Product Description

This story of a father guiding his son from despair to hope is a chilling, inspiring journey through the mysterious tunnel of schizophrenia--a world once closed and forbidding, now suddenly radiating excitement as thousands of patients are, in effect, being reborn.

Jeff Wyden, a bright, happy boy in childhood, began to withdraw in adolescence, and by the age of twenty-one was severely psychotic, disconnected from reality. He was schizophrenic. In the ensuing twenty-five years, Peter Wyden accompanied his son into a hell without certainties as they searched for a solution.

We see them pass through the hands of more than fifty psychiatrists and countless hospitals, clinics, and halfway houses. Doctors and health-care providers help and sometimes hinder both father and son in their odyssey through hypnosis, electroshock, dozens of drug therapies, and disabling "side effects."

Throughout their ordeal, the father's management of his son's managers is his daily task, self-assigned despite self-doubt. He is alternately tolerant and challenging while he observes and learns, always primed for more of Jeff's mercurial signs of new crises.

Along the way we learn about the history of the treatment of schizophrenia, from barbaric stopgaps like prefrontal lobotomy to the biomedical treatments that have revolutionized psychiatry. And finally, there is the new drug Olanzapine--a godsend for Jeff, and reason for cheer. It is not a cure, but many consider it the safest, most effective treatment to date (the first of similar medications recently licensed by the Food and Drug Administration, with more on the way). The story of its development is told here for the first time.

Until now, few of us have realized that two and a half million Americans, mostly young and intelligent, are schizophrenic, merely existing through the decades, separated from reason, rendered dysfunctional by the costly and little-understood disease. Fifty million people worldwide suffer from it. This compelling and enlightening book offers useful information about what can be done for them today--and the hope of more help to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1472405 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-27
• Released on: 1998-01-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 335 pages

Amazon.com Review
Described by Nature magazine in 1988 as "arguably the worst disease affecting mankind, even AIDS not excepted," schizophrenia is devastating for both sufferers of the affliction--more than 50 million people worldwide--and their families. Conquering Schizophrenia is one family's account of their terrible, 25-year journey to hell and back.

Jeff Wyden was a bubbly and vivacious child, described by his father as "unusually charming." In early adolescence, small changes occurred in Jeff's personality--his boundless energy was replaced with silence and a devastatingly low self-esteem. By age 21, Jeff had become severely psychotic and completely withdrawn from reality. So began the nightmare of schizophrenia. Jeff's story is eloquently told by his father, Peter Wyden. Although an inspirational book, especially for those affected by a mental illness, the Conquering Schizophrenia doesn't lapse into excessive sentimentality. Jeff is frequently portrayed as a monster, consumed by the wretched disease. Treatment options for the illness were particularly grim, including prefrontal lobotomies and electric-shock therapy. For more than two decades, Peter Wyden searched for a better answer, which eventually came with the development of new drugs. With this treatment, Jeff was "almost civilian" again. Wyden is an energetic and illuminating author who writes of a subject matter with which he has lived so closely for several decades.

From Library Journal
Writer Wyden (Stella, LJ 10/15/92) turns his journalist's attentions on his own family, mixing the story of his son's nearly 30-year illness with a history of schizophrenia and its treatments. The personal story, particularly the opening chapters describing Jeff's descent, elicits compassion as Wyden admits his own mistakes and misunderstandings and is forgiving of professionals' missteps. The anecdotal history of medical and psychological treatments is equally well-laid out, peppered with passionate rebukes of sometimes brutal therapies. And the story of the recent discovery of a promising new drug is uplifting. Unfortunately, Wyden has trouble blending these various parts, and at times seems to use the historical analysis to distance himself from his son's story. Two fine books combined into one imperfect effort, this is nonetheless a moving work that will be both informative and comforting to those who are close to one of the 250,000 Americans suffering from schizophrenia. For medium and large public libraries and speical collections.
-?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
``My son has been ill for so long that he has . . . been touched by just about every fashion in contemporary mental treatments,'' says this informed, assertive father, who describes many of them in a personal chronicle of his psychotic son's painful life. Wyden, longtime magazine and book editor and author of some dozen books (Stella, 1992, etc.) admits to being somewhat obsessed with schizophrenia. His son Jeff, now 46, was diagnosed as schizophrenic 23 years ago, and in the ensuing years, Wyden has had professional contact with at least 50 psychiatrists. He sees himself as the manager of his son's managers, and it's a job this often exasperated man takes extremely seriously. Searching the history and current practice of psychiatry, he asserts that nobody knows precisely what schizophrenia is or how to diagnose it unambiguously, but he has made it his business to learn all he can about it and to follow closely the advances in its treatment. He describes Jeff's early experience with psychoanalysis (which even Freud rejected for psychosis), family therapy, megavitamins, and electroshock therapy, and his cycle of remissions and relapses. Into this disheartening story he weaves an enlightening account of how thinking about schizophrenia has evolved and how the disease is treated in other countries. The turning point, says Wyden, came in 1987 with the development of clozapine, a major new neuroleptic drug for schizophrenia. The breakthrough for Jeff, however, was the FDA's approval in late 1996 of Olanzapine, a safer, more effective antipsychotic drug that he began taking with good results in the spring of 1997. Although there is no expectation of a cure, Wyden ends on an optimistic note. In an afterword, Jeff, once an extremely charming young man and gifted writer, now living on welfare in a halfway house in California, speaks briefly for himself. An informative and moving, albeit discomforting, read. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Extremely helpful and hopeful. Well written and thorough.

"Conquering Schizophrenia: A Father, His Son, and A Medical Breakthrough", published by Knopf, January 1998, is a father's account of the life of his son Jeff.  Jeff's break came at age twenty-one.  The book chronicles the next twenty-five years along two interwoven paths: the events in the lives of Jeff and his family and the evolution of the mental-health field during this time --its trends, controversies, therapies, medicines, practitioners, advocacy groups, agencies, economics, politics, etc.

The father/author, Peter Wyden, has published a dozen books and was formerly a writer for Newsweek. He writes in a concise, organized, journalistic style that is mercifully free of any self aggrandizement that might have been expected (he candidly acknowledges his missteps) and of any excessive sentimentality (the story itself speaks eloquently of the emotions, frustrations, struggles and celebrations that were there throughout).  He levels some very valid criticisms without being strident.  It is carefully crafted with detailed back-of-the-book chapter notes, bibliography and index for the reader who wants to dig deeper.  It is very up to date, mentioning situations as of Fall, 1997. (Of course we Internet devotees want to know how things are going this morning.)

I strongly recommend this book highly to anyone whose life has been affected by schizophrenia or by any other serious mental illness. I have been struck over the last four years (our 23-year old son was diagnosed with schizophrenia four years ago) how much I read about one mental illness that relates to the others.  (Incidentally, I have no connection to the publisher or author. I wish I did know the Wydens personally).

Jeff was treated by over 50 docs over the 25-year period. He was "treated" in every imaginable theater from the renowned Menninger Clinic, where at the time of Jeff's stay early on, probably did more harm than good, to a run-down half- way house, where he was helped greatly by a dedicated, compassionate social worker.

His symptoms when bad were very bad. He once broke a nurse's nose. He was not an easy patient and not an easy son. But those that got to know the real Jeff were very fond of him. And to his father, even after spending 25 years of struggling with Jeff over meds, docs, hygiene, etc., maybe to some extent because of those struggles, Jeff was a hero, a theme often repeated.

Family support helped (and I suspect help greatly) throughout. There were some talk/cognitive therapies here and there that helped deal with some of the problems of the underlying illness. Jeff's manic periods were helped by lithium. There were other meds that I cannot recount. A breakthrough came with Clozapine, though negative symptoms, especially lack of motivation, remained and a purposeful day, much less the possibility of a job, were not on Jeff's radar screen and he spent his hours at the half-way house. The "conquering" word in the title refers to the next breakthrough which came with Olanzapine in 1996.  Some of the negative symptoms begin to remit. The book ends with Jeff beginning to take some steps into the mainstream world and he gets involved with a local church program and one day asks his dad "Do you think you could get me a watch? I'd like to get my days organized". (!) You would have to read the whole story to understand what a wonderful ending (beginning) this is.

Perhaps I wouldn't have divulged the ending if the book only dealt with Jeff's situation. It would have been a great book if limited to just the Jeff story. Many of us could identify and empathize and imagine our own books.  Not to take away from the story, the real strength of this book for me was the second interwoven thread that dealt with the many aspects of the mental-health system as it evolved over the same twenty-five-year period and the interplay of that with Jeff's life.  The author was relentless in his researching, advocating and mainly getting to know individuals who could help his son. He knew or got to know many of the movers and shakers, those at the tops of their fields, and gleaned from them a detailed and realistic survey of the battlefield on which his son found himself. I have spent a lot of time myself the last few years reading, surfing the Web, meeting, etc., but was left with a lot of questions and perhaps was left without a a good overall perspective of how the many pieces interact.

The author does a masterful job of covering many areas and gleaning the salient features, good and bad, things you are never going to read in a journal or hear admitted for the record. For example, from a discussion with Dr. Solomon Snyder, the inventor of Prozac: "One question has run through Snyder's professional life: What exactly causes schizophrenia? ... 'We know so little he said', he said sadly. 'There's a screw loose, but we don't know which screw.'" I think I would like to have known this four years ago rather than having to discover it over time. The book is filled with nuggets like this.

The wide-ranging areas covered include: the slow, grudging acceptance of using meds for treatment, later the doctrinaire rejections by the biological guys of the talk therapy guys, (thank goodness my son's doc is dual-track), the fights over wording of the DSM-III, the history of anti-psychotic meds (amazing twists and turns), meds in the pipeline, the R. D. Laing school, orthomolecular treatment, psychosocial treatment, electro-convulsive therapy, schizophrenogenic mothers,"Toxic Psychology" book, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" movie, Marilyn Monroe, atrocious experiments and abridgment of patient rights, sexual abuse, the history of the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill, the champions of mental health legislation in Washington, the big, profitable, competitive pharmacy business (Eli Lily sales of Olanzapine in 1997 about $850 million), the National Institute of Mental Health, various studies and meta studies (and the ongoing puzzlement), interviews with consumers, interviews with the big names, etc.

He writes of many problems/challenges: the general stumbling nature of the progress in this field, the unknown causes of the illness, the problems of diagnosis and the diagnostic categories, questions about treatment, side- effect tradeoffs, stigma, managing the managers, family stresses, under funding of research and support agencies and the crushing work loads, poverty- producing expenses, bureaucracy, on and on.

I found the book very satisfying in many ways. It most of all helps sustain our hope. And makes us appreciate the fact that despite all the difficulties we families are facing in 1998, times and prospects were much worse just a few years age. It chronicles a story we can relate to and can compare to our families' stories.  It always held up the humanity, the personality of Jeff.

It shines a light on the battlefield that still has its challenges and dangers but through which we can now walk with more confidence and with a better chance of survival or even conquest.

I wish the best to the Wydens and to all the many families doing battle.

A veritable encyclopedia of psychiatry and mental health
Before you ransack the library trying to get straight about mental illness, just read Peter Wyden's "Conquering Schizophrenia - a Father, his Son, and a Medical Breakthrough." Wyden, a writer, tells of his son Jeff's 25-years of crippling psychosis, and his story vibrates with passionate critique of the mental health system. His journalist's piercing eye fixes the target, while the other eye darts around, taking us on a back-street tour of psychiatry's history, players, and struggles as Wyden searches for perspective on this arena.

What is the target? Is it Jeff himself, who went from warm,extroverted child to introverted, erratic youth, then back to a more normal, properly medicated 46-year old man? Is it mental illness itself? Which illness? Jeff's was diagnosed as "school phobia," "anxiety," "depression," "schizophrenia - paranoid type," then "malignant case of manic-depressive." Perhaps it is psychiatry itself, with its "foibles,follies, and failures," and its oddly noble persistance in the face of overwhelming enigmas?

In any case, the target keeps moving. This conveys Wyden's sense of confusion and hair-pulling frustration through the dozens of psychiatrists, neuroleptics that ravaged the body while they calmed the mind, the hospitals, and halfway houses that make up Jeff's existence. He shows us the "split" between modern medicaters who treat the physical, and the traditional Freudians who believe only in the unconscious and psychoanalytic. He describes the bizarre events of pharmacology finds and the equally bizarre trip through FDA approval. He narrates the bitter 20-year feud between Dr Spitzer and proponents of DSM series and the older therapists who call it a "straightjacket."

The sound and fury, based on the void of the unknown, rages on. There is an abyss between etiologies, and chaos about categories. Signs of schizophrenia dovetail so slyly into signs of manic-depression (hallucinations, hyperagitation) that even "experts" can't say which is primary. Medications for one cross over for the other. "My learning curve was turning erratic," complained Wyden when Clozaril came on the scene. ". . . Anything might work. Anything might fail. . . There are no true experts."

At the book's end, Jeff is converting from Clozapin to the newer Olanzapine (the "breakthrough"), and seems to be emerging from his demi-world into a more responsive, organized person. His real diagnosis is still up for grabs.

The real breakthrough is hope, for today and for tomorrow, hope that research and medicine can cut through the profound devastation of a broken brain. Wyden has painted a realistic picture of major mental illness - ambiguous, unpredictable, messy, and bankrupting. Only those who have traveled that tunnel of despair can appreciate the candle of this seemingly promising advance.

Not Quite Conquering ....Yet
But still a valuable book that vividly portrays what concerned and responsible families endure when dealing with a psychotic child and trying to make sense of the mental health system that is not really a system. Unfortunately for Peter Wyden, his son became ill at a time when psychiatry was just moving out of the era influenced by Freud with concepts like schizophrenogenic mothers. Today, this crippling disease is becoming properly recognized as a neurobiological problem.

Wyden guided his son through something like 50 different psychiatrists, numerous hospitals, clinics, half way houses, hypnosis and electroshock before the development of olanzapine. While this wasn't the first drug developed, it was the one that worked the best for them. Since this book was written in 1997, a number of other drugs in the olanzapine class have been brought to market. While they do help with many of the symptoms, they have not conquered the illness. In fact, there is now considerable controversy about the side effects associated with these newer agents.

This class of drugs, called atypical antipyschotics, can cause considerable weight gain, elevated cholesterol levels, and the onset of type II diabetes. As a result, many doctors are going back to prescribing some of the older drugs and/or prescribing lower doses of two or more of them simultaneously.

The important point, however, is that with more drug choices that are presently available, there is greater chance that one of them will be effective. The importance of this book is the description of the family role as it should be but is all to often not. Parents need to and should become actively involved in helping their ill children even if that is not appreciated by some psychiatrists.

Marvin Ross
Author Schizophrenia: Medicine's Mystery - Society's Shame