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Suspended Sentence: A Memoir by Janice Morgan

What Morgan’s book manages to do, is tell a very personal, compelling story about her relationship with her son, while at the same time giving the reader a glimpse into what it is like to have a mentally ill loved one, in this case her son Dylan, and to have everything about the illness affect everything else in your life. Once her son’s mental illness emerges, and at a heart-breaking young age, thus begins the journey, the Holy Grail, of trying to understand [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2021-05-16T15:07:48+00:00February 20, 2021|Book Reviews, Family, Mental Illness|0 Comments

Sober Living Houses and Mental Illness by Kartar Diamond

Sober Living Houses fulfill a need and help people with drug or alcohol problems become sober. The people who move into a Sober Living house voluntarily are likely to be more successful than those who are court-ordered to live there, but each person has their own unique history with addiction and their own time table and their own resolve to change. Sober Living houses are often located in residential neighborhoods, indistinguishable from surrounding private homes. In order to maintain good standing in the [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2021-05-16T15:10:46+00:00February 16, 2021|Advocacy, Mental Illness, Treatment|0 Comments

Siblings of Those With Mental Illness by Kartar Diamond

Each family member has a unique relationship with their loved one who has mental illness. When I was frequently attending NAMI Family Support meetings, the vast majority of people in attendance were mothers. Second to that we would see fathers and once in a blue moon a person would attend who was struggling with a mentally ill parent. This is always very sad to witness, when the parent-child roles are reversed, but of course this also happens with elderly parents and their grown [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2021-01-28T20:35:17+00:00January 28, 2021|Family, Mental Illness|0 Comments

Schizophrenia and Capgras Syndrome by Kartar Diamond

Because schizophrenia is a cluster of symptoms and brain function anomalies, not everyone with schizophrenia has the same beliefs, perceptions or experiences. One phenomenon experienced by a few people I know with schizophrenia is called Capgras syndrome. Capgras syndrome causes a person to have the irrational belief that someone they know is not who they really are, replaced by an imposter. Capgras syndrome can also be experienced by people with Lewy body dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease. Even anxiety could bring on an [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2021-01-12T23:06:01+00:00January 12, 2021|Mental Illness|0 Comments

Ben Behind His Voices: One Family’s Journey From the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope

Ben Behind His Voices: One Family’s Journey From the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope By Randye Kaye This book was published in 2011, but unfortunately it is what the literary world calls an “evergreen.” This means the information in it is always timely and is not outdated. The unfortunate part includes the fact that so many families, like Randye Kaye and her son, continue to suffer the pervasive emotional trauma and societal stigma for having serious mental illness. Worse yet, there is still [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-12-19T19:36:10+00:00December 19, 2020|Book Reviews, Family, Mental Illness|0 Comments

When Your Mentally Ill Loved One Lives At Home by Kartar Diamond

In my parents’ era, kids were often out of the house and working at age eighteen or away in college. As the decades have rolled forward, more and more young adults live at home, usually for financial reasons. There is also a phrase, “failure to launch” which is mostly ascribed to young men who have a difficult time gaining independence. With economic downturns, such as in 2008, multi-generational households have become quite common. With the COVID-19/ Economic Lock Down, for sure we will [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-12-18T03:30:42+00:00December 18, 2020|Advocacy, Family, Mental Illness|0 Comments

How Does a Mentally Ill Person Get Diagnosed? by Kartar Diamond

In the span of six weeks, back in the summer of 2007, my son received several different diagnoses, with each of four separate hospitalizations. The varying diagnoses ranged from schizoaffective disorder, to bipolar disorder with psychotic features, to schizophrenia paranoid type. Only six months prior, the first diagnosis was schizophrenia and a month later downgraded to Social Anxiety by the same doctor. For many people, it is difficult to get an accurate diagnosis. First of all, it may take a long time before [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-12-06T03:25:24+00:00December 6, 2020|Mental Illness, Treatment|0 Comments

Can People With Schizophrenia Lead Normal Lives? by Kartar Diamond

The functional recovery, aptitudes or limitations of people with schizophrenia is complicated. Different parts of the brain are affected under the same diagnosis and some people can maintain superior intellectual and creative capabilities, even when other areas of functionality are lacking. There are many variables which come into play and I learned a lot from reading Dr. E. Fuller Torrey’s book, Surviving Schizophrenia. The operative words in this article are “functional recovery” because there is no cure for the disease, but it can [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-11-13T17:29:53+00:00November 13, 2020|Advocacy, Family, Mental Illness|0 Comments

Natural Approaches to Mental Health Issues by Kartar Diamond

The subject of using natural approaches for mental health issues is complicated. First and foremost, we may not have a willing participant when referring to someone with SMI (serious mental illness). An unfortunate component of SMI is that many people, especially those with schizophrenia, lack insight into their illness. When you have a segment of the mentally ill population who does not believe they are ill, taking any kind of supplementation or natural approach could be rebuffed as swiftly as taking prescribed medication. [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-10-23T23:40:45+00:00October 23, 2020|Mental Illness|0 Comments

He Came In With It-A Book Review by Kartar Diamond

He Came In With It: A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness by Miriam Feldman A Book Review Before sitting down to review of this memoir, I read over some of the praises by others. The author’s writing style is so engrossing that she deserves a very unique review from me and I’ll strive not to be redundant. I approached He Came In With It from the perspective of also being a mother with a son who has schizophrenia, and also as an author [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-10-13T20:45:37+00:00October 13, 2020|Book Reviews, Family|0 Comments