Customer Reviews

Quiet Room

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

when i first heard about this book several years ago, i could not wait to get my hands on it. the story attracted me as it is my own story. and i was not to be disappointed. never before had i read a book that so expressively described my own illness. since it first came out, i have read it many times. this book is honest and direct and tells our story as it needs to be heard, for lori gives the true and painful portrayal of how a psychotic brain manifests itself through behavior. i was glad that she told so forthrightly of her experiences in the hospital. it is because of such honesty that people like us can learn to tell our own stories and demystify society's understanding of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia. through this telling the unfair stigma that has been placed upon us is exonerated. i also liked that the people in her life told their stories as well, for an illness such as this affects all involved. i am grateful to lori and amanda for helping me to gain insight into my own illness and understand better what my family and those closest to me have endured and still endure. i highly recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining an honest understanding of mental illness and the impact on the individual and their loved ones.

This is a very moving, perspective-changing book. Also a very honest one. I'm researching schizophrenia genetics now at UCLA and wanted to get an 'inside' view of schizophrenia. I began reading this book 28 hours ago and finished it this morning, never really putting it down except for a 5 hour catnap. Bless you Lori, wherever you are. I hope you're doing well. The amazing accomplishment of this book is that it truly enables the reader to have a glimpse of the life and torment of being a schizophrenic. I came away much more sympathetic to what so many of our fellow human beings go through. Absolutely the best non-scientific book I've read this year.

Lori Schiller, a high academic achiever suffered from her first mental breakdown at 17. She was a counselor at a camp in upstate N.Y. when she first heard nonexistent voices. She describes the voices and cruel and taunting. Alarmed, she tells nobody about her auditory hallucination and valiantly tries to "jump the voices away," by jumping up and down repeatedly.

Lori barely manages college, where psychotic episodes disrupt her formerly sterling academic career. Her life becomes a litany of hospitals, restraints and half way houses until she was admitted to a hospital in White Plains, N.Y.

Lori's psychiatrist, in a last ditch effort to spare Lori the inevitable trip to a state snakepit, tries administering Clozapine. The Clozapine clears Lori's mind and for the first time since she was 17, she is free of psychotic episodes. The trick is, she cannot afford to miss even one dosage.

Lori, her brothers and parents band together to try to make it possible for her to regularly receive this medicine. It is a question of her life and health. Her parents are absolutely lovely and have nothing but her best interests at heart. Her brothers will go to the mat for her and it is this loving family that Lori can count on.

Her father, who is a doctor offers his observations in this book. He paints a loving, yet hard and realistic picture of the pain and mental anguish of a family coping with a loved one seemingly lost to mental illness. There is no doubt that this man is very loving and will do anything to help his child. There is never any doubt that Lori has good back up.

This author has appeared on 60 minutes and shows describing her plight and the need for this medication. It has literally saved her life.

This book has changed my life. I am 40 years old. My mother is schizophrenic and my teenage daughter is now a hereditary statistic as she is also stricken with this terrible disease. I have always been the "informed" consumer and research everything that affects my life. Before my daughter began experiencing early onset of schizophrenia, I had dealt with my mother's illness extensively later in her life. I was with her during a psychotic break. I had the gut wrenching experience of processing a Baker Act through the courts to hospitalize her against her will. I engaged in productive and intelligent consultations with her medical providers. I thought I had this disease understood. I thought I knew...

The most unique and enlightening element of this biography is that the biographer began her life similar to my daughter's. Straight A student, gifted, very beautiful, popular, social, supportive & loving parents and an achiever in every way. So WHY does someone who has so much going for her sink so low? HOW can teachers, parents, siblings, friends distinguish symptoms of mental illness from common teen behavior and drama?

It is so easy to rely too heavily on the amazing new drugs that are currently available. We can easily, mistakenly feel a false sense of understanding and security. There is no cure for schizophrenia. There is no ONE pill that fixes ALL. There are a myriad of symptoms. There are hundreds of medications with hundreds of side affects. This book has given more insight than I could have ever dreamed in sorting all this out. After reading this book, my daughter and I are a team now. I really do understand. She is not just a badly behaved teen. She trusts me and I trust her.

She is only 14. She hears voices. They scream at her! She is being watched. She is in fear for her life.

We are in this together now with my having a clue - hearing her - perhaps for this first time.

This is a beautifully written book about a woman's battle with schizophrenia. She begins by describing her descent into the illness and the confusion she experienced. Somehow Lori Schiller manages to describe her experiences with the illness so that you can always see the person inside the mental illness. This is not an easy feat but invaluable for professionals in the field. The most moving scene, to me, was her description of being in a psychiatric hospital and hearing a baby crying. She was frantic because no one would help the baby-yet the baby wasn't real. This is what mental illness is like and why it is such a painful experience. My favorite part of the book was that she reaches a point where she is successfully living with schizophrenia. Too often we forget that people can live with this illness. Not everyone is forever doomed to a halfway house or psychiatric hospital. This is a book every mental health professional should read, especially if you are considering work with the mentally ill.

Lori Schiller's story is beautifully written and difficult to forget. What makes this story of a journey through treatment for schizophrenia exceptional is that it is told by several people, not just Lori. Her father, a psychologist, deals with her illness through denial. Her mother faces it with overwhelming sadness. Her brothers are confused and embarassed. Her friends are overburdened. Lori is not the only person suffering due to her mental illness. I was amazed with her strength during her ordeal. How difficult it must have been to live with multiple voices belittling her, constantly yelling insults, telling her she would die, telling her to kill others. After years of misdiagnoses, treatment by indifferent mental health professionals, hospitalizations, halfway houses, overmedication, undermedication, self-medication through cocaine abuse and constant suicidal thoughts, Lori finally comes to terms with her illness and fights to overcome it. With the help of several caring healthcare professionals, Lori learns to live with the voices that will always be a part of her life.

This book, along with "The Eden Express", is one of the best accounts of schizophrenia. The quality of writing is extremely high, the story is told with good pace, and the ending is hopeful. Lori's description of schizophrenia itself- the disorienting and downright frightening aspects of the disease- is one of the best accounts of the disease that I have read. It's comforting to think that the treatment of this disease has improved substantially since the 1980s due to the advent of the atypical antipsychotics, but I have my doubts as to whether these newer medications are really all that effective. Overall, this book is excellent and should be read by anyone interested in schizophrenia or mental illness in general. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".

This book helped me through my troubles and illness with bipolar and let me see and know that other people are going the exact same thing. So any one interested in reading of how it really is and what really goes a mentally uncapable person through family and being in mental institutions then please read this book because it tells how it is. A real sense of scenery and the restraints and the treatments that they put the patients through. I have personally been it all and this book tells it truthfully.

If you have any curiosity about the world of the schizophrenic mental patient and about mental hospitals, this book is a must read. Lori Schiller does an excellent job of describing that world in much descriptive detail as she experienced it during the 1980s. And she chronicles her descent into deeper and deeper illness and then her amazing recovery after she is placed on the dangerous drug, Clozapine. I could have used a scene or two with dialogue, but as a true personal account, the book is good even so. Lori Schiller's loving parents had the money or perhaps the insurance coverage to sustain her for years in private hosptals. One needs to note that for every Lori Schiller who amazingly recovers from schizophrenia, there are thousands of hopeless patients on back wards of state hospital who, unlike her, will never recover and will never be able to write about their worlds. Lori is a miracle-child in every way.

I read this book a year ago, but I still remember how much it affected me. As I am resident of Westchester (she lived in Scarsdale) and a young woman of 22 yrs old (at the time), her story had a major impact on me. Her story made schizophrenia a real possibility for anyone. She was very intelligent, went to an ivy league college, had friends, a seemingly good life. But the disease got hold of her anyhow. I couldn't put this book down. And I was proud of her in the end for combating her illness enough to life alone at the age of 30. I don't want to give any more of the story away. I highly suggest anyone reading it.