Escape from Psychiatry [Paperback]

Clover (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 1999

The autobiography of Clover, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, tells of her isolated childhood, her terrifying thirty- year journey through the mental health system, and her recovery after meeting supportive people who taught her how to love.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Clover has gone through solitary confinement, restraints, psychiatric drugging, and forced electroshock, over and over...Clover's experiences, and her magnificent recovery, would make a stirring film, with elements of drama, triumph, spirituality, romance and love. By the end, I was in tears, as all the pieces of her amazing life came together. Clover's story must be told -- David Oaks, Editor, Dendron & Co-Coordinator, Support Coalition International

This is a book about a sensitive, gifted human being, who was scapegoated and tortured by society, by the sick mythology of the mental health system, and the hubris of ignorant people in positions of power. Clover's story leads us through that nightmarish loop in which many long-term consumers of mental health services are trapped. And it bolsters our courage with the tale of how one very brave individual escaped. This book vividly attests that acceptance into a nonjudgmental, nonhierarchical and loving community is both antithetical to the system, and critical to recovery. Escape from psychiatry should be required reading for all counseling trainees, psychiatric interns, and mental health professionals, as well as psychiatry's victims, in need of hope. -- Peggy Whiting, Psychiatric Consumer/Survivor

From the Publisher

Escape from Psychiatry was written out of a profound need to educate people about the physical, psychological and spiritual damage forced upon innocent and naive individuals who have been labeled as the "mentally ill." The author tells her heroic story of recovering from thirty-one years of psychiatric abuse. She was labeled as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic, (which means "incurable" in the psychiatric community) and treated with unbelievable cruelty. After many years of being traumatized by the use of forced electroshock and powerful psychoactive drugs, the author quits all psychiatric drugs and joins alcoholics anonymous, a place where she was told she could get well. This community of people had finally replaced her feelings of helplessness and hopelessness with feelings of love and hope.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 381 pages
• Publisher: Rainbow Pots & Pr; 2 Revised edition (October 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0967116376
• ISBN-13: 978-0967116372
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,529,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inside Crazy Clover, February 1, 2002

By 

S. Rush "boyaremyarmstired.com" (California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Escape from Psychiatry (Paperback)

"Escape from Psychiatry," the autobiography of "Clover Smith" is a harrowing account of one woman's odyssey through the mental health care system of the `50s, '60s and `70s. This is not a book that can be evaluated as a piece of literature, because strictly speaking, it just isn't. But, like other first person accounts in the same vein - Frances Farmer's "Will There Really Be a Morning?" comes to mind - Clover's story is valuable for its portrayal of the shocking abuses and neglect endured by the mentally ill at the hands of psychiatrists.

From her seemingly-credible perspective, she was just a young woman cut off from emotional support who put her trust in doctors to heal her simple fears. All she desired was one person with whom to talk about her feelings of isolation and terror. Instead she was scarred and scared, literally out of her wits, by a series of "treatments" which resembled torture more closely than they did rehabilitation. At the hands of doctors she spent thirty-one years undergoing electro-shock and neuroleptic drug therapies which left her filled with increasingly justified, internal rage and external symptoms ranging from the loss of her teeth and memory to the constant muscle spasms of tardive dyskinesia - a known neurotoxic side-effect from the brain damage caused by a range of neuroleptic drugs.

She never did find a psychiatrist who wanted to talk with her, with the exception of one scurrilous egotist who also tried to bed her. Yet some preternatural strength, resident inside Clover, allowed her to outlast the convoluted mental health care system. Her recovery finally came as a result of entering an Alcoholics Anonymous program and weaning herself from the medications she instinctively knew to be toxic. She is no longer schizophrenic or paranoid, two diagnoses that may never have been accurate for her or countless others who have undergone similar treatment.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspirational and poignant read, March 14, 2000

By 

Deborah Shelton (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Escape from Psychiatry (Paperback)

Clover's story brings to light the travesty of presenting "mental illness" as irreversible and explodes the myth that medications can silence the symptoms. It also raises significant questions concerning accepted methods of 'treatment' that require the ultimate isolation of mental health patients making visitation (and monitoring) of the standard of care difficult, if not altogether impossible, to monitor. Her expose presents the inside story on mental health institutions, raising many questions and illuminating an area of medical care that seems to have been allowed to operate in obscurity for too long.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent! Heart felt, thought provoking, self-disclosure., April 26, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Escape from Psychiatry (Paperback)

This book truely touched my heart. I felt like a kindred spirit with the author. Clover's childhood reminded me so much of my own and brought back so many difficult emotions for me that I wept bitterly throughout the first five chapters. The book also gave me a complete understanding of what my mother, who died at the age of 53, went through with psychiatry and being diagnosed with manic-depressive illness. The way Clover explains feelings and behaviors she and others experienced in the book is nothing short of remarkable. I have never read a book that touched me at such a deep emotional level. This book made it impossible for me not to look deep within myself in an attempt to rescue my soul from the depths of spiritual turmoil and restlessness that I have allowed myself to fall prey to for 36 years. This book is extremely climactic in that it starts with a child that is isolated and withdrawn, being held hostage by the confines of a confused, angry, lonely, and miserable soul ultimately blooming into a beautiful, thriving, giving, understanding, accepting, and luminous spirit reaching out to help and be helped. Becoming one with all spirituality. Becoming complete. Clover, you are truely blessed. My spirit loves yours because you have the mind of Christ. Absolutely marvelous book. A must for everyone in search of self. You find it in this book because Clover holds your hand and leads you directly to it.