Top 20 Books About Schizophrenia

What Is Schizophrenia? Books About Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness marked by difficulty separating one’s own illusions from reality.

Schizophrenia is characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disordered speech, and disordered or catatonic behavior, and negative symptoms include restrained emotional expression and diminished motivation to engage in activities.

People with schizophrenia usually struggle to maintain their level of functioning in areas like work, interpersonal relationships, and self-care at the same level as before the onset of their symptoms.

A mental illness called schizophrenia affects how well a person perceives reality. Psychosis results from delusions and hallucinations in a person. Through its impact on a person’s beliefs, perceptions, and behavior, schizophrenia impairs their ability to succeed at a job, in school, or in social interactions.

Schizophrenia sufferers frequently face stigma in society, which is one of their biggest problems. There are many misconceptions concerning schizophrenia, which makes it challenging for most people to understand. Contrary to popular belief, people with schizophrenia do not possess “split personalities.” Patients with schizophrenia hardly ever act violently, although they do commit suicide more frequently than the general population.

Schizophrenia affects about 1 in 100 people, and the signs and symptoms usually start to show in late adolescence or early adulthood. Usually a chronic illness, it can cause serious damage if left untreated.

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• What Is Schizophrenia?
• Types of Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia Fact Sheet
• Schizophrenia Statistics
• Books on Schizophrenia (Schizophrenia Books)
• Nonfiction Books About Schizophrenia
• Books About Schizophrenia Fiction – Fiction Books on Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia symptoms
• Schizophrenia Treatment
• We Level Up Dual Diagnosis Treatment

Learn More:

• Negative Symptoms Of Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia Drawings
• Drug-Induced Schizophrenia
• Is schizophrenia hereditary?
• Schizophrenia Causes
• Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia Treatment
• Why is it Important to Focus Mental Health Efforts on Adults?
• Mental Health Poems that are Powerful and Healing
• Short-Term Disability Mental Health

Types of Schizophrenia

Up until the most recent version of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-5, which was published in 2013, schizophrenia was divided into 5 subtypes, even when some people think there are only 3 types of schizophrenia:

1. Paranoid Schizophrenia: People with paranoid schizophrenia experience at least one delusion or frequent auditory hallucinations.
2. Disorganized Schizophrenia: The symptoms of disorganized schizophrenia include disorganized thought, disorganized speech, and flat affect.
3. Catatonic Schizophrenia: In addition to other symptoms of schizophrenia, people with catatonic schizophrenia also experience catatonia, which may include unresponsiveness or restlessness.
4. Residual Schizophrenia: In people with residual schizophrenia, symptoms of schizophrenia still exist but are weaker than in other subtypes.
5. Undifferentiated Schizophrenia: If symptoms from more than one of the other subtypes of schizophrenia are present, but there aren’t enough to classify the individual in another subtype, they meet the criteria for undifferentiated schizophrenia.

These different levels of schizophrenia were dropped from the DSM-5 in favor of utilizing a spectrum to categorize symptom severity due to the lack of clinical support for their use in treating patients and the instability among them as a result of schizophrenia’s unpredictable course.

4.9%

With the risk being highest in the early stages of the illness, an estimated 4.9% of people with schizophrenia commit suicide, a rate that is significantly higher than that of the general population.

Source: National Insitute Of Mental Health

50%

The great majority of people with schizophrenia do not currently have access to mental health services. An estimated 50% of patients in psychiatric hospitals have a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Source: World Health Organization

Books on Schizophrenia (Schizophrenia Books)

You can benefit from learning more about schizophrenia whether you’ve recently received a diagnosis or have had the condition for a while. These are the best books on schizophrenia (best books for schizophrenia patients) that can assist you in navigating your specific symptoms and difficulties as well as in finding motivation, hope, and knowledge that you can and will recover — and remain well.

Nonfiction Books About Schizophrenia

1. Surviving Schizophrenia, 6th edition

The family manual by E. FULLER TORREY, MD includes a list of signs and symptoms, diagnostic standards, and instruments for determining whether a person has schizophrenia. Additionally, he discusses views regarding the origins of the condition, its course, and its prognosis, as well as various forms of treatment. He cites studies that looked at outcomes 10, and 30 years, after a diagnosis.

2. I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help (2010)

This book about schizophrenia is an authoritative manual on applying the LEAP technique to assist someone with mental illness in accepting treatment was written by Xavier Amador, PhD. Even if a loved one does not suffer from anosognosia—the inability to recognize that you are ill—I nevertheless urge them to read this book. Amador is the foremost authority on the subject. To aid families in aiding their loved ones, he founded the LEAP Institute.

3. The Everything Health Guide to Schizophrenia

This book on schizophrenia was written by Dean Haycock and Elias K. Shava to provide information on therapy, medication, and coping mechanisms. You might be able to find a print copy of an A-Z guide that is now accessible as an e-book in a public library like I did. An excellent complement to Surviving Schizophrenia.

4. My, Myself, and Them: A Firsthand Account

This schizophrenia book, which Kurt Snyder co-wrote, is about his experiences as a young man with schizophrenia. The only book that provides an overview of maintaining employment and living independently while living with schizophrenia is this reference guide. There is currently no other resource book that offers advice on how to balance having a job, your own apartment, and a fulfilling social life.

5. Divided Minds

This autobiography was written by the identical twins Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn Spiro regarding Pamela’s persistent sickness. Award-winning poet and visual artist Pamela shares a cautionary tale about delayed care and protracted hospital stays. This important contribution to the literature illustrates the all-too-common reality that a large proportion of people with schizophrenia experience episodes intermittently during the course of their life.

6. The Center Cannot Hold

Elyn Saks released her first-person story of how she learned to live with her schizophrenia while also holding a Yale JD and working as a law professor. Important mostly to motivate people with schizophrenia who wish to succeed in a conventional life or career rather than a creative one. According to Saks’ web bio, she still suffers “serious continuous episodes.”

7. Recovery from Disability

This guide on psychiatric rehabilitation was written by Robert Paul Liberman, MD, and covers a variety of subjects including social skills instruction, illness management, and vocational rehabilitation. This book should be read by every member of the treatment team in mental health.

8. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Our understanding of moods and madness was altered by Kay Redfield Jamison’s best-selling classic, An Unquiet Mind.

Dr. Jamison is a leading expert on manic-depressive (bipolar) disease and has personal experience with it. For even as she pursued a career in academic medicine, Jamison discovered that she was prone to the same exhilarating highs and devastating lows that plagued many of her patients, as her disease drove her into disastrous spending binges, violent outbursts, and a suicide attempt.

In this essay, Jamison addresses bipolar disorder from the perspectives of both the healer and the healed, showing both the terrors of the illness and the terrible allure that occasionally led her to defy medical advice. The memoir An Unquiet Mind is incredibly honest, vivid, and wise; it is a profoundly potent work that has both changed and saved lives.

9. Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

A book about a family with schizophrenia: The American dream appeared to be being lived by Don and Mimi Galvin. After the war, Don’s career with the Air Force moved them to Colorado, where their twelve children were born between 1945 and 1965, precisely spanning the baby boom.

10. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Books About Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus was acclaimed as a masterpiece and “a work of heretical craziness” when it was first published in France. The authors, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari put up the following hypothesis in it: Western society’s intrinsic herd instinct has made it possible for the authorities, the media, and even the rules of economics to capitalize on each individual’s need to remain a part of the group.

Furthermore, while people with mental illnesses are socially separated by nature, they may not be insane but rather pure individuals. More than 25 years after its initial release, Anti-Oedipus continues to be a contentious addition to a crucial conversation on the character of free thought.

11. Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence

Nine states have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Cannabis advocates contend that it can benefit everyone, including cancer patients and veterans. However, the case for legalization has been made on the false premises that marijuana arrests are a major source of overcrowding in prisons, that most medical professionals support the use of cannabis as a treatment, that it can somehow control the opiate epidemic, and that it is good for mental health.

12. Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity

In Far from the Tree, Solomon makes the astonishing claim that being exceptional is fundamental to the human condition and that our differences are what bind us together. He writes about families dealing with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or several severe disabilities; prodigious children, those born through rape, those who turn to crime, and transgender children. Although each of these traits has the potential to isolate, everyone experiences variation within families, and Solomon shows how love can win over prejudice in every chapter.

Every aspect of parenting revolves around one central question: how much should parents accept their kids for who they are, and how much should they encourage them to be their best selves? Solomon draws on ten years of study and conversations with more than 300 families to highlight the eloquence of common people dealing with difficult situations. Far from the Tree addresses how individuals who love each other must battle to accept each other—a subject in every family’s life—in an elegant manner by a dazzlingly innovative and sympathetic thinker.

13. I Am Not Sick I Don’t Need Help!: How to Help Someone Accept Treatment 

Dr. Amador’s success in getting his brother Henry, who had schizophrenia, to accept treatment, served as the impetus for his studies on lack of insight. Henry did not think he had a disease, just like the tens of millions of other people who have been diagnosed with addiction, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.

14. Louis Wain’s Cats

Louis Wain created the cat world, cat society, and cat fashion. These famous H.G. Wells words, which predicted the future of the Wain cat in 1925 and have once again made it the most recognizable cat art of the century. Louis Wain’s cats, who were dressed as people during their prime, depicted the fashionable Edwardian world having a good time while dining out and attending tea parties, attending races and the seaside, celebrating birthdays and holidays, and engaging in raucous matches of tennis, bowls, cricket, and football.

The majority of group activities in this titillating world of playful, unconstrained cats are likely to end in disaster, mayhem, and mischief. This is Wain’s world—an entire cat world—and it’s witty, edgy, and animated.

Since 1972, when the Victoria & Albert Museum in London hosted the first complete exhibition of Wain’s work, the artist has progressively gained in popularity and been collected all over the world. This biography includes 300 rich and varied plates that are all authentic reproductions of the original artwork, each with a scholarly introduction by award-winning actor Benedict Cumberbatch.

Chris Beetles Ltd. and Canongate Books collaborated to publish this book.

15. The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

The Collected Schizophrenias is a personal, affecting work written with the urgency and directness of someone who is still dealing with the aftereffects of mental and chronic illness. Esmé Weijun Wang writes not only to people who share her experience with the “collected schizophrenias,” but also to those who are trying to comprehend it. Schizophrenia is not a single, all-encompassing diagnosis. Wang begins by outlining how she came to receive the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. She then discusses the controversy within the medical community over the terminology and methods used to identify mental illnesses. Finally, she follows an arc that looks at how schizophrenia manifested in her life.

Wang’s analytical eye honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with personal narrative in essays that cover a wide range of topics, from using fashion to presenting as high-functioning to the depths of a rare form of psychosis, and from the failures of the higher education system and the dangers of institutionalization to the complexity of compounding factors like PTSD and Lyme disease. The Collected Schizophrenias is a collection of essays with unmistakable strength that clarifies common misunderstandings and offers an understanding of a long-misunderstood ailment.

16. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy of Schizophrenia

The use of cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of conditions like depression, panic disorder, and phobias has been proven to be effective. This book describes the practical application of cognitive-behavioral treatment to the pervasive illness of schizophrenia, offering a promising strategy to patients with the most difficult challenges. The methods presented in this book, which are based on pertinent theory and research, are intended to be used in conjunction with other forms of treatment for schizophrenia, such as medication, therapy, and family therapy.

18. Schizophrenia Fiction Books: Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

One of the best schizophrenia books fiction. It turns out that reality is frequently not what you think it is; occasionally, someone truly is trying to harm you. Alex, a senior in high school who is unable to distinguish between reality and illusion, is the protagonist of the novel Made You Up.

Alex struggles every day to distinguish between reality and illusion. Alex fights her schizophrenia head-on with the help of her camera, a Magic 8-Ball, and her only ally—her younger sister—in an effort to remain sane long enough to go to college. Prior to the start of courses and her encounter with Miles, she is fairly confident about her chances. She must have imagined him. Before she knows it, Alex is forming friendships, attending parties, falling in love, and going through all the typical teenage rites of passage. However, Alex is accustomed to being crazy. She isn’t ready for everyday life.

19. Schizo by Nic Sheff

The bestselling author of Tweak tells the interesting, startling, and ultimately very upbeat tale of one teen’s descent into mental illness. Miles, a teenager recuperating from a psychotic breakdown, is the definition of an unreliable narrator since he thinks he is getting better while actually getting worse.

Schizophrenia symptoms

Schizophrenia symptoms generally fall under three categories:

• Positive symptoms: this includes psychosis (including hallucinations and delusions), disordered thinking and speech, altered sensations
• Negative symptoms: these symptoms include reduced motivation, difficulty planning, suppressed emotions, social withdrawal
• Cognitive symptoms: this can include trouble with attention or concentration, memory loss, difficulty absorbing information, trouble making decisions