When Someone You Love Has a Mental Illness (Paperback)

by Rebecca Woolis (Author) "IN ORDER TO HAVE compassion for people with mental illness, we must understand that they are suffering from symptoms or experiences that are largely beyond..." (more)
Key Phrases: people with mental illness, treatment conferences, positive requests (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
An essential resource--featuring 50 proven Quick Reference guides--for the millions of parents, siblings, and friends of people with mental illness, as well as professionals in the field.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin; 2nd Penguin edition (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874776953
• ISBN-13: 978-0874776959
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #39,856 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

117 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Essential how-to guide, May 2, 1999

By A Customer

This is not one of the many books on "understanding" [a] serious mental illness. This book is a step-by-step guide to more successful interpersonal relationships between family and patients. No doctor or therapist will ever give you these essential tools, because therapists needn't live a life with your loved one - and may not even know what that life entails in a real and daily way. My daughter is a bipolar patient, diagnosed in 1981. Using this book, I have for the first time negotiated a crisis while knowing what to do and maintaining communication with her throughout the crisis. It is the book I always knew I needed. There is much more to serious mental illness than symptoms and medicine. This is the only book I have found that addresses the "more."

98 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid Advice, October 30, 2001

By	Rawfish (Salt Lake) - See all my reviews

This book contains what so many mental health books lack: advice. The majority of books on mental health offer a medical or personal description of various mental health conditions. This book tells someone who loves or cares for a mentally ill friend or relative how to help and handle them.

It covers the basics of how to approach and talk to someone who may not be behaving or thinking rationally at the time, to how to work with insurance companies and locate help.

I have purchased dozens of books in my quest to help a loved one. While the majority have been useful, this is the one I wish I read first. If you need help understanding and working with mental illness, this book is a great starting point.

54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't apply to everybody..., September 16, 2005

By	blbkwrm (Midwest USA) - See all my reviews

This book is excellent for people with relatives or friends who have severe mental illnesses, requiring occasional (or frequent) hospitalization and so on. It is a good resource in that it gives advice and tips for coping with various situations that absoultely will come up when you have a relationship with a mentally ill person. It is practical, there is no hypothesizing about what causes what, no blaming the family, very little "psychobabble." It's almost a how-to manual. It offers some insight into what the mentally ill person experiences, which is helpful to the family who may be frustrated and overwhelmed and very tired of trying to understand.
But it does not offer much for spouses in a relationship with a person with mental illness. Nor does it extend easily to the family and friends of somebody who has a mental illness or brain disorder who is as functional as the "average" person most of the time, but has frequent, incapacitating mood and perceptual problems.
If your loved one has a mental illness which is not so severe as to require hospitalization freqently, or a large degree of psychiatric intervention, this book will provide you with soem understanding, but not as much practical help as it will for people facing more severe problems.