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Introduction: Frederic Flach's Rickie
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17953 |
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BOOK WORLD
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5 / 1990 |
342 Words |
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Rickie is a psychiatrist's account of a ten-year search for help for his teenage daughter, a quest that shook his professional beliefs, religious faith, and family's stability. His account is interspersed with Rickie's own impressions of her odyssey through the world of mental illness, which began with a sudden, unexplained psychotic episode when she was fourteen.
Rickie's parents tried to help her through the psychiatric channels of which they were aware. Variously diagnosed as autistic and schizophrenic, she was sent from one psychiatric hospital to another, subjected restraint and isolation, drugs and psychotherapy, wet packs and electro convulsive shock therapy. Her father intervened when lobotomy was recommended. He had unearthed alternative therapy possibilities, including visual perceptual training, nutritional treatment, and rehabilitation training. The story has a happy ending, with Rickie's dramatic recovery.
I am sorry I could excerpt only a portion of Rickie's story, because the drama unfolds like a mystery through many trials, and her voice is compelling. Her father's point of view is unique. Frederic Flach is adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and attending psychiatrist at both the Payne Whitney Clinic and St. Vincent's hospital in New York. A practicing psychiatrist for more than thirty years, he is chairman of the board of Directions in Psychiatry, a nationwide education program for psychiatrists, and the author of other books, including Resilience (1988).
Three psychiatrists of different disciplines comment on this book and its implications for the profession. David
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