5⭐ This was an incredible read. At so many points, I had to keep reminding myself that this was non-fiction and became emotional reading all that the 5⭐ This was an incredible read. At so many points, I had to keep reminding myself that this was non-fiction and became emotional reading all that the people in this family went through.
Robert Kolker examines the Galvin family in this book and interspersed through their entire life story is the story of the developments and changes in the study of schizophrenia through those same years. It goes back and forth, chapter after chapter, reading the clinical history alongside the history of this family and that balance really connected for me.
Don and Mimi Galvin had 12 children between 1945 and 1965 and 6 of them developed schizophrenia. This was a tough read because although the positive is that the family's samples have contributed greatly to research and progress with understanding schizophrenia, they were real people who lived through many challenging successive stages of understanding and outlook and judgement of the illness. The concern over treatment of the boys who were showing symptoms and the stigma of the minds of the time who labelled the schizophrenogenic mother as the cause were just a few of the factors that remarkably led these boys to live at home in a house that, although one they presented as cookie cutter and one with upwardly mobile parents, was behind the scenes already a bit off and tumultuous. The youngest of the 12 children were the only two girls and I really felt for their terrible, honest stories of coming to terms with the scars that they now bear as the "healthy" ones who themselves did not have schizophrenia but were very marked and harmed by the illness in horrible ways.
The author interviewed all of the surviving family members and tried to present as authentic a picture as he could and it was both compelling and heart wrenching as well as being insightful and medically informative. There is so much more I can say about this and I had much discussion with my family about the interesting things that I learned reading the book.
I +++ recommend this for anyone interested in reading about schizophrenia and its history and connection to this incredible family ...more
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