Is There No Place on Earth for Me?

by Susan Sheehan

Other authorsRobert Coles (Foreword)

Paperback, 1983

Status

Available

Call number

616.89820924 She

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Vintage (1983), Edition: 1, Paperback, 352 pages

Description

Recounts the lonely, harrowing life of a diagnosed schizophrenic, "Sylvia Frumkin", whose experience has included frequent hospitalizations from childhood on, bouts with insulin comas, electroshock treatments, and drug therapy.

User reviews

LibraryThing member cbertz

This is a difficult book to read. It's filled with a lot of back history of the mental health system in New Jersey in the late 70's. On the other hand, Sheehan tells a truely sad story of a woman suffering from schizophrenia being shuttled from hosptial to hospital, doctor to doctor, medicine to

medicine with no one knowing exactly how to help her. The book is a remarkable expose of how uncaring the health industry, and the world at large, is towards treating and caring for mentally ill people.

Show Less

2 more

LibraryThing member janersm

When I found this book at the library in 2009, I wasn't expecting anything miraculous or amazing. I had tried to read books on schizophrenia and schizophrenics before, and had been sorely disappointed. What I found surprised me.

Susan Sheehan's tale of the life of one schizophrenic woman in a New

York psychiatric hospital is enlightening and heart-breaking. It was amazing. The beauty of the book is that Sheehan seems to be the only person who doesn't judge Sylvia Frumkin (real name: Maxine Mason). Frumkin's decent into madness is chronicled as well in the book as you would imagine it being captured in a film documentary.

It is colorful. It is beautiful. It is probably the most wonderful book that most people have never heard of.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Rob.Larson

Interesting story. Although it is a bit dry and clinical in places, the story is sometimes humerous and Sylvia says some pretty funny things. It is amazing what was done to her in the name of psychiatry.

Fewer