My descent into mania. This book contains my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings during the time of my illness. This book is not a memoir, it is written as it happened. It is interspersed with journal entries from my father. This book may be offensive to some readers, but remember, this is a true account of what happens to my mind while suffering mania.

The history of mental health services during the past 150 years has been told by a number of authors, usually accompanied by a dozen or fewer photographs. In this remarkable book that history is covered in narrative, but it also includes well over 600 photographs, which have never before been widely published. Many are so rare that they are of events that few have ever seen. The author was given full access to the entire range of photographs held by state mental health facilities in Illinois, in order to identify and preserve for the public this fragile historical resource. In addition he combed through various State, county, and municipal archives, and included his own collection of historical photos to assemble a stunning collection of photographs with historical importance. The majority of photographs have historical relevance beyond the confines of the State of Illinois.

The text begins with the efforts in the 1840s of a group of educated, socially conscious, citizens to improve the plight of the mentally ill in Illinois, including their invitation to the social reformer, Dorothea Lynde Dix, to join their effort. It proceeds through their establishment of a then state-of-the-art asylum built on the Kirkbride plan. Through nineteen chapters, 580 pages, and over 600 photographs the book documents the opening of the first Illinois asylum in 1851, and those to follow, along with the ÒMoral TreatmentÓ that was characteristic of the early days. The book photographically illustrates the ascendance of the asylum, its apex, and the ultimate decline in the middle of the twentieth century that was so common in all States of the U.S., the Provinces of Canada, and in many other countries.

The illustrations in this text include rare photographs of the daily activities of patients, their living conditions, their institutional and occupational assignments, and their leisure activities. There are unusual, turn of the nineteenth century, photos of patients and staff boating, playing tennis and at dances. It includes photos of a pastoral era, and photos of the alternative horrid county poorhouses in the late nineteenth century.

The photos do not neglect the remarkable architecture that was considered to be so critical to the concept of the therapeutic asylum. Through the course of the text, the change from architectural grandure in the past to today's utilitarianism is visually obvious. Many of the older photos of the physical plants are fascinating for what they reveal about the complexity of the institutions that were considered technological showplaces in their day. They generally were the first to have gas plants for gas lighting, dynamo rooms for later electric powered lights, grand auditoriums, natatoriums, swimming pools, fitness spas, large farms, canning plants, and the other aspects of the self- contained community.

The book does not neglect some of the less positive aspects of State hospitals. There are images of terribly overcrowded wards from the 1940s and 1950s that became so overwhelming that the State hospital fell into disrepute. The text also photographically documents the deinstitutionalization era, the growth of community mental health concepts and centers, and the "new" state hospital at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

For the individual interested, in general, in seeing what asylums, State hospitals, and treatment over the past 150 years actually looked like, and for those interested specifically in the Illinois public mental health system, the book is a visual treat.

As I Am was a book written out of need. Manic depression caught me totally off guard and sent me whirling for years before I ended in the mental health unit. The night before I was admitted, one of my 'grandiose' ideas was to write a book about what was happening in my life to help 'people like me.'

My book and the possibility of it becoming, became my therapy, my private solution. Literally, I examined in my mind every singe impacted memory and recorded my thoughts with the idea that I would be published some day.

As I Am had over 40 different titles and took over six years to write and edit. This book takes you into the mind of a mentally ill woman who is on a journey of survival. You cannot imagine the trail I had to take to become a strong willed, self-sufficient, triumphant human being.

This illness not only affected me but everyone who ever loved and supported me. My dedication to writing this book was influenced by their belief in me.

The author, Shane Feldman, is a college-aged person suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar. In this memoir he allows the reader to observe actual thoughts and behaviors exhibited as a manic episode occurred in a real-time journal. He allows the reader to follow him on an intimate descent and recovery from a manic episode along with providing a prologue detailing his relatively normal life and high level of functionality in the absence of devastating psychological symptoms. After the episode, Shane added a series of insightful postdated footnotes strategically located to aid the reader in fully understanding the complexity of his mind frame.

The memoir is far from being simply a documentation of a disease as Shane demonstrates his poetic and perceptive brilliance in a series of satires about the relationships between religion, society, and government. Though Mr. Feldman has suffered serious psychological illness for a small percent of his life... he is one-hundred percent a writer and has written and published a wide variety of works.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall... and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The same holds true for those of us with a mental illness. The psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, etc. can assist, but it is up to the individual to create conditions which will allow recovery to happen.

The neurobiological basis of mental illness is often presented in a fatalistic way. That's the brain chemistry you've got, and that's what you're stuck with; as if the individual was unable to change the chemistry inside his or her own head. Breathing changes brain chemistry. So does excercise, the food you eat, the words you speak, the thoughts you think as well as how often you smile.

While drugs are capable of making radical changes in the chemistry of the brain, it is the slow changes over time which will help most in recovery.

"Thorough and informative without being technical...facinating...very enlightening." Psychiatric Rehabilition Journal (Fall 2004 Vol.28 No.2)

"You have made a complex issue easier to understand." Chief Kathryn Landreth, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police.