17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good book, but might have been a little more two-sided, October 26, 2005
This review is from: Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia (Hardcover)
While the book is fairly well written, it was a little bit disjointed and one-sided. I thought there could be a better balance of the points of view of the two sisters.
As the mother of a schizophrenic, I am always looking for different views from both sides of the disease - from the afflicted as well as the family members who are also affected by this terrible condition
It would have been more informative and enlightening to hear more from the sister who was not schizophrenic, to hear more of her point of view and how she coped with her sister's affliction. There seemed not to be very much on that side of the coin.
Although I realize that this book obviously is not meant to be a text book and was most likely written to be simply an interesting observational read, I think a little more information and a clearer timeline would have been better. I would not recommend this book to people looking for better clues to understand a schizophrenic family person's thoughts and perceptions when in psychotic "mode".
Check this book out of the library if you want an afternoon's interesting read. Or buy it, but not for an in-depth look into a schizophrenic's mind. It simply does not fit that bill or answer that need if you are looking for that, as I always am.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I learned much about mental illness - Amazing first hand account, October 25, 2005
This review is from: Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia (Hardcover)
I feel like I know much more about schizophrenia after reading this book, mainly from the parts of the book written by the twin sister who has that diagnosis, Pamela Spiro Wagner. She is an amazing writer, and is able to bring the reader into her often hellish world. She sounds like a brilliant person, and it is so sad that the disease has robbed her of so much, but astonishing all she has still been able to do.
The book doesn't quite do as well for me in showing how being a twin affect either sister. I don't think Carolyn is ready to reveal much about her life, which I can understand, and for many parts of their lives they were very seperate. Their lives did take very different paths, but I don't feel like I know much at all about Carolyn's path, or perhaps she is just not as compelling an author as her sister. It's not her field, after all, as it is Pamela's.
I also wish there was a little more perspective and information on schizophrenia in general here, and more about how it specifically affected this family. It sounded like Pamela started being affected quite young---I had always thought it usually hit more like college age, but she seems to start showing signs around 6th grade. It seems hard to believe it took so long for her to be diagnosed, also, and I wish I knew more about why this took so long---was hers a unique case with unusual features?
With all that said, I still do highly recommend this book. I know I feel I understand much more about the plight of the mentally ill in our society after my reading of this fine book.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
NAMI recommends, January 24, 2006
This review is from: Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia (Hardcover)
August 23, 2005 www.nami.org The Nation's Voice on Mental Illness
Traditionally, twin studies have been important statistically for understanding genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, but a new book, authored by twins, provides a unique exposition of the illness.
Divided Minds: Twins Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia is a memoir by Pamela Spiro Wagner, now in her 50s, who began hearing voices in 6th grade. Her chapters alternate with ones by her sister, Carolyn Spiro, M.D., a psychiatrist, who even with her medical training, did not recognize her sister's illness for years. Neither did their father, a professor at Yale Medical School.
They also are scheduled to speak at NAMI state conferences in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in October, as well as to NAMI Westchester County, N.Y.
This is not the first time Pamela has shared her perspective as a person living with mental illness. As part of Mental Illness Awareness Week in 1993, NAMI Connecticut and others honored her with a media award for an article she published in the local newspaper, entitled "Mentally Ill People Deserve Equal Health Insurance Coverage." It also was carried on the newspaper's national wire service.
"NAMI is probably the most active and helpful group around and the award I won...remains one of my proudest moments," Pamela says. "I had barely heard of NAMI before that time, but I knew then I'd have to find out more. What I learned was that NAMI has single-handedly worked to curb stigma and fear of psychiatric patients, and to treat families and friends as allies in the struggle."
"A few decades ago biological brain diseases like depression, bipolar disorder, OCD and schizophrenia were still taboo subjects," Carolyn adds. "NAMI has helped bring them into household conversation. The Alliance has done extraordinary work in combating stigma and prejudice by educating the public about these illnesses."
Today, Pamela is an accomplished writer and poet. She was the winner of the 2002 BBC International Poetry Award, and her work has appeared in the Midwest Poetry Review, Tikkun and the Trinity Review. Although hospitalized several times for what was diagnosed as depression, Pamela graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1975. She made it through two years of medical school -- her rivalry with Carolyn playing out even as her life came apart. They walked different paths, but remained intertwined.
In the 1980s, one psychiatrist finally gets the diagnosis right -- telling Pamela that her struggle is with schizophrenia. For the first time, she is able to "tell another person everything: about the voices and the Strangeness, about my experience of the other dimensions and alternate reality."
"I know I'm evil," Pamela told the doctor. "I'm Hitler's spawn, that's what the voices say. I think I may have killed JFK. I know that Gray Crinkled Paper is the secret to the universe and I know no one understands."
"Pammy psychotic?" Carolyn recalls reacting. "Oh, come off it...No way! Schizophrenia happens to other people. I'm a psychiatrist for God's sake...I know schizophrenia and I know my sister doesn't have it...Don't say anything I don't want to hear."
NAMI families will identify with the push and pull of emotions between the sisters, and the tumultuous events in their lives. The illness affects both of them. At the same time, their relationship is as ordinary as that between any siblings. Following a divorce, Carolyn recalls that Pamela was unable to attend her wedding because she was hospitalized. "Oh, Pammy, would you have sensed the way you used to that I was taking the wrong road? Once upon a time you thought what I thought and felt what I felt. What happened to us?"
"Divided Minds is an important contribution to our understanding of the experience of severe mental illness for families. It is rare in the literature of psychotic illness to have the experience of hallucinations, delusions, and the struggle for health and acceptance so beautifully written by the ill family member," said Virginia Holman, author of Rescuing Patty Hearst, a memoir of her mother's untreated schizophrenia, which won a NAMI National literary award in 2003.
"Pam Wagner shows her valor on every page."
The book deserves to be publicized broadly, beyond the mental health community, to educate others about the realities of mental illness and its human dimensions. In 2005, Pam's and Carolyn's journey has not ended and they are not naïve about difficulties that still lie ahead.
"I can never really know the hell in which Pammy lives," Carolyn writes. "When I hang up the phone, hell disappears. But she knows nothing else. Hell is her life."
For her part, Pamela closes with the observation: "Life has a will of its own...I can live only the now, happy to be well for the time being, and alive -- not overly attached to the possibilities of tomorrow."
To inquire about possible speaking engagements, NAMI leaders and others may contact Diane Lewis at Common Sense
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