Another Kind of Madness

Another Kind of Madness

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Families are riddled with untold secrets. But Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family―that his father’s mysterious absences, for months at a time, resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalizations. From the moment his father revealed the truth, during Hinshaw’s first year of college, he knew his life would change forever. After years of experiencing the ups and downs of his father’s illness without knowing it existed, Hinshaw began to piece together the silent, often terrifying history of his father’s life―in great contrast to his father’s presence and love during periods of wellness. This exploration led to larger discoveries about his family, to Hinshaw’s correctly diagnosing his father with bipolar disorder, and to his full-fledged career as a clinical and developmental psychologist and professor.

In Another Kind of Madness, Hinshaw explores the burden of living in a family “loaded” with mental illness and debunks the stigma behind it. He explains that in today’s society, mental health problems still receive utter castigation―too often resulting in the loss of fundamental rights, including the inability to vote or run for office or automatic relinquishment of child custody. Through a poignant and moving family narrative, interlaced with shocking facts about how America and the world still view mental health conditions well into in the 21st century, Another Kind of Madness is a passionate call to arms regarding the importance of destigmatizing mental illness.

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This book has taken literally a lifetime to emerge. I tend to be a person of fast action, but some essential ventures don’t come to fruition quickly—like understanding one’s family, finding an authentic voice to recount difficult life experiences, and working to reduce the shame and stigma regarding such weighty topics as mental illness. Stigma itself is “another kind of madness,” a form with consequences that are far worse than those linked to mental illness itself. The silence and shame must be transformed into open dialogue. Unless we make progress toward this goal, we will never realize what we can become as a species.
Stephen P. Hinshaw

 

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Stephen P. Hinshaw is a psychology and psychiatry professor at the University of California. He has authored 350 scientific publications plus The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change, the first U.S. book on mental illness stigma. His internationally renowned research has been covered in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. His book Another kind of madness was awarded the Best Book Award in 2018. in the category Best Autobiography/Memoir.

 

  • ISBN: 978-953-8075-59-9
  • Dimensions: 136x210 mm
  • Number of pages: 304
  • Cover: paperback
  • Year of the edition: 2019
  • Original title: Another Kind of Madness. A Journey Through the Stigma nad Hope of Mental Illness
  • Original language: English
  • Translation: Dijana Bahtijari