Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

As a Psycholoy major who has worked with people who suffer from Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder I found this book fascinating and sad. Twelve children and ten boys, six of whom were diagnosed and treated for Schizophrenia. And this was during a time when experts didn’t agree on how to help or what was causing this. I actually admired Mimi (the mother) for continuing to try to help her sons, even when she was being blamed for their condition. The author did a great job portraying the stress on the “well” siblings. The chapters dealing with the medical research became more and more detailed until I wasn’t really able to follow them.

Fascinating account of one family who was just decimated by schizophrenia. Don and Mimi Galvin had 12 (!) children and had dreams of raising an all-American family. But 6 of the 12 ended up with schizophrenia, leading to violence, stress, and destruction of the family unit.
The book goes between the heartbreaking chronology of each new case of a brother becoming schizophrenic to descriptions of the studies that have been done in the medical-psychiatric-scientific community to try to understand it, treat it, and hopefully prevent it. There's so much we still don't understand about how the brain works.

Hidden Valley Road mixes the story of a family dealing with mental illness with research being done over time around interventions and pharmaceuticals. It talks quite a bit about the therapy they had and didn't have. It's very well written and easy to digest. There is so much about mental illness that we don't understand but putting more money into research may save us money and people's mental health in the process!

Fantastic view into the current state of mental illness research. Not a very positive trend, but thankful to be able to see it put together so well.

Fascinating! Led to an incredible discussion at one of my bookclubs. HIghly recommend for groups.