Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree: Schizophrenia

• Olivia Stahl
• David Brown

Mental illness affects 20% of the United States population; approximately 11 million adults are suffering from some sort of mental disorder. (ABC News) Despite the large number of Americans affected by mental disease, the information available to the general public and the understanding the extent to which people affected by mental illness suffer is weak at best. This lack of information to the general public leads to social stigmas that are often incorrect and always unfair. Andrew Solomon wrote a novel titled Far From the Tree. This novel discusses parents with children who are different from themselves and how this affects the parents. One of the chapters discusses the disease schizophrenia, and although it focuses on one disease many of the points he covers are transferrable to other diseases.

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When working on any sort of writing piece, it is important to consider the audience being addressed. Although written in mainly academic language, Solomon’s novel is clearly aimed at the general public and parents to be more specific. [DB1]His focus is on the affects of having a child who is not considered normal under the typical social constructs. By using personal stories and experiences in his writing, Solomon creates a piece of writing that is significant to his audience. It is easy to overlook and ignore numbers and statistics, however when you combine that data with real life applications, it becomes more real and readers are able to more easily grasp onto the ideas.

The author addresses social stigmas that exist and acknowledges the reasons that a lot of these prejudices exist in society. While realizing there is a reason that people behave discriminatory towards mentally ill patients, he points out the need for this discrimination to end and the negative way in which these stigmas affect the mentally ill. For example, Solomon brings up the difficulty psychiatric patients face in attempting to find a job. While certainly, a mentally unstable patient who had a psychotic episode two weeks ago is not exactly what an employer is looking for; however, even patients who have been asymptomatic for years struggle to find a job in society because of the negative connotations associated with hiring a mentally ill person. The difficulty in this is working is often therapeutic for a psychiatric patient, the schedule, occupying the mind; it often makes healing easier and more effective. This presentation of material allows the reader to see things from both points of view, the employer and the mentally ill. It acknowledges the reasons employers may be wary of hiring a person with schizophrenia, but also points out how unfair it is to judge someone on something they have worked hard to get under control, it almost makes the entire healing process pointless.

Solomon uses a combination of pathetic and logical appeal to convey the effects of schizophrenia on the people suffering from the disease and their loved ones. He combines interviews with family members of people affected by the disease and clinical descriptions of the disease to give a well-rounded representation of the schizophrenia. Spending a decade on this project, Solomon interviewed over 300 families and did extensive research on the various subjects in his book, including schizophrenia. With a master’s degree in English and being in the process of getting a PhD in Psychology, this work has a clear academic voice; however, by incorporating personal stories of people actually experiencing what he is discussing, the book becomes more relatable than simple facts on a page. He explained how schizophrenia is a disease that people are born with and that people are often asymptomatic until puberty, it is because of the late onset of the disease, that people often believe it is the fault of the parent or upbringing that causes the disease, when the truth is that the cause of the disease is biological and there really isn’t much a parent can do to prevent the development of schizophrenia. He then tells the story of a mother with a child suffering from schizophrenia who often felt judged and thought of as a bad parent because her child was mentally ill. This balance of pathetic and logical appeal is so affective because it reaches the reader in two different ways, it explains the logical reason not to judge parents of schizophrenic children and then also gives the reader empathy for a mother who has experienced this discrimination. While the logical approach to presenting the case has its value, the more effective form of rhetoric in this piece was through empathy. Solomon used poetry and personal anecdote to demonstrate the suffering of people with schizophrenia and counted on the empathetic nature of humans to understand the damaging effects of negative biases towards the mentally ill. One of the most profound moments in the book was when the author quoted Emily Dickinson to help explain the negative symptoms as well as the onset of schizophrenia. While the poem, quoted below, had no factual basis, it explained schizophrenia better than any list of symptoms could.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—

As if my Brain had split—

I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—

But could not make it fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join

Unto the thought before—

But sequence raveled out of Sound

Like Balls—upon a Floor.

This book is very useful in researching the cultural biases against the mentally ill for a variety of reasons. First, it takes the reader inside the lives of people suffering from this disease and the toll it takes on the people around that person. Second, it addresses social stigmas in our culture and the reason they are dangerous to these people. Though this work has valuable knowledge, it is very specific to schizophrenia. In a research essay devoted to all mental illness, I will need to find more information on other diseases such as bi-polar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. These diseases are the focus points of the films Silver Linings Playbook, Donnie Darko, and K-Pax, which are the focus points for my research therefore I would like to learn more about those diseases. To eliminate bias, I will spend a portion of my research explaining why these stigmas exist and the dangers of integrating mentally ill into society. Despite the dangers, however, I will also cover the benefits to having a more understanding and accepting society.

Solomon uses personal anecdote along with facts and data to demonstrate the inaccuracies of established social stigmas as well as the negative impact these stigmas have on psychiatric patients and their families. He involves the reader in the lives of those suffering from schizophrenia in order to make the facts he presents resonate with his readers. His engaging writing style makes the reader care about what happens to these people and ultimately, convinces them to help eliminate these social stigmas faced by the mentally ill. In his attempt to unite mentally ill and the healthy, he succeeded using the human nature to empathize and significant facts and data[DB2].

[DB1]AWESOME!!! – This is rhetorical analysis. There seems to have been a lot of confusion with some of your classmates but this is spot on!

[DB2]This is STELLAR work! It really is! This is exactly what a rhetorical analysis should look like!