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Is There No Place on Earth for Me? | 
 enlarge | Author: Susan Sheehan
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $14.94 (100%)
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 412985
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0394713788
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.89820924
EAN: 9780394713786
ASIN: 0394713788
Publication Date: May 12, 1983
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
" A brilliantly documented chronicle of young woman's long struggle with schizophrenia."
-- Willard Gaylin, The New Republic
"Sylvia Frumkin," highly intelligent young girl, became a schizophrenic in her late teens and spent most of the next seventeen years in anti out of mental institutions. Susan Sheehan, a talented reporter followed "Sylvia" for almost a year talking with and observing her listening to her monologues, sitting in on consultations with doctors, even for a period sleeping in the bed next to her in a mental hospital.
"Susan Sheehan has committed an extraordinary act of journalism....She brings relentless intelligent attention to bear on a particular case, a journalistic practice that almost always results in new and disturbing insights into those mindless generalities and prejudice and certitudes we tend to carry around with us." -- Meg Greenfield, front page Washington Post Book World
"Sheehan is tenacious, observant and unsentimental. The history of a single patient leads us into a maze of understaffed institutions, bureaucratic fumbling, trial-and-error treatment and familial incomprehension. Though Sheehan keeps herself invisible, her sympathy is palpable."
-- Walter Clemons, Newsweek
By the author of Lift for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 An exceptional piece of investigative journalism that is potently affective. July 22, 2007
Christian Engler (Woburn, Massachusetts)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If the investigative reporter Nellie Bly were still alive, she probably would have declared Susan Sheehan to be her comrade-in-arms, journalistically speaking, at least, for so eye-opening is this book, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1983 in the nonfiction category, that one can't help but somehow feel indirectly involved in this true story in regards to time, place and manner.
By chronicling the schizophrenic oddesy of a single patient, "Sylvia Frumkin", a pseudonym, Susan Sheehan has performed an intimate piece of extraordinary journalism, whereby she brings the reader into the frightening and oftentimes misunderstood world of those possessed by mental illness. With compassionate, intellectual and keen, almost anthropological observation, Sheehan weaves through the blurred and confusing healthcare bureaucracy which "Sylvia Frumkin" and her family incrementally find themselves trying to navigate. Coupled with psychiatric doctors who seem tartly bent on competing against each other in regards to what drug perscriptions are best (and there is a flurry of them), a frazzled family who is so thinly glued together that a feather could crack them apart and "Sylvia Frumkin" herself, whose fragile mental health goes up and down faster than a blinking eye, a reader would want to toss the book aside simply because of the consistent up and down emotional tolls that are flatly patterned in each passing chapter. Yet, as each chapter occurs, it also provides a clean slate and or a new beginning where the illness can be kept at bay and "Sylvia Frumkin" can finally have the good normal life that she deserves. However, it is the rare bouts of normalcy that are fleeting and therein is where the loss of hope and frustration lie. It is that very fleetingness that is so expertly conveyed in, Is There No Place On Earth For Me?
Sheehan's book is one of those rare type of books, not simply because of its high journalistic caliber, but because it is one of those works that can actually bring about good, positive change in a very flawed system, and if a system, governmentally, medically and administratively speaking ever needed change, Creedmore Hospital and those of a similar ilk, definitely required serious correction. Sheehan's book was an eye-opening and engrossing read, amd one can only gravely echo Sheehan's own words in the afterword: "I want there to be a decent place for "Sylvia Frumkin"...and for the many thousands of other people like her."
Insightful and Well Written January 9, 2007
F. Higgins
Sheehan gives an objective and interesting view of schizophrenia and institutionalization. Her writing is funny and engaging.
 The Revolving Door of Schizophrenia April 30, 2005
Melissa Solomon (Victoria, TX United States)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Reading this book is like watching a train wreck in progress. You can't take your eyes off of it because you want to know how it all works out. When I was putting together a course on psychology in literature a friend gave me this book but made me promise to return it because it was a favorite of hers. After reading it, I can understand why. The author does a fantastic (although disturbing) job of describing the life of a woman with schizophrenia while also discussing the impact that the woman's illness has on her family. While reading the book the reader often begins to feel the anxiety and frustration experienced by Sylvia, a woman with schizophrenia, and her family, and can see in their mind's eye how the disease unfolds and engulfs their lives.
This is a great text for a student of psychology who is interested in descriptions of the disease and also of historical (1970s) views of the mental health system. It would also be helpful for the family members of a person diagnosed with schizophrenia to read so that they can have a greater understanding of the life of a person affected by the disorder.
nicely researched December 30, 2001
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
but having read it just this year, it seems a little outdated. I would recommend this book as an introduction to the subject of mental illness, institutionalization etc., but if you know a little more on the subject, skip the book and read something else.
 True, intimate, and slow June 24, 2001
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
I think this book shows the reality of liveing with schizophrenia and the feeling that there is no place for you. This book takes you through relaspe and healing periods with the main women character. It also shows the failures in our system. I think the book gets a little slow at points, it is a book you can definately put down, but it does do justice to teaching and learning about life with schizophrenia.
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