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Acquainted with the Night
Paul Raeburn
A Parent's Quest to Understand Depression and Bipolar Disorder in His Children
Broadway
June 2005
On Sale: June 15, 2005
320 pages
ISBN: 0767914384
EAN: 9780767914383
Paperback
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Non-Fiction
In the tradition of Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind,
Acquainted with the Night is a powerful memoir of one man’s
struggle to deal with the adolescent depression and bipolar
disorder of his son and his daughter. Seven years ago Paul Raeburn’s son, Alex, eleven, was
admitted to a psychiatric hospital after leaving his fifth-
grade classroom in an inexplicable rage. He was
hospitalized three times over the next three years until he
was finally diagnosed by a psychiatrist as someone
exhibiting a clear-cut case of bipolar disorder. This ended
a painful period of misdiagnosis and inappropriate drug
therapy. Then Raeburn’s younger daughter, Alicia, twelve,
was diagnosed as suffering from depression after episodes
of self-mutilation and suicidal thoughts. She too was
repeatedly admitted to psychiatric hospitals. All during
this terrible, painful time, Raeburn’s marriage was
disintegrating, and he had to ask what he and his wife
might have done, unwittingly, to contribute to their
children’s mental illness. And so, literally to save his
children’s lives, he used all the resources available to
him as a science reporter and writer to educate himself on
their diseases and the various drugs and therapies
available to help them return from a land of inner torment. In Paul Raeburn’s skilled hands, this memoir of a family
stricken with the pain of depression and mania becomes a
cathartic story that any reader can share, even as parents
unlucky enough to be in a similar position will find it of
immeasurable practical value in their own struggles with
the child psychiatry establishment.
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