How we got Barb back - Margaret Hawkins

In the early 1970s, Barb Hawkins, a talented, vivacious young woman from suburban Chicago, met and married an Iraqi graduate student and moved with him to Basra where hed been offered a job at the university. When they returned for a visit three years later, she was clearly not well, and he had run out of resources to help her. She wouldnt allow herself to be touched. She was in torment, and so was her traumatized family. Her parents, utterly out of their depth, never sought help for her after her first refusal to go to a psychiatrist. For 33 years Barbara was never evaluated, never hospitalized, never medicated, and, after the first few years, she didnt leave the house. Until her parents died and her sister Margaret became her guardian. How We Got Barb Back is the story of Barbs descent into schizophrenia and the healing that has come only in recent years. With uncanny grace and humour, Margaret chronicles her familys struggle with Barbs mental illness, the love that carried them through, and the virtual army of healthcare angels willing to come to Barb to help. Its an extraordinary story of severe mental illness and the healing that is possible with good diagnoses, good drugs, good care, and a fierce belief in our power to get well.