First person account book (about mental illness essay.

Assignment 1:
First person account book (about mental illness) essay (20% of course grade)
Due via BB at 11:59 pm on Friday February 17th
For this assignment, you are asked to read one (or more, if you are especially interested) book-length primary account of mental illness as experienced by either a mental health consumer or a family member of a person with mental illness; and write a review roughly five to seven 1.5 spaced pages in
length. Examples of first-person accounts:

The day the voices stopped (schizophrenia)
Diary of a schizophrenic Girl
Just Checking (OCD)
Girl Interrupted (borderline)
The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller
The Day the Voices Stopped: A Schizophrenic’s Journey from Madness to Hope by Ken Steele
Is There No Place on Earth for Me? By Susan Sheehan
Diagnosis: Schizophrenia by Rachel Miller
Recovered, Not Cured: A Journey Through Schizophrenia by Richard McLean
The Voices of Robby Wilde by Elizabeth Kytle, Robert Coles
In the realm of Hungry Ghosts (addiction – uses a critical lens)
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Neakem: racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies (Black author speaking about individual and collective nature of racism and a embodied traumatic experience)
The Politics of Trauma by Staci Haines (white woman, trained in mental health) overview of social political and economic roots of trauma critical feminist perspective (racism, sexism environmental degradation, poverty)
Embodied social justice by, Rae Johnson (white queer scholar social worker) trauma,
body center somatic way of looking at oppression; integrative approach (trauma, critical way of thinking about social identity)
Mad in America by Robert Whitaker

Please select a narrative that is at least 100 pages long.

This assignment has three purposes:
First, to understand how mental disorders are experienced by primary consumers and their families. Such an understating will add to your effectiveness as a practitioner or administrator by acquainting you with the phenomenological world of a person with a mental disorder. In addition, you will learn about the stigma related to mental illness from the perspective of those who experience it directly.
Second, this assignment is designed to help you consider the challenges of detecting, defining, classifying, and

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University at Albany
State University of New York
School of Social Welfare

treating mental illness from a perspective different than those offered by the course readings. Your first-person account will provide you with a case study through which you can think more deeply about the issues we discuss in class.
Third, this assignment also gives you the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding about issues related to anti-oppression. For example, if your book is about a queer person, what is their experience living in a society that centers white, heterosexual, able-bodied, men? We will talk more about this in class, but in your paper, you can practice using a using an anti-oppressive lens regarding mental health, mental illness, and healing.

Prepare your essay in the style you prefer (you may wish to pursue examples from professional journals) and bear the following points in mind: Although a summary of your chosen book will be necessary to set a context for the reader, it is important that you accomplish this as succinctly as possible and move towards conducting a critical analysis of the text. The analysis should include both 1) a description of the utility of the reading for broadening your knowledge about psychosocial aspects of mental disorders; and 2) a dialogue that brings together the text itself and the perspectives embodied in the articles and chapters you have been reading for class. In this respect, delineate and discuss points of convergence and divergence between the two. Since this assignment is due in the fifth week of the semester, it would be best to select an appropriate book as soon as possible.

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