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The Price of Silence

A Mom's Perspective on Mental Illness

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Liza Long is the mother of a child with an undiagnosed mental disorder. When she heard about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, her first thought was, "What if my son does that someday?" She wrote an emotional response to the tragedy, which the Boise State University online journal posted as "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother." The post went viral, receiving 1.2 million Facebook likes, nearly 17,000 tweets, and 30,000 emails.

Now, in The Price of Silence she takes a devastating look at how we address mental illness, especially in children, who are funneled through a system of education, mental health care, and juvenile detention that leads far too often to prison. In the end she asks one central question: If there's a poster child for cancer, why can't there be one for mental illness? The answer: the stigma. Liza Long is speaking in a way that we cannot help but hear, and she won't stop until something changes.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 7, 2014
      “Accidental advocate” Long, whose blog post “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” went viral, expands on her ideas for improving the lives of mentally ill children and their families. Long emphasizes that people with mental illness are generally not violent, and that cultural stigma and fear leads to treating mental illness differently than physical ailments, which can lead to shame, isolation, and even suicide. Long highlights problems in the education and mental health systems, such as limited financial resources, difficulty obtaining diagnoses, and policies that do not allow intervention until a problem has occurred, which gives rise to a “school-to-prison pipeline.” The judicial system is often the only way to ensure the safety of family members and the public and provides the mentally ill with access to services. She prescribes earlier interventions, community-based care, whole-family approaches to juvenile justice, and integrated education. Although Long uses her child, who has bipolar disorder and is sometimes violent, as an example throughout, the book is more of a policy opinion piece than a memoir. However, she effectively reminds readers that the people most affected by the treatment of mentally-ill children should have a voice, and that including even the most difficult members of our society in the discussion is a first step.

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  • English

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