Description

By Catherine Amey

ISBN: 978-1-84991-768-1
Published: 2012
Pages: 168
Key Themes: Mental Health, Psychosis, Medical

Description

Psychosis through My Eyes. a Personal and Professional Journey draws on the authors personal experience of psychosis and 15 years of expertise as a medical writer to provide an information and support book for patients who have experienced psychosis. In addition, the book contains the authors own story. Psychosis through My Eyes. a Personal and Professional Journey will also be of interest to healthcare professionals.

Review by Professor Malcolm Lader, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychopharmacology, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London.

This book is a unique combination of a distressing, even harrowing account of personal experience of psychosis and the scientific knowledge concerning this disorder. As a psychiatrist, I tend to seek the commonalities among psychiatric patients and I can easily underestimate or even overlook the profound mental disturbances which are so individual to each person. Catherine , who I have met and worked with, is one of the most efficient and balanced people that I have encountered. I never suspected for a moment that she had suffered to such extent and that my profession had been so inept in trying to help her. Even after my decades of clinical experience she gave me new insights into what it is like to suffer delusions and hallucinations, to lose touch with what we take as reality, and the extreme effort needed to set in train any possible recovery. I will read and re-read the first part of the book, recounting in an objective, intelligent and unashamed way what transpired. Even so the fear of suffering the stigma of mental illness is apparent in her account.

The second part of the book is a careful, knowledgeable and critical overview of the numerous factors that play a role in the antecedents, onset, maintenance and treatment of psychoses, schizophrenia, bipolar illness and the hybrid schizoaffective disorder. It is a highly recommendable introduction to the topics and well within the capabilities of patients, families and carers to understand as it avoids jargon.

The third part is an invaluable listing of sources of help for patients. Too often the mental health services, both lay and professional, are difficult to access and sufferers become desperate for help both within and outside the usual agencies. No longer, this book provides a compendium of what is needed to seek and hopefully receive adequate aid, support and treatment.
I unreservedly recommend this book to all those with mental health difficulties who seek help, solace and enlightenment, and to those carers who strive to lessen that burden.

About the Author

Catherine Amey was born in Slough in 1972. She studied Biochemistry at the University of Bristol and after graduation, worked in medical publishing. Catherine wrote this book after experiencing a psychotic, manic episode that was thought to have been caused by prescribed antidepressant medication. She continues to work in medical publishing. Catherine lives in Worthing with her husband, Dom, and son, Freddie. pt>