NOW AVAILABLE @

BARNES & NOBLE

www.bn.com

www.amazon.com

(also on KINDLE)

and through

www.mountainvalleypublishing.com



“Over the Rainbow: A Story of Life, Love, and Family with Bipolar Disorder”, a memoir, is the true story, written in engaging novelistic form, of my decades long battle with atypical, refractory/ treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and bipolar II disorder. My audience will accompany me as a child, adolescent and then at the onset of my early twenties when stricken with mental illness. My readers will witness me go from sheer innocence as a shy, withdrawn and subservient child, to coping with the realities of psychiatric illness as I approach the true beginnings of my adult life. They will follow me through my 1970’s suburban childhood in Scarsdale, as my big Italian family copes with my father’s manic depression and we watch him spiral into exuberant highs that eventually collapse into unbearable lows. My readers will observe what started out as sometimes “odd or funny” behavior mushroom into radical conduct, mood swings, and the ultimate “God complex.” They will witness this immensely successful, motivated and euphoric man go from a life of excessive gambling and incredible thrill seeking into a hopeless and depressed man who barely resembled a human being. We continue to see the chaos that my family undergoes, (especially my mother), as we are all trying to cope with my father’s illness, and me being unknowingly, learning disabled and simultaneously left back in school.

Next, my readers will witness the beginnings of my own depression and hints of despair as I go through college and its looming shadow follows as I enter graduate school and fall in love. They will observe and continue to be astounded as they follow me into the progression of my illness as I begin a career in psychology, marry and have a child. The readers will join in my journey of hope, despair and honest-reckoning through vignettes and tender dialogue as my illness begins to mimic my father’s. They will see me in my most vulnerable condition, helplessly depressed, hopeless and pathetic, catatonic, and completely incapacitated. My subsequent odyssey as the severity of my illness progresses will thoroughly entice my readers. All told straight from psychiatric lock down, electroshock tables and the arms of my husband, we witness how my increasingly catastrophic condition begins to tear my family apart. Treatments with therapists, drugs and electroconvulsive shock therapy, 3 suicide attempts, and stays in psychiatric wards finally culminate in hope as I find a successful treatment almost 20 years later and look toward the future. This is a candid, compelling, soul-baring story that while humorous and entertaining at times, also educates about bipolar depression (an illness as physical as any other). In addition, it reduces the stigma associated with mental illness, and offers hope to sufferers and their families. Although the conclusion of this book does offer some treatment options, this is not a self-help or reference book: it is a story filled with sadness and turmoil; romance and humor, tender dialogue and heart. Most of all it is a story that ends in “HOPE!”

INSIDE FLAP ON HARD COVER   "A True Depiction Inside Back Sleeve  I felt as if I were mentally shackled to my bedposts. I felt that not a person in the world could comprehend the devastating pain I was enduring. There were times it felt as though my feet were caught in the reeds beneath the water in a deep lake.  There was the light above me and yet I could not swim to the top.  All I felt was the tightening around my ankles and no escape.  The answer seems so simple to some…just reach down and untangle your feet.  Yet, it didn’t quite work that way. As you watch yourself, from the inside out, drowning in your own hopeless demise, gloom perpetuates and you can feel your tunnel of hope narrowing. The sadness is profuse as darkness closes in.  Again and again you hear and see the words “THE END” in big black letters in your troubled head.  Countless times this image haunts you as this beastly illness rips your soul out of your very being.  It is a brutal and sinister existence, or nonexistence, and as your world grows darker and darker, it tears you and your family members apart.  For the average person, the suffering is incomprehensible.    THE BACK COVER READS: “Okay, hook her up; eight electrodes, four on the right side of the head and four on the left.  Not too heavy on the glue gel. Get her IV’s in and we’ll start.”  I am lying on the operating table hearing the doctor instruct the nurses and watching all of the wires being hooked up and connected to what; I have no idea, other than mostly to my head.  I can feel the burning rays of light from the ceiling pouring down on me, but that doesn’t stop my body from trembling.  I am petrified. The light is so bright I imagine an angel is watching over me, or perhaps just praying for one.  Everyone who loves me is in the waiting room right now probably only a floor or two away, but it feels like they are so far. The drugs in my IV likely begin to penetrate my body because I could now only faintly hear the doctor as he speaks again.  But, I have yet to feel any calming or sedating effects.  I am still terrified.  “Okay Mallory, we’re in the operating room and ready to go.  I assure you honey, you’re going to be just fine; just try to relax.  I want you to start counting backwards from number 10.”  On the operating table paralyzed with fear and riddled with anxiety, I feel frigid.  I get to number 8 and then…

"OVER THE RAINBOW" IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE @ BARNES & NOBLE www.bn.com www.amazon.com (also on KINDLE) and through www.mountainvalleypublishing.com