Acquainted with the Night: A Parent's Quest to Understand Depression and Bipolar Disorder in His Children (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It is the spring of 1996, after Alex's first hospitalization..." (more)
Key Phrases: psychiatric ailments, mentally ill children, new psychiatrist, New York, Four Winds, New Jersey (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the space of a few months, 11-year-old Alex Raeburn is bounced among seven psychiatrists and prescribed even more drugs, among them Lithium and Depakote, after lashing out at his 5th-grade teacher. The doctors are swift to prescribe pills but slow to provide therapy, despite varying opinions on what the diagnosis may be--maybe depression, ADHD, or an anxiety disorder. While the family finds little relief from the medical establishment, author Paul Raeburn, Alex's dad, slowly admits that his lack of parenting and anger-management skills may have exacerbated his son's condition. Some of his temper tantrums, one of which involves flooding their kitchen, are as frightening as his son's manic episodes.

Ironically, as the science and medicine reporter for BusinessWeek, Raeburn had access to the most prestigious names in psychiatry, but his denial of Alex's emotional problems was so strong that he didn't even bother to look up the (significant) side effects of his son's prescriptions in the Physician's Desk Reference: "I was not going to read about psychiatric drugs and mental illness because I was not going to be the parent of a mentally ill kid." He and Alex are given hope from bipolar expert Kay Redfield Jamison, who, during a book signing, writes, "Things will get better." They do, but not before the Raeburns' marriage disintegrates and Alex's younger sister Alicia is also repeatedly hospitalized for depression and attempted suicide. Raeburn's bravery in telling his childrens' story is to be commended, but the reader is left wondering just how much of Alex and Alicia's misery can be blamed on his own moodiness, prejudices, and procrastination. --Erica Jorgensen

From Publishers Weekly

Raeburn writes, "[T]here is no manual for taking care of a child with a psychiatric ailment," and it's crucial that readers of this soul-baring memoir know this isn't meant to be one. Raeburn fully discloses the daily struggles he faces with his childrenâ€"one bipolar, the other chronically depressedâ€"but what emerges is less about them than about him. He is the center of the narrativeâ€"a pragmatic journalist with an anger problem and a failed marriage who wants what's best for his children, but like most parents is groping in the dark for what that is. Honorably, Raeburn publicly acknowledges his thwarted search for parenting solutions. This work is, in some ways, his extended apology to his children for this failing. But the book serves a public good, too: it will remind parents of children with mental illness that they aren't alone in their exhausting quest to find adequate health care, fight insurance companies and love unconditionally. In fact, they're part of a growing community of parents scrambling to get their children the few resources that exist. The book, though focused on the personal, does have larger political implications. Unfortunately Raeburn, a former Business Week science and medicine writer, isn't adept at weaving the broader importance into his smaller story. When he incorporates research or sociological observation, it feels segmented and distracting. Raeburn's greatest gift is his brave honesty. He challenges all parents to take responsibility and claim their part in their children's pain.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (May 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767914376
• ISBN-13: 978-0767914376
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #801,030 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book I've ever read about mental illness, August 6, 2004

By	K. G Havemann "ARabidReader" (Dayton, OH United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I stayed up much too late reading this absolutely riveting true account of a family falling apart from mental illness and a therapeutic community utterly unable to help. I'm not sure what was more frustrating -- the astoundingly awful parenting on both sides, the ineptitude of the therapists consulted along the way, or the dreadful societal pressures exerted upon middle-school children. And I won't even get into the awful state of the health insurance industry and how it exacerbates the very illnesses it is purported to help. I have never before read an account of such an appallingly dysfunctional family on just about every level, dysfunction that still exists in the almost-absent relationship between the father and his eldest son.

If ever two people were destined for destruction, the author and his wife are them. References are made to the classic symptoms of clinical depression displayed by the author's wife from the time she had her first child, but it's obvious she has never received adequate help. The passivity and inappropriate parenting that resulted combined with the outrageously immature and explosive anger of the father/author would cause even the healthiest children to implode. Raeburn is exceptionally honest about his own contributions to this harrowing story but, throughout, I just wanted to throttle him. Raeburn complains about his long work commute and how that impacted family interactions and even visiting his hospitalized children, yet he never took the most obvious step -- moving closer to work. I grew up in a suburb similar to Ridgewood and I know there are exceptional public schools much closer to the city. But Raeburn was too blinded by the cache of such a rarified and wealthy community to see the dangers. As it turned out, all the struggles to afford the "great schools" were for naught when it turns out the community is not healthy for children either.

Raeburn probably did not intend to question the educational and social philosophies for dealing with middle-school-aged children but, the more I read, the more I came to believe middle schools that separate out 6th, 7th, and 8th graders do more harm than good. The children no longer have older students as role models (good and bad) and no longer serve as role models themselves for younger students. Instead, hundreds of hormonally and emotionally unstable adolescents are set out to sea in a microcosm of insanity and left to feed off each other's craziness unchecked by any examples of the normalcy that both precedes them and usually awaits them on the other side. Maybe this is one reason children fare better in smaller K-12 private schools that are able to maintain some semblance of age-disparate families.

Raeburn never actually voices but nonetheless demonstrates with each escalating crisis another very apparent fact - there are as many opinions (or non-opinions) about how to help mentally ill children as there are psychiatrists, therapists, and medications. If the reader is to come away with only one very unsettling conclusion, it is that no one really knows what is wrong with your child, what causes it, or how to treat it. Accept this, do the best you can, and hope your child lives long enough to grow out of the worst of it, as the author's children did. I can only pray the author's children never have children of their own.

This is not a happy book with a satisfying ending but it is a very important book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does Diagnosis matter?, March 10, 2005

By	D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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I had set this aside for reading as a professional duty but found it so compelling that I promoted it to my bedside. Paul Raeburn is a superb writer.
That being said, I think it may be more useful to professionals than to parents. The mental health workers in this book do not come off well and it makes salutary reading. Raeburn is perturbed by his doctors' inability to make a "correct" diagnosis and proceed from diagnosis to specific treatment. Psychiatric diagnoses tend to be fuzzy (although this is by no means confined to psychiatry. How many diagnoses of "fibromyalgia" and "virus infection" are ever scientifically proven?). In children the labeling is further complicated by the wish to avoid diagnoses that stigmatize.
The use of psychotropic medications in child psychiatry is often empirical with a "lets try this and see" approach. Some children are definitely made worse by Ritalin and Adderal and other "upper" type drugs. It may be that these include victims of a childhood version of manic-depressive illness, which Kraepelin originally described in adults. The Papalos's, in their book "The Bipolar Child", have extended the definition of this disorder rather more widely than most experts would agree with. For a more balanced viewpoint I would recommend "Do They Grow Out of It?" edited by Lily Hechtman and "Child Psychopharmacology" edited by B Timothy Walsh.
I was surprised that no mention was made of telephone hotlines, which are a valuable resource for the suicidal teenager (the national line is 1-800-SUICIDE)and of WEB sites for cutters (see my review of Tracy Alderman's "Scarred Soul.")

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing and Powerful, December 14, 2004

By	Michele M. Bunn "Mother, researcher, reader" (Fairfield County, CT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I just finished reading Acquainted With the Night and could relate to much of the struggle, frustration and helplessness felt by the author. It is a full time job raising a bipolar teen and I felt the author was able to capture the craziness that each episode can throw everyone in the family into - from the parents to the other siblings. No amount of psychotherapy ever really helps - it all boils down to the brain chemistry balance. That was made very clear in the last chapter when Alex is interviewed. If science can find the right mixture of meds, you can have the child back - if not, the child is lost and confused and angry and just left behind.
We live in a community just like Ridgewood, but in Connecticut. Our special ed programs throw all the bipolar kids, ADD kids, other emotionally disturbed kids into one program and then let them get away with whatever they want. Very little learning really takes place. Yet, their IEP's will note significant progress toward achieving the goals. All of this is to keep the costs down so that the school district does not have to pay for specialized private school. There is very little structure, no follow through, no guidance, no real therapy, no learning. Raeburn touches on this point, but only briefly.
While this book is a very honest and real account of life with emotionally and mentally ill children, it does not provide any direction, any solutions, any hope beyond "just wait and they might grow out of it..." which I find to be very troubling, especially from a writer and father who does have as many resources at his disposal as are and were available to Raeburn. While I do not agree with his wife's parenting style, it appear that Raeburn did very little but follow the advice of "professionals" without questionning any of their direction.
I can't say that I would recommend this book to parents who are in the middle of this quest with their children. It is probably better for the insurance industry executives, public school administrators and policy makers in government. It may give them a better understanding of what it is really like. Those of us who are living through it already know.