O’Loughlin (Adelphi Univ.) here joins forces with several practioner-colleagues to provide considerable insight into the lives of people suffering psychotic disorders (whose condition is termed “severe psychic distress”). Summarizing the findings from a large qualitative research study involving extensive interviews with individuals living at a residential community for persons diagnosed with psychosis, most chapters summarize individual interviews and provide insights into the subjective experience of each individual. What makes these chapters particularly interesting is that the experiences are addressed in all their complexity. The authors explore not only emotional suffering and functional problems but also how individuals try to incorporate their experiences with severe psychic distress into understanding themselves, and how they try to fit into the larger social world. . . the text provides considerable focus on understanding as a means of reducing client feelings of stigmatization and loneliness. . . this book serves as an excellent resource for helping clinicians understand all clients, even those with what are considered the most severe psychiatric diagnoses, who are trying to find their way in the world. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

Choice Reviews

We thank Michael and his associates for treating the members and staff with respect and dignity. We hope in explicating here the underpinnings of our unique form of social practice, the publication of this book will encourage interest and discussion in the greater application of the working community in achieving our common vision that people with serious mental illness can live and thrive in our communities.

Kenneth Dudek, President, Fountain House Inc.

“It is moving to read a work emphasizing the emotional contact of work with psychosis. Whatever the importance of medical intervention, human need for feeling links cannot be underestimated. Lives Interrupted provides a warm heart, caring mind, and imaginative reflection touching pain and wounds filled with longing and aching creativity. The editors and contributors bring out atmospheric conditions that further potential healing and growth. It emphasizes psycho-social elements that touch heart and mind and a felt sense of what may be possible.”

Michael Eigen, author of The Psychotic Core, The Sensitive Self, and The Challenge of Being Human

“Lives Interrupted exposes the plight of marginalized people suffering the anguish of extreme mental states. We hear the first person voices of those usually exiled by diagnosis and eclipsed by medication. This is a book for anyone interested in the experience of people suffering beyond the outskirts of mental well-being and the creativity and support needed to foster their healing and recovery.”

Danielle Knafo, Lond Island University