Saving the Schizo Kid, Waln K. Brown

Saving the Schizo Kid: (Reflections on Divorce, Mental Health, and Recovery), Waln K. Brown.  Tallahassee: William Gladden Foundation Press, 2011.  approx. 1 mg on an e-reader.

Waln K. Brown is the founder and C.E.O. of the Willian Gladden Foundation located in Tallahassee Florida and on the web at

http://www.williamgladdenfoundation.org  .

Harrisburg State Hospital is still in operation.  Several years ago, on our way to the Pennsylvania Mental Health Consumers Conference, some friends and I met there to wait for the next chartered bus.  One friend had spent several years there once, and then another almost-year some time later after going off of her psych meds.  [N.B. the Citizens Conmission on Human Rights with its' vigorous anti-shrink and anti-psych meds stance is an organization which is run by Scientology].  She pointed out various buildings to the rest of us.  We studied what patients we could see, the carefully manicured lawns, the unappetizing smells belching from some kitchen window.  At the conference we did a skit about a cockroach funeral on the ward.  Only it wasn't a fiction.  It happened.  My friend had lived it.


Waln K. Brown had also been there, to Harrisburg State Hospital.  He was escorted there by the police.  Harrisburg State Hospital had been vetted to Brown's divorcing parents as a place where their troubled son could get the help that he needed with his temper.  And so the decision was made.

sapphoq reviews says: Saving the Schizo Kid was all the more real to me because my friend had also been there as a patient.  I never got the chance to ask her if she knew Waln K. Brown-- she is dead now.  Waln K. Brown's authentic voice rings clearly throughout the pages of this book.  Highly recommended to those with an interest in personal mental health stories.