It had taken years for Jennifer’s increasingly erratic behaviour to be correctly diagnosed, let alone treated, and her parents had endured repeated frustrations in obtaining an answer to their desperate plea of “what is wrong with my daughter?” Recognizing how little useful information was available to other bipolar sufferers and their families, mother and daughter were already determined to collaborate on a book that might help them cope with the debilitating disorder and begun work just before Jennifer’s tragic death. In this powerful, evocatively titled memoir, Ross completes their project and relates Jennifer’s heartbreaking story in the hope that others may get the help they need.

Written in a straightforward, brutally honest style, Bathed in Blue is at its most harrowing in recounting the family’s often mindboggling struggles with an unsympathetic medical establishment in both Hong Kong and the UK. That any psychiatrist could think it wise to decorate a waiting room for mental patients with faux bookcase wallpaper and a chair in the shape of a leering, multicolored jester clown is just one comic example of the hurdles encountered. What becomes clear is how poorly doctors and nurses understand bipolar disorder (particularly in the young), the ravages it inflicts on the lives of its sufferers and their families, and the critical importance of a personalized plan of care that engenders that all-important hope for the future.

Photographs of Jennifer at various ages and her often very moving diary entries are woven throughout Bathed in Blue, bringing her intelligence, droll sense of humor and feisty personality to life. The book also includes a list of useful bipolar-related resources (magazines, newsletters, websites and helplines).

In a concluding chapter, Jennifer spells out her vision for future psychiatric care, offering commonsense suggestions based on her own less than satisfactory experiences with intimidating psychiatrists and callous mental hospitals. How often do medical professionals in their omnipotence ever stop to seek such advice from the people most clearly qualified to provide it? Earlier in the book, her mother explains how the stigma of mental illness renders people mute regarding their disease and its treatment, while suicide too often silences them forever. “Their suffering and their plight becomes forgotten and nothing changes,” she writes. “This renders them invisible and without a voice. Jennifer asked me to be her voice and this book is her voice.”

Rona Ross writes movingly about the distress & pain that she & her family endured after her daughter Jennifer developed bi-polar disorder.
Jennifers own clear & powerful words are used to great effect in this book.An intelligent & talented girl whose life was wrecked by the relentless tyranny of this disease.
Rona’s attempt’s to get the best & most effective treatments for Jennifer are documented in detail as are her frequent battles with a number of unsympathetic mental health professionals .These make for chilling reading .
This book gives the reader a clear insight into what it is like to live with someone who has a bi-polar dis-order , its effects on family members & of coping with suicide.
Jennifer wanted her story told, which Rona has accomplished very skillfully .Rona speaks from the heart – a mother who tried to overcome the ravages wraught on her daughter by mental illness.
This book is a fitting tribute to Jennifer.

The call that every parent dreads came at 3 a.m., Hong Kong time: her beautiful 23-year old daughter, just months away from completing her U.K. university course, had leapt to her death. The news was an awful shock to Rona Ross but not a complete surprise. Jennifer had suffered terribly from bipolar affective disorder (sometimes called manic depression) since puberty, and made many earlier attempts, resulting in repeated hospitalizations. Those afflicted by the disease are in fact 15 times more likely than the general population to succeed at taking their own lives.

It had taken years for Jennifer’s increasingly erratic behaviour to be correctly diagnosed, let alone treated, and her parents had endured repeated frustrations in obtaining an answer to their desperate plea of “what is wrong with my daughter?” Recognizing how little useful information was available to other bipolar sufferers and their families, mother and daughter were already determined to collaborate on a book that might help them cope with the debilitating disorder and begun work just before Jennifer’s tragic death. In this powerful, evocatively titled memoir, Ross completes their project and relates Jennifer’s heartbreaking story in the hope that others may get the help they need.

Written in a straightforward, brutally honest style, Bathed in Blue is at its most harrowing in recounting the family’s often mindboggling struggles with an unsympathetic medical establishment in both Hong Kong and the UK. That any psychiatrist could think it wise to decorate a waiting room for mental patients with faux bookcase wallpaper and a chair in the shape of a leering, multicolored jester clown is just one comic example of the hurdles encountered. What becomes clear is how poorly doctors and nurses understand bipolar disorder (particularly in the young), the ravages it inflicts on the lives of its sufferers and their families, and the critical importance of a personalized plan of care that engenders that all-important hope for the future.

Photographs of Jennifer at various ages and her often very moving diary entries are woven throughout Bathed in Blue, bringing her intelligence, droll sense of humor and feisty personality to life. The book also includes a list of useful bipolar-related resources (magazines, newsletters, websites and helplines).

In a concluding chapter, Jennifer spells out her vision for future psychiatric care, offering commonsense suggestions based on her own less than satisfactory experiences with intimidating psychiatrists and callous mental hospitals. How often do medical professionals in their omnipotence ever stop to seek such advice from the people most clearly qualified to provide it? Earlier in the book, her mother explains how the stigma of mental illness renders people mute regarding their disease and its treatment, while suicide too often silences them forever. “Their suffering and their plight becomes forgotten and nothing changes,” she writes. “This renders them invisible and without a voice. Jennifer asked me to be her voice and this book is her voice.”