Published in 2008 (first published 1994)
282 pages
Lori Schiller is the author of The Quiet Room– A Journey out of the Torment of Madness, originally published in 1994, written with Amanda Bennett. The memoir chronicles her battle with mental illness and includes chapters written by her therapist, her brothers, her parents, and herself. It follows Schiller’s journey with schizo-affective disorder, in and out of hospitals, multiple suicide attempts, and multiple treatment plans. Schiller describes her struggle with mental illness and the impact it had on her family.
Schiller now teaches a course on schizophrenia to doctors, nurses, patients at hospitals around the country, including the Westchester Division of New York Hospital, where she spent time during her hospitalizations. She now speaks to local police in crisis team intervention education, has been a board member of her local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness since 1998, and teaches a ten-week course for NAMI, helping those with mental illness. She is on the board of directors of the South County Mental Health Center, and in 2009 was named Florida Council for Community Mental Health Peer Specialist of the Year.
Amanda Bennett is a lawyer living in in Kigali, Rwanda with her husband and son. She serves on the board of directors for Reeds of Hope, a non-profit serving vulnerable families and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
What is this book about?
Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, Lori Schiller’s memoir is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage.
At seventeen Lori Schiller was the perfect child-the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia. She began an ordeal of hospitalizations, halfway houses, relapses, more suicide attempts, and constant, withering despair. But against all odds, she survived.
In this personal account, she tells how she did it, taking us not only into her own shattered world, but drawing on the words of the doctors who treated her and family members who suffered with her.
