Disability-and-Health Books

It is a book that helps us to think over schizophrenia. I am a counselor. I am working with several clients who are schizophrenic. It is a very useful book for psycho-education of their family. In addition, it helps the society to be more respect and patient to our client if we get rid of the medical model for schizophrenia.

In his excellent new book, "Winning The Disability Challenge," California clinical psychologist Dr. John Tholen translates William James' aphorism that: "...great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed..." into practical responses to the hurdles presented by a physical or mental disability. The author has worked with patients in the disability field for over twenty five years and this experience, along with his friendly style and compassion for his patients, shine throughout this thoughtful and helpful work.

Dr. Tholen's up-beat and practical approach to overcoming the financial, physical and emotional problems caused by the disruption of his patients' personal lives in the wake of disability are summed in a section on "Crisis or Catastrophe." He notes that the Japanese ideogram for "crisis" is made up from the symbols for "catastrophe" and "opportunity" and that the road to success in meeting personal challenges begins with a patient's determination to stake out the positive features in his or her life and expand them, rather than falling into despair over handicaps. The book lays out a detailed and practical road map for meeting personal challenges on a day-to-day basis and the recommendations are backed up by concrete examples from the author's practice, with actual results from patient case histories. Recognizing that disabilities often pose financial and legal issues which have to be dealt with, along with psychological problems, the book includes appendixes with references up-to-date programs and community resources available to aid patients who are working their way through the complex and often frustrating road to obtaining workers' compensation and disability insurance benefits.

It's worth noting that, in addition to being an indispensable guide for those dealing with disability issues, the book is also an excellent general resource for overcoming interpersonal and family problems in everyday life, for those fortunate enough to have avoided the disability challenge. Dr. Tholen's pro-active approach to coping with a variety of challenges faced by all should earn this useful paperback guide a welcome place on everyone's bookshelf.

What a shame such a wonderful book doesn't even warrant a single review from all those supposed intellectual readers who claim to "understand" disability and what it means for millions of women all over the world.

I found this book in a thrift shop for a dollar here in the UK and what a buy it was is all I can say!

This is an anthology for disabled women by disabled women but it is also for YOU abled bodied folk who think YOU KNOW what it is like to be in a body where you are physically powerless or have a mind that is considered "different" and therefore not normal. This book will tell you what it is really like, it spares no punches and takes no prisoners.

There are poems, life stories, experiences, angst, humour, sorrow, irony, anger, dreams fulfilled or not as the case may be, no two voices in this book are the same.

This book is not a sentimental journey down the "what might have been" lane it's a book about real people living real lives.

A gem of a book that sadly has been overlooked by many.

Readers all I can say is "you don't what you're missing!"

This text is a great resource for graduate students as well as practicing Learning Consultants.

Walsh and LeRoy go beyond the parameters of a typical research study as they share the experiences and the realities of women from around the world (18 countries to be exact) in a way that is informative and compassionate. Situating aging in a global web of social programs and public policy, the authors delve into the issues that matter most. Using a case study approach to introduce each topical chapter, the authors first allow women to tell their stories, thereby providing space to women who have been marginalized for the greater portion of their lives. This in itself is remarkable and commendable. The book is also rigorously academic, citing and adding to research on health, income, employment, family relationships, friendships, leisure, quality of life, and others for people with and without disabilities. This book is definitely an indispensable resource and staring point for further research in each field of aging, gender, and disability studies.

This important new contribution to the field grew out of a 1994 conference sponsored by the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, The Health of Women With Physical Disabilities: Setting a Research Agenda for the '90s. Women With Physical Disabilities exposes a diverse subject that, until now, has received little to no attention.

The volume is unique in that it does not overmedicalize the issues. Rather, it concentrates on the point of view of women with physical disabilities. Many of its contributors are researchers, clinicians, and advocates with disabilities who are in charge of their lives and their bodies and who are active members of the research, health care, and disability communities.

The book targets multiple audiences: women with disabilities, health providers, researchers, and families and friends of women with disabilities. Women with disabilities will identify with many of the described experiences, may find some new information and perspectives, and will have reinforced the need to move ahead with strong, loud, and continued advocacy for change. Health providers should benefit by an expansion of their clinical knowledge and by becoming aware of some of the practical and quality-of-life issues of concern to women with disabilities. Researchers will find new ways of analyzing the issues raised and new ideas for broadening the scope of their investigations to ensure that their research has practical applications. There are many important recommendations in the book for new research priorities.

The 33 articles cover a range of topics, including an exposition on wellness in the context of disability, an overview of sociodemographics of women with disabilities, a look at the effect of combining disability status with cultural minority status, sexuality, reproduction, contraception, obstetrics, parenting, stress and its impact on physiology, approaches to stress management, bowel and bladder management, and exercise and nutrition programs to enhance physiological and psychological fitness. A few of the articles are technical, but most are easy to read.

Carol J. Gill's "Becoming Visible: Personal Health Experiences of Women With Disabilities," eloquently explores experiences of oppression of women with disabilities. She establishes the importance of women protesting their invisibility in the health system in terms of treatment options and in the research that guides those treatments.

The chapters on sexuality deal with what is known and not known about sexual response, reproductive health, pregnancy and delivery, as well as the psychosocial issues of sense of self, relationships, parenting, sexual orientation, abuse, gaining access to health care systems, and the politics surrounding the sexuality of women with disabilities. Sandra Welner's article addresses several critical issues, rarely discussed: the negative effects of taking estrogen and progesterone for women with certain disabilities, the effect of disability on the detection and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and the experience of menopause. Questions addressed are increasingly frequent topics of conversation among disabled women "boomers' " For example, as we age with disability and enter menopause, what will the effects be of many years of decreased weight bearing and limited participation in aerobic exercise? Are we more vulnerable to significant osteoporosis? What will the inevitable changes in tissue, strength, skin elasticity, reduced blood supply to the skin and soft tissue, and temperature sensitivity mean to us?

Carol Gill's noteworthy essay on dating and relationship issues articulates common and painful difficulties encountered by many with disabilities in establishing intimate relationships. She explores issues around societal devaluation, physical and verbal abuse, family disapproval of relationships, and the practical and financial burdens placed on couples by misguided public policy.

Harilyn Rousso's "Sexuality and a Positive Sense of Self " shares some good and bad news regarding adolescent girls with disabilities. The social scene is still difficult as girls continue to be excluded, rejected, and viewed as asexual based on the mythical standard of physical perfection. The good news is that today's girls are tougher, more self-confident, and more creative in dealing with negative assumptions about their social potential. These girls recognized, earlier than many of their older peers, that the source of oppression was outside themselves. The problem is societal prejudices, not their bodies or their abilities.

Corbett O'Toole's "Disabled Lesbians: Challenging Monocultural Constructs" explores the barriers that disabled lesbians encounter both within the disabled women's community and the health care world. The "Stress and Well-Being" section treats a subject one doesn't see written about a great deal: stress related to dealing with disability. It explores the relationship between the physiological basis of the stress response and physical and emotional health and traditional approaches to stress, as well as new approaches to alleviating stress.

This book does a great service in recording in one volume a representative sampling of what is known, but more important what is not known. Many of the articles leave the reader frustrated and wanting more data, information, and strategies. This work sounds a blaring alarm: "pay attention to these areas and devote greater resources to investigating many of the issues critical to women with disabilities' " If this is to happen, researchers, providers, and women with disabilities must join forces and be the sounders of the alarm, also.

We must make our needs clearly, assertively, and repeatedly known in areas of essential services and resources, including education, prevention, research, and public policy change! We need to advocate for attention and solutions so our concerns and our urgency for these services and resources are not only understood but become a priority for many. So what do we want? We want these issues to get attention, and we want it now!

Reviewed by June Isaacson Kailes, Disability Policy Consultant, author of "Health, Wellness and Aging with Disability," and "Be a Savvy Health Care Consumer, Your Life May Depend on it!" ||

This book lays out the laws for worker's comp in an easy to read chart. The information in the charts and text of the book is priceless. If you are serious about reducing your work comp costs, this book shows you how.

Informative book about children with deaf-blindness caused by rubella syndrome, it is also quite touching and accessible to readers unaccustomed to reading sociology. It is an intimate look into the institutions of the 1970s and the lives of these affected children and their families.

A wonderfully imagined look into the mind of a boy debilitated by cerebral palsy. The author, who himself has a son with cerebral palsy, imagines that Shawn, though confined to a wheelchair with absolutely no control over his own motor functions, is very smart, incredibly observant, and has perfect memory of everything he's heard since a young age.

Unfortunately, what Shawn's been hearing lately makes him think that his father is planning to kill him, to "end his pain." Naturally, Shawn has his own thoughts about that plan, but knows that he's completely powerless to stop his father. Yet the father is not portrayed as a villain, but is sensitively drawn as a father who is just trying to do the right thing by his son.

I couldn't put the book down. It's horrible. I'm sorry the book - and, aparently, Shawn's life - are so short.

The book is powerful because of all the here-and-now details: the fly crawling on Shawn's face and he can't do anything to stop it; the taste of the bbq-flavored potato chip Shawn's brother slips into his mouth; the vivid descriptions of what it's like to experience a seizure.

A short, powerful book.

This is the best suspense novel I have ever read! I couldn't put it down. Author, Terry Trueman, is brilliant!

Terry Trueman's Stuck In Neutral was inspired by his son Sheehan, who has cerebral palsy, is not able to communicate, and has been labeled profoundly developmentally disabled. Trueman recently penned Sheehan: Heartbreak and Redemption, about his own personal struggle with his son's severe cerebral palsy that inspired Stuck in Neutral. Trueman's protagonist Shawn McDaniel is in much the same boat; he's unable to communicate or control any of his muscles, including his eyes, and even his family has chalked him up as profoundly retarded.

But Stuck in Neutral, told from Shawn's point of view, reveals a witty narrator with a photographic memory and a zest for life, even if he's not able to communicate it to his family. There's not a trace of self-pity, even though he's at the mercy of family and caretakers for everything from feeding to bathrooming, and he's in a class of profoundly retarded classmates. The plot revolves around the suspicion that Shawn's father is planning to kill him out of "mercy" for Shawn's suffering and his ever-present seizures.

The binding link that weaves throughout the story centers on his father's poem about young Shawn that won numerous awards including the Pulitzer. Now his father, who deserted the family years ago, is a celebrity for his poem that presents Shawn as a helpless, pitiable object, not the funny, smart teenager that he's become, if only in his head, and his father seems inspired by a recent "mercy killing" of another handicapped child.

Trueman does a masterful job of leaving the ending open (he penned a novel written from Shawn's brother Paul's perspective, Cruise Control, that explores Paul's feelings towards his brother and his situation, which is also open-ended in its final decision), and Shawn is an utterly hip, real narrator that shows us how easy (and dangerous) it is to judge someone based on appearances.

Go ahead and shell out 7 bucks and see what it's like to be on the other side...I dare you.

I bought this book as a christmas gift for a neurologist in my family, after reading a very favorable review of it in a major medical journal. I did not read it myself, but the final recipient was very happy.

This is a very inspiring and amazing book. Bauby's situation might have seemed hopeless to most, but he turned it into an opportunity. He devised an alphabet which could be communicated by using the only body part he could move, his left eye. Through this communication vehicle he was able to "talk" to his family, friends and those tending to him, if they would only take the time to listen. Bauby's efforts provide helpful information to health care providers as well as to those with loved ones who are caught in the throes of locked-in syndrome which may be experienced by some stroke victims. Despite the dismal circumstances, Bauby's handling of the situation makes this an uplifting book. I could only hope to be half as brave as Bauby given the same circumstances.

A rare look into the mind of a severely affected stroke victim. He has more courage than I have and I am glad he took the time to share his world with me.

First, the story of this man communicating with the world by blinking his left eye is fascinating. The description of prioritizing letters based on their frequency of use in the French language is really cool.

However, the real wonder in this book is Jean-Dominique's acceptance of fate. He is certainly not happy with it, and feels quite demeaned at times by hospital staff, but he keeps on going, and as a result we have this beautiful memoir that he shared with the world.

At this point, mostly everyone knows the story of what happened to Jean-Dominique Bauby as well as the story of his life, so it's pointless to rehash what's already common knowledge, but one thing that needs to be said (or reiterated) is that it's absolutely amazing that the late Bauby dictated this book to his therapist by blinking one letter at a time.

"The Diving Bell and The Butterfly" is a pretty quick read, but what's contained within is, at the risk of sounding cliche, deeply moving and powerful. To think that someone was patient enough (in this day and age of minus zero patience and even shorter attention spans) to take the time to transcribe his thoughts one letter at a time defies description.

As always, some details were changed in the adaptation from the book to the movie, but the message remains the same - and it will remain with you long after reading the book and/or watching the movie. - Donna Di Giacomo