Product Description

In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story, Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia.

For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters.

As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to any children he might have, and inspired by the recent discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia, Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that, until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of institutionalization for mental illness, following clues and separating fact from fiction in the legendary relationship the Irish have had with madness.

Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to learn how much–and how little–we know about this often misunderstood disease.

Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the future of schizophrenic patients.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24731 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-26
• Released on: 2008-08-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780553805253
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
After describing the sudden onset of madness in one of his older sisters, followed two years later by his younger sister's, Tracey seeks to understand the legacy of schizophrenia that has haunted his family for generations, traced back to his great-great-grandmother Mary Egan, who emigrated from Ireland. His search takes him first to County Roscommon, the mythic center of Ireland, where he explores the Irish lore of fairies who, according to myth, capture minds from those who lose them. Tracey then travels to Dublin to consider more scientific explanations for schizophrenia, but even Dr. Dermot Walsh, who helped link the dysbindin gene to this mental state, cannot offer anything conclusive. He concludes his travels at Gleanna-a-Galt where he finds the legendary well his mother told him about when he was a child, a well said to make the mad whole again. In a symbolic gesture—at a loss for anything else he can do—he procures two bottles of the healing water for his sisters. While Tracey finds no conclusive answers, his book helps to dispel misconceptions about schizophrenia and reveals the various attempts by experts to make sense of this mental illness. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
This harrowing first memoir follows journalist Tracey's search for the roots of his family's "Irish madness," i.e., schizophrenia. As he traverses Ireland in a renovated camper, he visits sites that may have been cursed by the Druids, fairy mounds, and ancient shrines, trying to separate fact from fiction. He even interviews the Irish research team that first discovered the gene code for schizophrenia. Spared the disease himself, he records the anxiety his mother felt about having children and reveals his father's vain conviction, common in the 1940s and 1950s, that a stable household and good parenting would prevail over mental illness. Powerfully moving, Tracey's investigation will fascinate anyone interested in the mysteries of mental illness.—Elizabeth Brinkley
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“Mystical and miserable, tragic and hilarious, like Irish life itself. An utterly absorbing book that will bring some comfort to families afflicted with this strange condition.” —Malachy McCourt, author, A Monk Swimming: A Memoir

“For more than a century, the prevalence of schizophrenia in Ireland was among the highest in the world. Patrick Tracey’s important and engaging book describes his search to understand why, and the effects the disease has had on his own Irish-American family.” —E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., coauthor, The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1790 to the Present:

“With courage, humor, and rare insight through the tangles of history, biology, and culture, Tracey tracks that ghost in the brain, which is always ready in any generation to randomly strike his family down. This book is an original. Pick it up and you won’t be able to put it down.”—Shane Connaughton, screenwriter, My Left Foot and author, A Border Station

“With heartbreaking candor and poetic vision, Tracey recounts a spiritual and scientific pilgrimage that will resonate for all siblings who have witnessed a brother’s or sister’s descent into madness.”—Jeanne Safer, Ph.D., author of The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling

“Be prepared to put all else aside: this is a fascinating descent into the dark soul of madness. Tracey’s brave and compelling search for his family’s psychological origins swept me up like a literary thriller.”—Terri Cheney, author of Manic: A Memoir

“Stalking Irish Madness is obviously a must-read for families, especially Irish families, that have been affected by this most severe form of mental illness…. The fragile, human story at its core is beautiful and devastating.”–Minneapolis Star-Tribun...

Customer Reviews

"Here be dragons": at the edge of Ireland's genetic map?
Since my family comes from around the same area as Tracey's in the Irish west, I was curious to follow Bostonian native while "searching for the roots of my family's schizophrenia." It's what he defines poetically as "an apocalyptic form of madness because it robs its victim of our most precious human gift: the ability to separate the real world from the unreal and to trust one's own thoughts as true." (10)

Two of his sisters, his uncle, his grandmother, and her grandmother in turn had been struck by this affliction in their young adulthood. Mixing his personal saga with encounters with those who share the illness and those who argue-- variously-- how to cope with its assaults, Tracey witnesses New Age-aligned healers, medical professionals (who turn out to know much less than one might expect), and those who guard their own family's similar secrets. He follows the history of the disease in Ireland, and integrates smoothly much of the nation's history and trauma on an island-wide level with the impact felt on the domestic and institutional fronts over centuries. Tracey wonders if the legend that the Irish have been so cursed more than other peoples can be validated by genetic research, so he embarks on a quest to Ireland to investigate.

He begins his account with a look at his two sisters and what he knows of his family's previous incidents; he blends his own memoir with a commendable combination of tact and candor. He's excellent at gleaning what separates Irish Americans, in turn, from those born there, and his chapter about a night in a Co. Roscommon pub masterfully sums up the cultural and attitudinal gaps between those from America who assume that a surname and a few half-remembered first names from an withered family tree will somehow open up vistas of happy long-lost cousins eager to shower affection and land upon the Returning Yank. Such sharp observations throughout the book demonstrate Tracey's experience as a journalist able to probe and hold back according to the flow of the conversation with those he interviews.

As mental illness makes such an unlikely icebreaker to raise in talking to those to whom Tracey suspects, on the scant evidence extant, he may be related, the search for his family's direct roots proves less than certain. Along the way, he does a more valuable service for his readers wanting to know if there's some genetic bubble in the Irish gene pool. Earlier scholars and popular gossip appear, Tracey concludes after a tour of the experts, who themselves to date still find little to confirm their own conflicting hypotheses, that every people has the disease at the same rate. However, he does note that while "correlation is not causation," you can find four common links within populations of schizophrenics worldwide: "emigration, famine, substance abuse, and older fathers." (199) Nancy Scheper-Hughes controversially earlier investigated the supposed ties between the malady and and peasants in her 1979 "Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland." Very strangely, this study's not mentioned by Tracey.

This gap confused me. I also wondered why, in discussions of the shamanistic parallels or those of left-brain language vs. right brain evolution, why Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind theory-- however lambasted by the establishment it may have been-- was not raised in context. Tracey does give endnotes for his sources, but these too prove somewhat scattershot. For example, he cites "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake" with page numbers without editions, contrary to scholarly convention, so no reader could easily find these quotes, albeit well-chosen ones.

He errs in small details such as giving the pronunciation for Cruachan Ai but he does not give the second word of the ancient place name to match the parenthetical reference; while his rendering of Irish-language words generally fares better, he conveys the well-known phonetic sounds for the Gaelic words for whiskey without the actual Irish original. He also misspells "An Gorta Mór" and leaves a few accents out. I'm not sure that historians would label all of the admittedly heinous Black & Tans recruited by the British Army after WWI to hunt Irish rebels as "Scottish thugs"-- Tracey may be conflating their wearing of the tam-o'shanter by Constabulary auxilaries with an assumed unified origin in Britain. You won't find any County "Wickford" on a map, either.

Still, these minor quibbles do not detract from the success of a narrative that draws vividly Tracey's own "lace curtain" family dynamic. While at the end the tone does soften from the previously formidable punch of personal drama and demographic devastation, it's an understandable retreat into a measure of carefully distilled hope after a couple hundred pages of often dispiriting reports, as even the world's brightest minds appear as befuddled as medieval monks when dealing with this perplexing set of shifting symptoms.

One of his sisters bears "positive" traits that spin her manically. The other, "negative," crumples under catatonia. Here's a dramatic example from sister Chelle, who hears voices telling her she's a bride of Christ. "The eleven-o'clock Mass is under way, most pews filled, as Chelle strides, fully naked but with perfect aplomb, up the center aisle. Nearly to the altar, she spins around to face the shocked congregation. 'You bastards,' she snarlsm 'that's my husband you're worshipping.'" (43)

He's skilled at telling enough to illuminate while stepping back into the shadows when tact demands. I recognize a lot, especially the passive-aggressive silences that represent for a certain generation of Irish Americans parental communication. I'd have liked to hear much more about his mother the lawyer, his father the religious-goods wheeler-dealer, and the author's own period down and out in Boston, DC, and London, but that may have to wait for a fuller sequel, perhaps. He's a nimble storyteller, refusing to bow to any clichés of mad drunks or plastic Paddies. I look forward to hearing more from him.

Heartbreaking Story, Wonderfully Written
I am so thoroughly enjoying this book, even though my heart breaks on each page. Tracey has researched farther back than I could even fathom tracing my own family tree. His tales about his family are interesting and so well told that I can see the houses. I feel as if I know the great-grandmother, I can almost feel her pain.

He describes schizophrenia in words that I have never heard before. It has opened another level of understanding. The horror that is losing someone in the blink of an eye, having them replaced with a different person, is terrifying. I found myself checking my age versus the statistics, wondering if my own children are safe.

My heart goes out to him for all of his tragedy. But I do so appreciate his ability to put it into words and on paper for everyone to experience.

RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "MADNESS DOESN'T JUST RUN IN OUR FAMILY - IT GALLOPS!"
This is the heartbreaking story of Patrick Tracey's family history of schizophrenia. So many times when an introduction to a book review starts out saying its "heartbreaking", the ending of that sentence normally will also say "uplifting". Unfortunately that is not the case here... but in the place of uplifting... the story is definitely the next best thing... EDUCATIONAL. The author's Irish family on his Mother's side has been cursed with this dreaded disease. From his Great- Great Grandmother Mary Egan, to his Grandmother May Sweeney, to his Uncle Robbie, and to his two sweet and loving sisters, Chell and Austine. The reader will be taken on an educational and scenic trip from Boston to Ireland and back. The reader will... if not shed tears... will definitely feel pangs of sadness and dread in the gut of their soul... as names of victims become real to you... and you can feel the actual utter helplessness... that healthy family members... are reduced to. Along the way you will learn about the tragic speed in which this mind controlling, life-changing, dreaded, curse of a disease attacks.

"Schizophrenia is the hearing of voices, but the hallucinations can be seen, felt, and smelled as well as heard. It's fright night for life for many, an all-consuming terror that never ends." The author's healthy Grandmother, May Sweeney went out one day and came back late. Her husband was worried sick. When she came back to their house, he met her at the gate, "her slow grin says it all: every tooth has been wrenched from May's head - her gums a swollen and bloody mess." "What has become of your damn teeth?" "May it turns out, was nobody's victim. She had gladly paid for the dental surgery, she said, to stop the voices in her head. The voices had grown in power and strength until she could no longer bear them. The voices told her they would go, happily, if she would free them from her dental cavities. Whether extensions of her mind or enemies in her head, these strange voices lied, though; they were still chattering, her empty gums still bleeding, as May collapsed into my Grandfather's arms."

After schizophrenia attacks his Uncle and his two sisters, Patrick decides to depart on a trip to his ancestral homeland in Ireland, to try to trace down his family tree and investigate possible causes of his family's medical and mental dilemma. Along the way many myths are refuted. The author delves deep into the effects of the many famines in Ireland... he investigates the effects of alcohol... explores the mysterious and magical "fairy-caves"... and he visits the sights of old and new mental institutions... which held patients that not too long ago were openly called "LUNATICS". His investigative journey brings him upon a Dr. Dermot Walsh an epidemiologist "whose work, with Dr. Kenneth Kendler, led to the discovery of the first-ever schizophrenia-gene-link. Walsh reveals that questions of causes and cures still tax him. Despite his press, and all the excitement about the abnormality in the dysbindin gene, he is nonplussed. "Yes", he says of the gene marker, that's our discovery. But it's quite clear that its effect, like some other genes that have been discovered, is quite small and you will only get this effect in a small proportion of individuals. How it works and how it operates is another day's work. We don't know much about it."

"OF COURSE, IT'S NOT JUST GENES," HE SAYS. "THERE ARE ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AS WELL - AGAIN, ABOUT WHICH WE KNOW VERY LITTLE - BUT WE HAVE SUSPICIONS ABOUT THIS OR THAT OR THE OTHER. BUT OVERALL, IT'S PROBABLY TRUE TO SAY THAT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ORIGINS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA IS STILL QUITE LIMITED."

There are a few "main" types of delusional schizophrenic characteristics; one of which is "religious-delusions." Patrick asked Walsh: "ONE OF MY SISTERS HAD IT IN HER HEAD THAT SHE WAS MARRYING JESUS. WOULD YOU KNOW WHY?' "NO, WE DON'T. WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHY PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE THESE EXPERIENCES."

The author sadly summarizes: `THE FUTURE IS UNIMPRESSIVE, WE NOW CAN SAY. SCIENCE CAN LOOK BACK THIRTEEN BILLION YEARS TO THE BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE, BUT IT STILL CAN'T HEAR THE VOICES IN MY SISTERS' HEADS. SOME THINGS TAKE MORE THAN A LIFETIME TO KNOW, AND IT MAY BE THAT I'LL NEVER LEARN THE NATURE OF THIS DARK THING THAT MUGS US."

At the time of the publishing of this book there are 35-40,000 schizophrenics in Ireland and approximately 2.4 million American adults, or about 1.1 percent of the population age 18 and older in a given year, that have schizophrenia. After reading this book... I will never look at one of those poor tortured souls... talking to themselves on a street corner... in the same way again.