lack of insight into his/her illness is actually part of the disease (brought on, many doctors believe, by the same impaired functioning of the frontal lobes as the disease itself) - that a lack of insight is not merely stubbornness or an unwillingness to face the disease. This is important information to be learned and may help families better empathize with the patient - however, is this small piece of information worth the price of the book?
Notice that the subtitle holds out the promise of "Helping the seriously mentally ill Accept Treatment," but I do not believe it in any way offers this help. When it comes down to it, the suggestions he offers are vague and elusive. He has not really done studies that empathetic listening or setting goals will really help the patient stay on medication - what it will do is help relationships. What the book does accomplish is offering tips to help empathize with the patient and giving those 7 guidelines to effective listening, which will help improve relations between the patient and family members.
This is really a self-published book (if you go to the Vida Press website, you will see they only offer two books, both by Xavier Amador) - and being self-published, it obviously lacked the critical input of an editorial staff that could have guided the book to be more focused and cohesive. Furthermore, there are many typographical errors. It would be better to purchase E. Fuller Torrey's Surviving Schizophrenia and use Chapter 12 - "How Can Consumers and Families Survive Schizophrenia?" as a starting point.
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Title: Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Consumers, and Providers (4th Edition) by E. Fuller Torrey ISBN: 0060959193 Publisher: Quill Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: When Someone You Love Has a Mental Illness: A Handbook for Family, Friends, and Caregivers by Rebecca Woolis, Agnes Hatfied ISBN: 0874776953 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: September, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Hidden Victims - Hidden Healers: An Eight Stage Healing Process for Family and Friends of the Mentally Ill by Julie T. Johnson ISBN: 0964043009 Publisher: P E M A Pubns Inc Pub. Date: July, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Diagnosis: Schizophrenia by Rachel Miller, Susan Elizabeth Mason ISBN: 0231126255 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Burden of Sympathy: How Families Cope With Mental Illness by David Allen Karp ISBN: 0195152441 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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