Parenting mentally ill children : faith, caring, support, and surviving the system /

After reading the moving stories told by caretaking parents of children with severe mental illness, one is grateful for this mind-stretching survey, which condenses research in the fields of psychiatry, social work, sociology, health care, epidemiology, psychology, and social policy. All of this research has yielded variations on a similar idea: that parents, once thought to be boundlessly caring and all-containing, may be just one of many systems needed to cope with the requirements of gravely troubled children. Within this formulation, the author writes, lies the possibility of survival, "a place where [parents] can accept what life has given [them] and find faith, hope, and meaning." LeCroy (social work, Arizona State Univ.) tempers the parents' anguished voices with a therapeutic yet unsentimental calm, noting the limited solutions offered by most mental health care models yet suggesting that the potential advanced by the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 and other legislation remains unfulfilled. The book's painful narratives defy easy analogy, but readers who persist will take seriously LeCroy's argument that a tolerant, strengths-based approach combined with information and resources can help families cope and, indeed, thrive. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. E. A. Danto City University of New York Hunter College