This is the author's story of childhood and his own process of growing into taking responsibility for his schizophrenic brother. One of its themes is that the biomedical model of mental illness has gone too far. Neugeboren sees his brother's illness as, at least, partially the result of a dysfunctional family. The book is also very critical of mental hospitals and the limited help available to the chronically mentally ill.

Clea Simon, Mad House: Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings (New York: Doubleday, 1997).

This book is partly a memoir and partly an investigation of the experience of siblings of people with schizophrenia. The author has both an older brother and a younger sister with severe schizophrenia. I bought the book because I have a sister who is mentally retarded, and I thought I might find some common themes (particularly the pressure felt by the "normal" child to be perfect).

I found the book even more valuable than I expected because I recognized so many of the family patterns she talks about, some from my experience with my sister and some, also, from my abuse experiences. She does a wonderful job of showing the feelings behind such issues as family secrets and our tendency to repeat painful patterns of the past. While the author does not focus on abuse issues, she does mention some abuse by her older brother (and she suspects that there may be more that she does not remember). I think this book might be valuable to anyone who was abused by a sibling.

Leslie Simon and Jan Johnson Drantell, A Music I No Longer Heard: The Early Death of a Parent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).

This book collects the stories of people who lost a parent before they became adults. It tries to show through their words the process of loss and how feelings change over time but never go away. I think in the end, I like Maxine Harris's book (reviewed above) better, but this one is more personal.

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