William Jiang - A Schizophrenic Will: A Story of Madness, A Story of Hope

A Schizophrenic Will: A Story of Madness, A Story ofHope

By William Jiang, MLS

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Copyright 2010 William Jiang, MLS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A talented ambitious young student isafflicted by the most dread mental illness in the prime of hislife. This first person account describes this all too commonoccurrence but what is unique is how he reacts to this adversityand his courageous and successful journey to recovery. Will Jiangsimpressive and moving story is reminiscent of other similar firstperson accounts of personal struggle and triumph over mentalillness including Elyn Saks The Center Cannot Hold and TempleGrandins Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life withAutism. Wills story will be similarly informative andinspirational to everyone who has the good fortune to read it.

Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D.

President, American PsychiatricAssociation

Lawrence E. Kolb Professor and Chairman

Department of Psychiatry

Columbia University College of Physicians andSurgeons

Director of the New York State PsychiatricInstitute

In A Schizophrenic Will, William Jiangtells a riveting and compelling story about his struggles withschizophrenia and his emergence at the other end with a good andproductive and gratifying professional and personal life. He alsogives advice to other consumers, e.g. on navigating college, andwho knows better than someone whos lived through it himself?Jiangs story should help people understand what schizophrenia islike and in the process destigmatize an illness that is badly inneed of destigmatization.

Elyn Saks, J.D., Ph.D. USC Gould School ofLaw, Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatryand the Behavioral Sciences

Award Winning Author, The Center CannotHold

With an incredible strength of will WilliamJiang describes his life dealing with one of the hardest conditionsto live with: Schizophrenia. Again and again he fights against thedisease and despite all odds secures a professional career andfulfilled life. A must read for any person coping withSchizophrenia, whether you are a sufferer, relative, friend,physician or a scientist working on mental disorders.

Christoph Kellendonk Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Pharmacology inPsychiatry

Columbia University

Will Jiangs experiences as detailed in hisbook are a wonder to read and can help you to understandschizophrenia better. I highly recommend it.

Dan Frey, B.A. Former Editor-in-Chief

New York City Voices, a Journal for MentalHealth Advocacy

This inspirational story is a great read foranybody, but family and friends of those suffering withschizophrenia will especially find it useful for learning what itis like to live with schizophrenia.

Leaf Jiang, Ph.D., Brother

William Jiang's extraordinary chronicle ofhis life is at once arresting, horrifying, challenging andinspiring. Obviously Will Jiang is a brilliant young handsome manborn prematurely to an Anglo-Saxon mother and an absentee RussianJewish father and later adopted by his Chinese stepfather Yu Jiang:the inordinately touching memories of and tributes from hisbrothers Leaf, Chung and Justice as well as comments introduced inhis preface form an impressive list of people attest to the factthat this is a unique young man.

But the reason this autobiography is sodeeply moving is the fact that Will Jiang was diagnosed at age 19as a paranoid schizophrenic and given the fact that he is welleducated (has earned a BA and ad Masters of Library Science, speaksfour languages, served as the Columbia University/NYSPI MedicalLibrary Chief, and has written a number of fine books), the mannerin which he is able to not report as a bystander the workings ofthe mind sinking into psychotic depths but instead relating to thereader the feeling of that descent , treatment, horrors, andeventual recovery is nothing short of astonishing.

This book takes us by the hand and walks usthrough the first suggestions of mental illness, plunges us intothe moment by moment nightmares that assault the mind of aschizophrenic patient, makes us feel the effects of the medicationsand treatments, and then beckons us into the light and his owndiscovery of natural nutritional techniques that help heal thebrain. It is an odyssey, reading this book, but it is also ajourney lead by a guide who knows each aspect of it well.

Will Jiang writes so well that it is hoped hewill embrace his gift for his literary talent and continue writingmajor works. He is an extraordinary man who is doing more toeducate the public about the world of the mentally ill victimswhile providing a brilliant beacon of hope. Highly Recommended.

Mr. Grady Harp

Amazon Hall of Fame top 100 Reviewer, VineVoice

A Schizophrenic Will: A Story of Madness, AStory of Hope

By William Jiang, MLS

By Leaf Jiang, PhD

My older brother, Will, and I have been closethroughout our lives. As kids, our aunt described us as two peas ina pod. We played together all the time; whether it was handball,role-playing games, basketball, boxing, play-fighting, or computergames, we had fun and he always included me in his activities withhis friends. Will was certainly the pathfinder of this duo,figuring things out and showing me the way. When Will went off tocollege, I saw how hard he worked -- one (sometimes two) full timejobs with a declared double-major. Before his first breakdown incollege, he was 49-chin-up strong, read-more-than-one-book-a-daybright, vibrant, and driven.

The topic of my college entrance essay forMIT was to describe who the most influential person in my life wasand how he has shaped me. I wrote about Will and how his work ethicinspired me to work hard and eventually graduated as salutatorianfrom Stuyvesant High School in New York City, arguably one of themost competitive public high schools in the United States. Evenafter Wills breakdown, he was a source for inspiration, help, andsupport. I remember Will getting me my first academic summer jobafter my freshman year at MIT. He literally walked through NYUsphysics department and knocked on all the professors doors, askingif they needed an intern. I dont think many brothers would do thatfor each other.

I remember Will after his first breakdown asan undergraduate at Stony Brook University and being locked up intheir mental ward. The future was uncertain at that time and itwasnt clear if we would ever get Will back. When I visited Will inthe ward, he looked like he dropped in weight by 50 lbs, hadbruises on his face, and was noticeably uncomfortable. Later, Ilearned about the paranoid thoughts that lead him there. Even withmind-numbing medication, Will was still able to graduate fromcollege.

It took several years of medication andpsychiatric hospital visits before Will figured out whatmedications and doses worked for him. In the meantime, he earned amasters degree in library science. Excessive thinking, like thethinking that one does when studying or trying to understandcomplex things, triggers his illness. It is remarkable that he wasable to drive himself through school mentally, when all he reallycould have done was just lie back and let the government checkscome in the mail, and when the very act of educating himself waspotentially dangerous because it could set off his illness. Hismasters degree was an admirable achievement.