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Silence You: A Novel
“I read Jessie and Calen’s book with my heart in my throat, at times, my eyes burning with tears. It is a gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately, life affirming, step-by-step account of how mental illness can shatter a family, but also how that family, through love and resilience, can not only survive, but triumph."—Glenn Close
“Writing the book was like putting it back together, my fall into psychosis and how I began to recover.”—Calen T. Pick, featured in People
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.
“Writing the book was like putting it back together, my fall into psychosis and how I began to recover.”—Calen T. Pick, featured in People
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.
343 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 10, 2024
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38 people want to read
About the author
Jessie Close
4 books16 followersJessie 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.
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February 4, 2025
A beautiful, raw story of a family and how they navigated mental illness. Thank you for sharing your story.
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