Silence You and the Other Cave Paintings

by Jessie Close

One family's struggles to overcome the challenges of living with a son who has schizophrenia.

For eighteen years, everyone looked up to Oliver. He was smart, funny, good-looking, and a talented artist. Everyone wanted to be his friend. But after his eighteenth birthday, he became morose and moody. He watched familiar faces melt into unknown strangers. Oliver fights to silence the sinister voice that tells him scary things as he tries to exist in a world that no longer makes sense to him. Oliver’s parents and siblings grapple with how to help him find treatment while his delusions, anxiety, and hallucinations intensify. However, finding treatment proves to be even more difficult since Oliver's mother is bipolar and his father holds onto the denial he has regarding Oliver's increasingly dangerous behaviors.

Based on the authors’ own experiences, Silence You follows a family coping with crisis. Oliver, the eldest son, is suffering from schizophrenia. As he goes through treatment, his parents and siblings deal with the repercussions. In particular, Oliver's mother, Elizabeth, must come to terms with her own mental illness and the role it may have played in Oliver's illness.

340 pages, Paperback

Published December 3, 2024

About the author

Jessie Close is an internationally recognized speaker, author, poet and advocate for mental health reform. She lives with bipolar disorder in the foothills of the Tobacco Root Mountains outside Bozeman, Montana with her Service Dog, Snitz, and three other dogs. She is the author of The Warping of Al, (Harper & Row 1990) and she writes a regular blog for Bring Change 2 Mind, an anti-stigma organization that her sister, Glenn, created at Jessie's request.

Jessie has received awards from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the largest grassroots mental health organization in America with more than 600,000 members, and Mental Health America, the largest grassroots group of persons living with mental disorders. She also has received the Jed Foundation Award and The McLean Award. Along with her son, Calen, Jessie is a much sought-after inspirational speaker.

Reviews

[bjneary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both adults and young adults will find this book compelling as a family tries to deal with their eldest son's mental illness. Based on the author's family, I could not stop turning the pages as Oliver becomes a different person (one listening to an evil voice) at age 18 - everyone is afraid of him now. Follow this family on their journey as Oliver tries to heal, get rid of the voice & deal with all the medical implications. A MUST READ.

[Tory Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the writing itself is a little rough in parts, this was a vivid and informative look into both the mind of a person with mental illness and the struggles of a loving family trying to figure out how to help. I finished it with a much deeper understanding. It ended up being a page turner.

[Zev · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting something wholly different than what I got. I was not at all the intended audience for this. The first person with schizophrenia I ever met was someone I proceeded to date for five months. We were seventeen and she informed me the third time we met that she had it. She was cheerful. She'd been diagnosed six months prior and she was jazzed about a medication combination she had just begun. I was caught off-guard and decided to match her cheeriness with a smile. I had no idea what schizophrenia was, and seriously thought "undifferentiated" was a made-up word. No...twenty years ago, that was a term meaning "multiple types." It's so outdated now that it doesn't exist and there are different ways to describe what she had. Four years later, I met the second person. She had another type than my ex did. This gal and I were close friends for two years. I was much better equipped to--not be a jerk, and I knew more, by then. We drifted apart and I wish her all the best. Two years later, I met a third person with this disease that is supposedly super rare. She was a neighbor of mine. She could not access treatment. This is not her fault. Her schizophrenia made her perform invasive behaviors and say and do strange things. Her actions towards me ranged from annoying to unsettling, and she refused to communicate. Maybe not a refusal. I don't actually think she could. There was absolutely no point, and people thought I was -nice- to her. I do not think I was. She got on medication and remembers me fondly for reasons unknown.

It was during this time that one of my best friends developed schizophrenia. I watched it happen. It wasn't schizophrenia, it couldn't be, because it was a really rare disease and I was not a shrink. I was seeing schizophrenia everywhere, I decided. She went into a mixed episode. Her family did not believe mental illness existed, and thought she needed more Jesus. I don't believe in Jesus. I wanted her to see a shrink. Maybe her behavior was just stress. But it wasn't. We were in denial. Even after she was diagnosed, she still didn't see anything wrong with her and getting her consent to treatment was a long road. I broke off the friendship. We were going to be best friends for the rest of our lives originally. She has this illness for the rest of her life, and here I am, treating it as my own personal tragedy.

The fifth person I met with a type of schizophrenia...I watched and frowned and was too tired to care because I am an asshole. She got herself help right away, and has an adoring, strong, supportive family system. She told me her diagnosis and I started to say, "Yeah, I can tell" before shutting my trap because she didn't know I'd already had such friendships and relationships. We broke off the friendship for entirely unrelated reasons a few months later.

The sixth person...I did not know well at all and still don't. She's hot and was hostile when she turned me down for a date. Like, such that I asked her friends wtf. They blamed me. A week later we realized she'd been having symptoms. I have given her the space she asked for and will continue to do so.

This is not a rare disease. I went into this book expecting something far more profound and compassionate than I got. I wanted to learn something new. EVEN THE MEDICATIONS ARE THE SAME FROM TWENTY YEARS AGO. I am so sorry that the authors' families were so antagonistic to them. "He went with some crazies to the mall zomg" Oh NOES, he was on an OUTING. Clearly he should have stayed in his room! Oh NOES, he was SOCIALIZING with people with similar symptoms to him! Just soooo dreadful. I absolutely hated his mother, even as I wished for her to get medical help to stop drinking. I liked the dad. Yay dad. The siblings were eh, fine.

This book made me look up information on schizophrenia again and things have changed a lot in some ways. Some old memories that I did not need or want came up, so I am seeking therapy and I feel gross about it. Gross because this is a misunderstood illness and I don't have it, so I should not be experiencing so many negative emotions and memories. Grr.

Still way, way more realistic than "Words on Bathroom Walls" though.

[Daa_of_night]

From Amazon dot com (because there is no blurb on goodreads yet)
For eighteen years, everyone looked up to Oliver. He was smart, funny, good-looking, and a talented artist. Everyone wanted to be his friend. But after his eighteenth birthday, he became morose and moody. He watched familiar faces melt into unknown strangers. Oliver fights to silence the sinister voice that tells him scary things as he tries to exist in a world that no longer makes sense to him. Oliver’s parents and siblings grapple with how to help him find treatment while his delusions, anxiety, and hallucinations intensify. However, finding treatment proves to be even more difficult since Oliver's mother is bipolar and his father holds onto the denial he has regarding Oliver's increasingly dangerous behaviors.

Based on the authors’ own experiences, Silence You follows a family coping with crisis. Oliver, the eldest son, is suffering from schizophrenia. As he goes through treatment, his parents and siblings deal with the repercussions. In particular, Oliver's mother, Elizabeth, must come to terms with her own mental illness and the role it may have played in Oliver's illness.

[Başak Aydınlıoğlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who struggles with mental health i related to this so much. Even though I don’t know a lot about schizophrenia and bipolar disorders I felt the emotions, vulnerability through the words. Mental health is something we don’t talk about often and when we talk about it it’s not about the symptoms, daily challenges, trial and error, right medication. It’s usually about how it is viewed by society. But in this book you can see how hard it is to navigate mental illness finding right medications and doctors. Every step is written in raw emotion. We also see how important it is to have right support especially from family. It’s hard on people who take care of you. How lost and helpless they feel. Everything is so true. I also loved to see two types of disorders interacting in one family. Elizabeth, being a mother and also having bipolar then her son having schizophrenia the guilt she felt and her trying so hard. I absolutely loved it. I cried during some parts, everyone who has mental health issues should read this.

[Robyn Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing depiction of mental health.