Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 20,630 ratings

Price: 17.72

Last update: 09-04-2024


Top reviews from the United States

She Treads Softly
5.0 out of 5 stars very highly recommended
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2021
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker is a very highly recommended true family drama and medical detective story following the Galvin family.

Between 1945 and 1965 Don and Mimi Galvin had 12 children, 10 sons first and then 2 daughters. Later 6 of the boys were diagnosed with schizophrenia. This is the inside true story of their family, including the violent wrestling matches between the older brothers, the seemingly perfect father, the control Mimi exercised over them, the hidden sexual abuse, and the feelings of abandonment by younger siblings. Once their first born, Donald, began exhibiting mental issues and was later diagnosed as schizophrenic, they tried to keep the truth hidden as long as possible. By the 1970's six of their sons who were diagnosed as schizophrenic and the families secret could no longer be hidden. Soon Mimi was spending all her time and energy trying to help the "sick" boys while basically leaving the "healthy" children to their own devices.

It is also the story of the history of schizophrenia and the medical advancements made during this time. Kolker follows the background information about the history of schizophrenia and the psychiatric, chemical, and biological advancements in treatment were interesting. The various treatments the brothers endured are shared and the struggles they had taking their medication as the professionals searched to find a treatment that worked for the brothers. Because so many siblings in one family were diagnosed with schizophrenia, the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health is the search for a genetic marker for the disease. Samples of their DNA are still being used in genetic research today. This research continues to influence treatment, prediction of the disease occurring and hopefully a way to prevent the disease in the future.

This is in turn a heart breaking and fascinating well-written and researched account. It is truly an honest portrait of a family in crisis. Kolker follows each family member, their place in the family, and their story with empathy and honesty. It is easy to judge Mimi's actions, but at the same time impossible to do so unless you were in her situation. She really seemed to handle the mental breakdowns of her sons as most people from her generation would and her own background also influenced this. The recounting of the family's history and suffering is handled with compassion. This is not always an easy read, but it is an eye opening and engrossing narrative.
Paula B.
4.0 out of 5 stars Well written
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2024
Well written, fascinating story, especially if you have an interest in psychiatry.
Jacqueline Guida
5.0 out of 5 stars Family
Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2024
It was disturbing and interesting. I feel such pain and sadness for all the children. Such good looking and smart boys to be swallowed up in this horrible and incurable? disease. And their sisters, who lost all the attention and loving from their parents. The non sick boys who almost raised themselves, because they weren't affected, left a very bad taste in their mouths.
Mimi seemed to be handling all of it, right or wrong, herself. Don was in his own world, avoiding his home life as best he could. And there is NOTHING that the non sick kids could do, as they grew, to rid their minds of trauma. All handling it differently.. But it was their just the same. I will never forget this family and their tragic lives. So very tragic. It makes me very sad.
Karen Roberts
5.0 out of 5 stars A family tragedy
Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2021
What an amazing story and family. I feel like I have been on a roller coaster ride. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has family with a serious mental illness or who has an interest in how society treats or mistreats those who have a serious mental illness. This books focuses mostly on schizophrenia, but as you read through the experience of the family, individual family members, and the research, you realize that there is likely a spectrum that includes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic depressive illness) , autism, or any condition that includes psychosis.

“Each passing year brings more evidence that psychosis exists on a spectrum, with new genetic studies showing overlap between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and bipolar disorder and autism.”

“For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation of the family is permanently tilted in the direction of the sick family member.”

How profoundly families are affected by mental illness. Both the “abnormal” family members and the “normal”.
This excellent achievement in story telling is the true story of a family in Colorado who had 6 sons out of a family of 12 children, who developed schizophrenia. The disease manifested differently in different sons, but the results for the family were fairly devastating. Those children not diagnosed were terribly affected by inattention, abuse at the hands of the schizophrenics, or non validation of their altered lives and experiences because of parental overwhelm in dealing with the sick.

“By one measure, those diagnosed take up a third of all the psychiatric hospital beds in the United States.”
“One out of every twenty cases of schizophrenia ends in suicide.”

We are treated here to a history of the nature versus nurture debate. The Freudian approach. The terrible mother approach. “Mother blaming became an industry standard for psychiatry”. And then the search for a genetic cause as the psychoanalysis approach was discarded for more biological constructs is disease.

“For decades, doctors have been treating schizophrenia pharmacologically without a clear understanding of the biology of the illness.”
Many promising avenues of research are presented, showing an almost certain genetic causation.

“families with a history of schizophrenia seemed more than four times as likely as the rest of the population to pass along the condition to future generations—”

Some potential treatments are discarded because of lack of potential financial gain by the pharmaceutical industry. Some changes have even made their way into changes in prenatal vitamins as a means to prevent the development of these significant mental disorders.

“In 2017, the American Medical Association approved a resolution that prenatal vitamins should include higher levels of choline to help prevent the onset of schizophrenia and other brain developmental disorders.”

What we must conclude is that the complicated picture is one of a blend between nature and nurture. An inherited genetic tendency towards schizophrenia which blooms with life stressors watering and tending the substrate in the brain. We hear of excessive pruning of synapses in adolescence as the disease is taking hold, robbing the person of brain power they would need to have to more normally handle life as they pass through adolescence (when schizophrenia generally begins manifesting) and adulthood. We see how nicotine receptors in the brain are so intimately involved and this is why people afflicted are so addicted to smoking, as it has a calming affect on this parts of the brain negatively impacted by the disease.

“The α7 receptor, however, stood out from the crowd because of its special relationship with nicotine. No one experiences this more vividly than habitual smokers: Nicotine has a way of turbocharging the effects of the acetylcholine that this receptor needs in order to function, and smokers—or the α7 receptors in their brains—like it when their acetylcholine is turbocharged. This is the feeling cigarettes can give smokers—that way nicotine has of focusing their minds for short periods, or calming them. Could it just be a coincidence, Freedman wondered, that many schizophrenia patients—Peter Galvin among them—can’t get enough cigarettes? For very brief moments, nicotine may offer them at least some relief from their delusions.”

You may ask how this affects you? Why should you be interested? Well, we all pay for untreated mental illness in one way or another. Societal resources are drained. We lose potentially productive members of society, people who might have much to teach us about different ways of seeing “normal”. But nearly half of school shooters show evidence of either developing, or already fully manifested schizophrenia. Most schizophrenics are not violent, but clearly there is something here. And then remember the spectrum. For those of us who painfully watch ill family members, worrying about losing them to incoherency, to violence, or to the clutches of a profession that clearly does not know enough to affect a cure, this is important material that gives hope that more understanding is coming, and with it more effective treatments and even preventive strategies for identifying those at risk and treating before these devastating illnesses take hold and begin their destruction.
Excellent read!
M Piasecki
5.0 out of 5 stars Heartache and real world perspectives
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2024
This was such a phenomenal book, the author made you really feel like you knew the characters & you were there for all of the moments... highly recommend!

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