Larry Hayes

Mental Illness and Your Town: 37 Ways for Communities to Help and Heal.

This easy-to-read book has been written as a blueprint for community action from award-winning journalist, Larry Hayes.

In this book you wil learn how each person can play a role to help those who suffer; you will hear stories of people who overcame their disabilities; discover how each of us can work together to create a "treatment revolution" that will help to save lives and it will open your heart and your mind in order to work towards a positive community goal.

There are six sections in the book with up to seven chapters to each section. Each section is backed by data, references, first-hand accounts as well as, ideas and solutions.

The Faces: This section describes the different type of people who may suffer from mental health, the problem areas and how to help reduce the numbers.

The Helpers: This section describes the different ways in which people can help. How one can gather the information they need to meet the community and in which ways it can be shared.

The Personal: This includes concepts to begin discussing the subject of mental health, how you can empower someone with a mental stigma and the pertinent information of each person's disclosure.

The Recruiters: How you can reach out to the community for help, for guidance and to share information. It encourages you not to be shy in your approach, enlist anyone who has the heart to listen and utilize your community events to help bring recognition to mental health issues.

The Innovations: Discusses ways in which you can launch new programs in your community.

The Reforms: There are programs already in place but some of them need some "tuning" in order to work with the individual within the community. With proper training and information, each person who reaches out for the attention they require, will have the proper response if everyone is on the same page.

You will also find reference books you can enlist in your research as well as internet resources.

I found this book to have some great merits about it, however, I didn't glean any information from it that would push me to go out and incorporate what I learned. It seemed that just as an idea was being formed, the author pushed off to another topic, leaving me wanting. I thought it was very easy-to-read and written with out pretense, talking to you and not at you as most of these self-help books do.

I liked the relaxed way in which the ideas are shared as well, some of the approaches suggested were easy to understand, written clearly and concisely. There were a few instances in which it seemed like the author was basing his information on one community only, as in the chapter about "observing celebrations", it is mentioned that you would not find a float in a parade concerning mental health and I have to disagree with that statement. My community is always involved with mental health awareness, we have 90% of the ideas shared within this book and still, it is quite a concern. My underlying thoughts believe it has to do with management and the lack thereof. I believe the chapter on The Reforms was the best chapter in the book and I would have liked to have seen more ideas given.… (plus d'informations)

This book is based on the author’s personal experience with mental illness and his decades of experience as a journalist and advocate writing about mental health issues. It is written with admirable passion and clarity, and would be an excellent brainstorming tool for local advocacy groups or individuals looking for ways to work effectively on social and policy change behalf of people struggling with mental illness.

But as with so many mental health advocacy books about, this one unfortunately sidesteps the complexity and conceptual difficulty surrounding the topic. Although Hayes acknowledges that much of mental illness remains beyond the power of medical science to explain, he uncritically accepts the currently dominant biological paradigm, pretending that there is no controversy around the existence and nature of various psychiatric categories. He also completely ignores recent scandals around the corrupting effect of big pharma’s money and influence on psychiatric practice the drug licensing process. He frequently lumps all mental illness into a single category, writing of “the disability,” as though various kinds of psychiatric symptoms all produced the same sort of psychological and social effects.

Perhaps most unfortunately, his discussion of stigma is particularly weak – though again this is a fault in most mental health advocacy books going back a century or more. Hayes writes as though all that will be needed to undo the stigma of mental illness will be to better educate the public, to counter the many myths that surround mental illness. But this stigma has persisted despite consistent and highly visible education programs over the decades. This is because the stigma of mental illness is not rooted in ignorance of its etiology, but in anxiety about its symptoms. Successfully addressing stigma will require not education or psychiatric literacy programs, but a different kind of cultural work that de-emphasizes emotional and psychological control and competency as the pillars of selfhood.

Individuals or groups using this book for planning purposes should also seek out more nuanced discussions of the nature of mental illness and its stigmatization in society.… (plus d'informations)

Before I start this review, I would like to admit that I have bipolar disorder, so I started this book with some interest. The subject is clearly close to the author's heart since he and his son have both dealt with mental illness. The tone throughout the book was painfully earnest. Sadly, this didn't contribute to the quality of the writing which was, to be frank, boring. I found it incredibly difficult to read this book out of sheer boredom. Maybe it's because I'm more used to literary books about mental illness (Girl, Interrupted and The Bell Jar, for instance) but the book read more like a pamphlet.
The book is useful, though. It does have a list of resources in the back and is especially strong when giving advice about dealing with the media.
Unfortunately, there isn't a bibliography or any foot- or endnotes, which was disappointing when the author made claims such as the one on page 114 that claims that, "...a certified clubhouse sees that the club member stays on the job a bit longer and enjoys greater job satisfaction. That's the research." What research? Conducted by whom? What was the sample size and was the study peer-reviewed?
Finally, many of the author's suggestions are very cost-intensive. This book was written before the recession, but many of the ideas are unfeasible. Another reviewer noted, and I have to agree, that the author acts as if mental illness is the only charitable cause around and the only problem in society.
Ultimately, I think that this book would function better as a webpage. Then information could be updated as it changed, there could be links to resources, and the conversational tone would be more appropriate.… (plus d'informations)