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Searching for the Roots of My Family's Schizophrenia
Bantam
September 2008
On Sale: August 26, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 0553805258
EAN: 9780553805253
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In this powerful, sometimes harrowing, deeply felt story,
Patrick Tracey journeys to Ireland to track the origin and
solve the mystery of his Irish-American family's
multigenerational struggle with schizophrenia. For most Irish Americans, a trip to Ireland is often an
occasion to revisit their family's roots. But for Patrick
Tracey, the lure of his ancestral home is a much more
powerful need: part pilgrimage, part investigation to
confront the genealogical mystery of schizophrenia–a
disease that had claimed a great-great-great-grandmother, a
grandmother, an uncle, and, most recently, two sisters. As long as Tracey could remember, schizophrenia ran on his
mother's side, seldom spoken of outright but impossible to
ignore. Devastated by the emotional toll the disease had
already taken on his family, terrified of passing it on to
any children he might have, and inspired by the recent
discovery of the first genetic link to schizophrenia,
Tracey followed his genealogical trail from Boston to
Ireland's county Roscommon, home of his oldest-known
schizophrenic ancestor. In a renovated camper, Tracey
crossed the Emerald Isle to investigate the country that,
until the 1960s, had the world's highest rate of
institutionalization for mental illness, following clues
and separating fact from fiction in the legendary
relationship the Irish have had with madness. Tracey's path leads from fairy mounds and ancient caverns
still shrouded in superstition to old pubs whose colorful
inhabitants are a treasure trove of local lore. He visits
the massive and grim asylum where his famine starved
ancestors may have lived. And he interviews the Irish
research team that first cracked the schizophrenic code to
learn how much–and how little–we know about this often
misunderstood disease. Filled with history, science, and lore, Stalking Irish
Madness is an unforgettable chronicle of one man's attempt
to make sense of his family's past and to find hope for the
future of schizophrenic patients.
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