Goodreads asked Stephen P. Hinshaw:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Stephen P. Hinshaw I endured many years of mystery as a boy, when my warm philosopher father would disappear for months or even a year at a time. Yet no one was allowed to discuss what was happening, either before, during, or after the absences. I blamed myself. At the time, I didn't know that the doctors had ordered the silence: His disappearances were into brutal mental hospitals for severe episodes of bipolar disorder, misdiagnosed as schizophrenia since the time he was 16. Only when I returned to Ohio during my first spring break from college did my father pull me into his study and reveal the truth about his lifelong mental illness. Intrigued, yet at the same time terrified, I studied psychology and began my lifelong quest to work with, and understand, children and families grappling with mental disorder and, eventually, to overcome the stigma that still surrounds mental illness.

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