Suggested Reading/Viewing

Please consider these books, movies, clips and magazines as resource material for dealing with suicide survivors, suicide prevention, depression and other mental illnesses:

• Healing The Shame That Binds You, by John Bradshaw, is a classic book written seventeen years ago. It has now been expanded and updated by the author.
  

  Healing The Shame That Binds You

  You can find Healing The Shame That Binds You online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or check at your local bookstore.

   

In honor of Mental Illness Awareness Week (October 4 – 10, 2009) PBS broadcast the film (produced for PBS by Fred Friendly Seminars) and offers web access and schedules of future broadcasts.

Visit Minds on the Edge: Facing Mental Illness and learn where you can watch this thought provoking film. You can also take advantage of the other excellent resources provided on this site.

• Please visit the Minds on the Edge PBS site for more information. About the program they said:

  The television program Minds on the Edge: Facing Mental Illness effectively illuminates challenging ethical issues as well as systemic flaws in program and policy design, service coordination, and resource allocation that are contributing to a mental health system that is widely acknowledged as broken.

  Minds on the Edge also provides a glimpse of many solutions that are being implemented across the country. These innovations, many shaped by the guidance and expertise of people with mental illness, offer promising solutions and hopeful direction to transform the mental health system.

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  After Suicide Loss: Coping with Your Grief, by Bob Baugher, Ph.D., and Jack Jordan, Ph.D., is available online at Amazon.com and on the AFSP website.

• Where Are the Cocoa Puffs?: A Family’s Journey Through Bipolar Disorder, by Karen Winters Schwartz, was written with a strong intention to decrease the stigma surrounding mental illness. “Where Are the Cocoa Puffs? is a coming of age story. It provides an authentic look at a teenager, her family, and friends who struggle to come to terms with the onset of her mental illness and to find a balance between hope and acceptance. Read it for its own sake. Read it to learn. It speaks to many truths.”~Michael J. Fitzpatrick, MSW, Executive Director of NAMI National. You may purchase it at here at Amazon.com.

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  No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide Of A Loved One, by Carla Fine, is available online at Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble.

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  My Side of Depression, by Don Legun, is available online at Amazon.com.

• Reviewed in Righter Monthly Review by Elizabeth Silance Ballard

Mr. Legun’s account of his experiences in the depths of clinical depression can easily be read in less than thirty minutes. It offers insights that might be valuable to those who have loved ones suffering from undiagnosed depression. Not a mental health professional, he is not burdened by professional jargon and speaks from the heart in a sincere effort to help others.

He is a “wounded healer” who has overcome the aftereffects of trauma leading to the onset of his difficulties, difficulties which were overwhelming and frightening, not only to himself but to those around him. His purpose for the book is simply to assure others that they are not alone, that help is available and that there is a way out of the quagmire of life for those who suffer with mental and emotional illnesses, which still carry a bit of stigma in society.

He gives full credit to his wife who stood by him all through the years and sought continually to find ways to help him, always showing that she loved and cared. Particularly poignant was her successful effort to help the author’s father to understand what his son was experiencing. Being like all parents who know the capabilities of their child, he urged his son to basically straighten up, get a job, be a man and everything would be all right. How many of us have not thought, or even said, the same thing to our own children?

The author’s wife, however, took the time to find material, which helped Dad to understand that his son was genuinely suffering and unable to do the things he knew he should be doing. His crippling was not of a limb, but of the brain.

His acceptance that the brain’s chemical imbalance would have to be offset by medication was not an easy one; and, of course, not all cases of clinical depression are treated with medication. Only a mental health professional can make that determination. The author urges anyone who is having the same symptoms he had to seek out a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist who can give that help. For families whose loved ones are unable to help themselves in these matters, Mr. Legun has included a list of sources that offer help to all concerned.

The cover illustration, also done by the author, is very touching and clearly shows the feelings one with clinical depression experiences almost every waking moment: A sad person, sitting alone facing a corner with high walls on either side, turned away from a world which has become impossible to face and a future which seems totally blocked. The insides of the book, however, offers hope and way out, back into Life.

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  Up From Grief: Patterns of Recovery, by Bernadine Kreis, is considered one of the best books available on grief, offering solid guidance to all who minister to those who mourn. Find available copies online at Amazon.com.

   

   

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  Toxic Ward: A Survivor’s Story, is Anne Marie Brian’s second book. She poignantly reveals her journey with mental illness.

  “Hi, I am an author with Bipolar. I have had two titles published. The first one is a book of poems called “Don’t Breathe a Word”, some of which deals with my experience of having mental illness. The second, “Toxic Ward – a Survivor’s Story” is an account of time spent on a psychiatric unit, and how being labelled “mentally ill” changes your world.” ~ Anne Marie Brian.

  You may purchase her book online at Amazon.com.

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  Dying to Be Free: A Healing Guide for Families After a Suicide, by Beverly Cobain and Jean Larch, is available online at Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble.

  If you buy After Suicide Loss: Coping with Your Grief, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide Of A Loved One and Dying to Be Free: A Healing Guide for Families After a Suicide together at Amazon.com, you’ll get a special price.

• Boy Interrupted, an HBO documentary directed by Dana Perry (mother of the film’s subject), debuted at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, as well as other National and International film festivals.

  

  You can purchase a copy of Boy Interrupted at Amazon.com and on the HBO DVD Shop website.

  Please read the amazing description of this film provided on the Boy Interrupted Official Site (where you can also see a preview of the film, read special interviews and get additional information):

  Boy Interrupted is a film that raises questions. It asks how a young boy can end his life at the tender age of 15. It struggles to find answers about what kind of family he had and the life he led. By its very nature, it is a naked display of its filmmaker’s personal life at its most revealing and perhaps disturbing. How can a mother, we may ask, make a film about the death of her son? What defines this film as a remarkably unique and truth-telling achievement is the way it explores how filmmaking can create closure for its creators as well as its audience. Dana Perry has gathered home movies, photographs, and a variety of different documents to tell the story of her son, Evan: his bipolar illness, his life, and his death, and their impact on those who loved him the most. She interviews his siblings and friends, his doctors and his teachers, and in the process, she chronicles a harrowing and difficult journey. The camera provides insight and revelation, and yet Boy Interrupted is a film that is also full of despair. The film’s saving grace is that it functions, in the final analysis, as therapy for both its viewers and its subjects at a most fundamental level. It is an essentially human story, and a parent’s worst nightmare.

The Chris Voss Show

On October 7, 2009, Brad appeared on The Chris Voss Show to speak about the One to Six blog, the One to Six Short Film and the upcoming documentary, Suicide Survivors. Chris Voss is a Twitter and Social Media Expert.

To view the interview, click on the above image, or click on this link.

One to Six the Documentary

One to Six is a short film created by Brad Woosley after the loss of his brother to suicide in 2004. This documentary provides a personal view on living as a suicide survivor and the stigma of suicide in our society..