Hurry Down Sunshine

In the opening pages of his sort-of memoir, Michael Greenberg says it's "something of a sacrilege" to speak of mental illness as anything besides the "chemical brain disease that it on one level is." Nonetheless, in Hurry Down Sunshine, Greenberg takes on the subject from a father's perspective and tells the story of his fifteen-year-old daughter's swift mental decline.

Greenberg names the day of his daughter Sally's crack-up: July 5, 1996. He wakes up to discover that Sally isn't home, and when he finds her walking around in the streets, the daughter he knows is gone. Instead, a raging young girl who kicks down trashcans and speaks in abstractions seems to have taken her place.

Hurry Down Sunshine is a book that, I think, will draw in readers who have first-hand experience with mental illness, and it will connect with others who are interested in reading about personal and family drama. For the former, this story will read like a testament of survival and perseverance in light of a family tragedy. Like any hopeful father, Greenberg first rationalizes Sally's illness as a teenage spell, but when she lashes out on him-leaving bloody scratch marks on his face, he knows something more serious has taken hold. A therapist advises Greenberg and his wife to take Sally to the emergency room on the grounds of "acute psychosis." They comply, shocked that such a phrase could apply to their daughter.

Greenberg signs a consent form for Sally's treatment, and paramedics strap her to a gurney. Sally doesn't fight them but rather "races on about her epiphanies, the piercing nature of light, the lightness of light, the genius in us all." Just like that, Greenberg watches his daughter be whisked away to a psychiatric hospital, where she undergoes intense treatment.

For those who have never been inside a psych ward, Greenberg does a good job evoking a place that is deeply sad and curiously exciting at the same time. Family members show up at visiting hours, baffled by what has happened to their loved ones. Patients in various stages of treatment wander the halls, such as Fabulosa, who becomes infatuated with Sally's brother and lifts her shirt as a sign of affection. Doctors eventually pronounce Sally "bipolar 1" and, after lengthy treatment, release her from the hospital. Greenberg and his wife continue to grapple with the fact that their daughter is not healed, nor will she ever be the same. At home, Sally follows a strict health regime, involving a long list of medications, dietary restrictions, and regular doctor's visits. She worries that her friends will shun her and that she won't be able to return to school, as her meds have affected her concentration so much that she struggles to read a single sentence.

Alongside Sally's story, Greenberg offers medical and literary perspectives on mental illness, and he introduces a caring cast of characters who rally to Sally's side. He explains the workings of psychotropic drugs, giving an insider's account of their effects after he becomes fed up with Sally's treatment and swallows a "full dose" of her pills. Greenberg also draws upon the story of author James Joyce's dealings with his daughter Lucia, who suffered from mental illness during a time when treatment was much more precarious.

In the end, readers will find themselves rooting for Sally and her health. Hurry Down Sunshine elicits a powerfully emotional response, whether or not its author delves deeply into his own emotions. For this family, we want to see Sally's full recovery, but this book offers no happy ending. In doing so, it is truthful in its treatment of mental illness and doesn't shy away from the sad reality that Sally and those who love her are not alone in their struggles. ( )

scary look at what it means to be bi-polar and to be the support for someone going through a severe depression, beautifully written ( )

made going nuts sound like something you can actually climb inside of, as much so that you question your own normalcy. I personally felt so much for the girl that I am clearly not sane, and not so much worried about it either. ( )

Greenberg's memoir of his teen daughter's first bipolar manic episode is both engaging and problematic.

"Engaging" because of Greenberg's ability to tell the tale with emotion and immediacy. This wrenching family narrative is well worth reading to understand a parent's experience of extremely difficult and frightening events. It appears that Greenberg's daughter and family received inadequate and indifferent treatment, which is extremely troubling. His description of the events and their effects on his family is wrenching and raw.

"Problematic" first because Greenberg presents the story angrily. This is understandable and certainly warranted given the circumstances, but over the course of the book, the reader's impression is that Greenberg is angry in general. He describes the lack of adequate care his daughter received, and in the absence of context, I assume his report is accurate. However, he doesn't describe which interventions his daughter does receive, and when he alludes later to the course of her recovery from this episode, he is silent on whether he believes that her hospitalization and therapy were helpful. In many descriptions of his and his family's life, he accentuates the negative, which raises some concerns about the potential narrowness of his focus. Greenberg is trying to be clear and brutally honest about himself, but sometimes just seems brutal.

Further, Greenberg makes some puzzling errors that may speak both to his confusion and a lack of adequate editing. For example, he refers several times to "narcoleptics." He means "neuroleptics," a category of antipsychotic medication. "Narcoleptic" means a person with narcolepsy, a neurological sleep disorder. Unfortunately this error occurs several times; in and of itself this would just be unfortunate, but in conjunction with other areas of lack of clarity, it makes me wonder how well Greenberg and his family understood his daughter's treatment. Treatment can be confusing under the best of circumstances, and I would have no problem with a description of how confusing this experience was. However, it's not obvious whether Greenberg ever got clarity on this. Greenberg expresses his frustration that medical people do not know what causes bipolar disorder, a frustration that is, in fact, shared by many practitioners. However, Greenberg seems to have an ambivalent relationship with the idea that this disorder may be biologically based, often describing his shame and worry that he caused his daughter's bipolar disorder. Other family members worry that they, too contributed to the problem, and ruminate about the stigma associated with mental illness. One would expect that part of this story would be the family's realization that accepting this stigma is unreasonable, and the information that they were radicalized by this experience in some way. However, Greenberg does not report this, which seems to me to imply that he accepts the legitimacy of that stigma, and that a primarily biological description (if not explanation) of bipolar disorder is not sufficient for him. He still seems to see the origin of his daughter's illness as interpersonal or psychodynamic. While relational stress is often a contributor to increased symptoms and decreased functioning, a review of the research literature would show that stress and dysharmony are not sufficient to cause bipolar disorder in the absence of a biological substrate. The omission of this information seems strange to me given that Greenberg is a journalist and presumably is able to do his own background reading, call sources who could answer questions, etc. It again raises the question of where his editor was. The overall effect is of a story without a point, at least so far as the narrator's or his daughter's development or learning. In this way, its structure is that of a case report, not a plot.

Because the problems outweigh the benefits of this narrative, I would not recommend it for people or families trying to understand bipolar disorder. I would not assign it for a class on diagnosis, but might in a class focused on disconnections between families and providers.

For a more accurate and more nuanced report on bipolar disorder, read Jamison's An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. Jamison describes her own bipolar disorder, and, as one of the major contributors to the scientific research on bipolar disorder, characterizes the diagnosis both more accurately and more hopefully. ( )

This book came into my life at a time when I really needed a book like this. We had been dealing with our own frustration and anger at the Canadian mental health system, and the inability to receiver proper care and support for our own teenage daughter.

Mr. Greenberg’s words spoke to me and made me feel less alone. I felt his helplessness and understood his confusion. This book was written from a parent’s point of view. It offered an accurate account of what it feels like to be a parent of a child dealing with mental illness. It spoke of the toll mental illness takes on a family and the impact it has on each member as an individual and the family unit as a whole.

This book was honest and real and I felt every word of it. ( )