Reviews of Will's Choice
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NAMI Beginnings Review, Summer 2006 (pdf)
From The Washington Post
"The Will to Live"
© Sunday May 29, 2005 The Washington Post
On March 11, 2001, Gail Griffith's 17-year-old son, Will, took an overdose of his antidepressant medication that left him comatose for 48 hours. He became one of the approximately 2,000 Americans between ages 13 and 18 who attempted suicide that day. Griffith chronicles her son's journey back to a renewed interest in life in Will's Choice: A Suicidal Teen, a Desperate Mother, and a Chronicle of Recovery (HarperCollins, $24.95).
After Will's suicide attempt, Griffith searched for a residential treatment facility, the right combination of medicines, and answers to the question that haunted her: "Why?"
In addition to the emotional toll on Griffith's family, the time and financial cost of finding help for Will was enormous. The treatment option they deemed best -- a $5,000-a-month, out-of-state therapeutic boarding school -- was not covered by insurance. What about families who don't have such resources? "They are relegated to the dregs of the mental health system -- poorly managed and poorly maintained state-run facilities," Griffith explains. "Their children suffer, their families suffer -- and we all pay for this heinous failure to provide adequate treatment for every young person who needs it."
Part memoir, part social manifesto, part reader-friendly biochemical textbook, Griffith's personal story turns political as she uncovers the obstacles that many depressed teens and their families face: an illness that is difficult to diagnose in young people, ill-informed pediatricians recklessly prescribing antidepressants, and the powerful drug companies holding sway over the Food and Drug Administration ("The two are incompatible and they have no business being in bed together.")
Griffith's powerful prose provides just one of several voices in this book. Articulate, revealing journal entries from Will and his girlfriend supplement the author's description of Will's road to recovery, speed-bumps and all. Correspondence from various relatives during Will's treatment rounds out the book, and the entire family seems to have a way with words and an irrepressible sense of humor.
As an advocate for depressed teens and their families, Griffith educates and empathizes. With the story of Will's choice -- life -- she gives hope to families in crisis.
--Deesha Philyaw Thomas, © 2005 The Washington Post Company
From School Library Journal
"The inclusion of segments of Will's journal and those of his girlfriend, who suffered similarly, helps to keep their voices in the forefront."
Adult/High School-In this beautifully written and gripping account, readers learn a great deal about adolescent depression.
On March 11, 2001, Griffith discovered that life had become so unbearable for her 17-year-old son that he took an overdose of antidepressants in a failed suicide attempt. Denial about what Will tried to do became determination to help him to recover and to control the emotions that led him to that moment.
Griffith talks about the warning signs of a suicidal teen, the controversy concerning teens and the use of antidepressants, and the potential difficulties of identifying the right treatment program. Throughout the book, she is honest about her feelings of failure and of feeling lost. In 1991, she was diagnosed with major depression and realized that she had been fighting a mood disorder all of her adult life. The inclusion of segments of Will's journal and those of his girlfriend, who suffered similarly, helps to keep their voices in the forefront.
This account has much to offer adults who may encounter a depressed teenager or teens themselves, including a list of organizational resources and a list of suggested reading and references.
--Peggy Bercher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
From The Nashville Scene
Picking Up the Pieces: A mother tries to help her shattered son recover from depression
© August 11-17, 2005 Nashville Scene
The author, joined by Emmylou Harris, will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 6 p.m. Aug. 11
On April 18 of this year, 21-year-old Rachel Wright was found dead in the basement garage of the United Artists Tower on 17th Avenue South. Three days before her suicide, Wright had been released from inpatient psychological care, and her case got a good deal of attention in the local press. As her story indicates, psychological and pharmacological treatments, even when competently administered, don't guarantee recovery. Clinical depression is not like a headache: it doesn't just go away when you take a pill.
At 18, Will Griffith was also on the cusp of adulthood when he attempted suicide four years ago, and he, too, had recently been released from a treatment program for depression. Unlike Wright, however, Will didn't die. Will's Choice is a chronicle of his disease, attempted suicide and tentative recovery. Written by Will's mother, Gail Griffith, the book has implications for anyone who struggles, or loves someone who struggles, with depression-a condition that Will himself likens to being overcome by a "black wave."
In many ways, Will was a normal teenager. There had been traumas in his life-his parents' divorce, a recent move, a troubled romance-but prior to being diagnosed with "major depressive disorder" shortly before his suicide attempt, there were no obvious signs that Will's reserved demeanor hid anything other than routine teenage angst. The stealthy nature of suicidal depression is the most troubling revelation of Will's Choice. "I found it hard to imagine a more unlikely candidate for the illness," Gail Griffith writes of her son. "He was popular and athletic; he received good grades and was well-liked by his teachers, and he was the easygoing, youngest child in a family who lavished him with love and attention." Ironically, Will's chosen method for suicide was his anti-depression medication.
Though Griffith is quick to point out that there's hope for the seriously depressed-a cocktail of cutting-edge antidepressants combined with cognitive behavioral therapy has proved particularly effective-her book never stoops to platitudes or easy answers. Rather, she describes a family dealing with the ongoing sufferings and frustrations that are consistent with the disease of depression, which is chronic and requires a lifetime of vigilance. The struggle is made more complicated, Griffith claims, by a mental health delivery system that's skewed toward the bottom line rather than with the well-being of patients, many of whom don't have the familial or financial resources to adequately battle their afflictions.
Despite its gut-wrenching subject matter, Will's Choice is an entertaining book. Griffith is a zippy writer whose sarcastic wit tempers her family's saga. "Please no Enya tapes," she tells herself while fantasizing about an ideal treatment facility. In more serious passages, her lucid, honest prose keeps the reader engaged. "To the outside world, my son brought this on himself," she writes. "Parents who find themselves struggling to cope in the aftermath of a child's suicide attempt shouldn't have that slapped on them. Society's ignorance and lack of understanding about depression may lead others to that conclusion, but as a parent, you do not have to accept it."
The book's most compelling writers, however, are Will and his troubled girlfriend, Megan. In letters and excerpted journal entries, the pair describe their ordeal in terms that are both puerile and incisive. "Goddamn, why'd I get myself in this?" Will writes. "Was it even my fault? I don't even know. I fucked up pretty bad. But that was a pretty direct result of the depression. And that shit wasn't my fault. I can't help being sick." Megan, who also suffers from depression, is a "cutter." She explains the gratification of self-harm in a tragic, remarkably well-written journal entry, which the book prints in its entirety. "I would hold my arm up and watch the steady streams of drops cascade down the smoothness of myself, falling to my lap with a mixture of tears," she writes. "It was satisfying to know that many of the cuts were probably deep enough to warrant stitches, or at the very least, a butterfly bandage. The scars would be beautiful, I thought."
Each of the 10 chapters in Will's Choice begins with a song fragment. One of the most telling is a verse from "My Baby Needs a Shepherd" by singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris, who is a childhood friend of the author's. It reads, in part, "My baby needs a pilot / She has no magic wand / To help her part the troubled waters / Of the Rubicon." The lines emphasize how difficult it is for families struggling with major depression to find direction in a sea of pop-culture quick fixes and expensive, long-term therapies.
Though Griffith admits there are no clear-cut answers in the struggle against depression-the difference between normal teenage angst and potentially fatal depression, for example, is notoriously hard to discern-her story provides concrete advice to concerned parents. One such lesson, often ignored by therapists and missing from other books: "Never allow your son or daughter to administer his or her own medications."
Above all, Griffith recommends that parents communicate with their teens. "Talk to your kids about depression. Openly. Candidly. And at intervals as they grow up," she says. Griffith maintains that it's unrealistic to ask the FDA, the drug companies and the medical community to relinquish self-interest in the name of adolescent mental health. Instead, the burden of care falls on the parent, who must gather the courage and information necessary to be their child's best advocate. "It's a crapshoot," she concludes. "And the risks of making the wrong calculation are immeasurable. Do not give up."
--Paul Griffith, © 1995-2005 Nashville Scene
From Kirkus Reviews
"A knowledgeable guide's revelatory report on a disturbing phenomenon."
© May 3, 2005 Kirkus Reviews
First-timer Griffith provides an intimate account of adolescent depression.
In 2004, Griffith's son Will, 17, tried to kill himself by overdosing on his antidepressants. The first chapter, recounting Griffith's finding her near-comatose son in bed and rushing him to the hospital, is gripping, grueling and entrancing. As Griffith recounts his recovery, she makes elegant detours to consider her divorce and remarriage, the frankly marvelous co-parenting she and her ex-worked out, and her own struggle with clinical depression. Decorating her account are letters between Will and his parents, snippets of doctors' reports, excerpts from Will's journal and, most rewardingly, letters and diary pages by Will's girlfriend, who herself wrestled with depression (she was a self-mutilating "cutter" during the months she and Will dated) and who is an emerging writer in her own right. But this isn't mere memoir. It's also reportage and social criticism, with a little self-help thrown in about how to recognize depression in a teenager; the pros and cons of SSRIs; and suppositions about why so many kids today are depressed. Griffith also exposes the inexcusable (if not wholly surprising) flaws and fault-lines in the mental health care world. Though that world is staffed by many devoted and compassionate doctors - you'll meet some in these pages - it is ill-prepared, in the main, to handle depression among adolescents. The FDA remains fuzzy about the effects of antidepressants on teenagers; inpatient treatment centers for juvenile patients are extremely expensive to operate and are consequently closing their doors; and, if Griffith's experience is representative, the insurance industry isn't exactly sweet on suicidal teenagers. All this is laced with shocking statistics (each day, 2,000 young people between 13 and 18 attempt suicide). But the text never becomes morose, thanks in part to Griffith's light hand as a word-smither and her often winsome turns of phrase ("Girls were drawn to him like ants to a glazed donut").
A knowledgeable guide's revelatory report on a disturbing phenomenon.
From Young People's Press
'WILL'S CHOICE: NECESSARY READ"
Copyright 2006 Scripps Howard, Inc.
What would you do if you found your son in bed with his skin clammy, his color yellow-gray and sweating profusely? Probably the same as any other mother. Panic, attempt to wake him and then have an ambulance called. Like any mother, she automatically blamed some sort of flu or virus for his symptoms. Only after arriving at the hospital did she find out that her son had in fact attempted suicide by overdosing on Remeron. In "Will's Choice," we are brought into a family whose world came crashing down in only a few minutes. Written by Gail Griffith, Will's mother, the reader gets an inside look at the suicide attempt, the hospitalization and subsequent recovery of a 17-year-old boy who was "fatigued with living with chronic emotional pain," according to the attending psychiatrist. What makes this book even more remarkable is that Will and his girlfriend, Megan, a fellow sufferer of depression, allowed Griffith to reprint some of their correspondence, to get a clearer picture of the suffering they were both enduring. For anyone who has dealt in any way with teen depression, "Will's Choice" is a necessary read.
Chris Curry
From The Albuquerque Journal
"Will's Choice" is actually about two choices: the young man's choice to die, and his choice to live. Griffith's story stands as a heartbreaking and hopeful account that highlights a public health crisis in dire need of attention."
© Friday, May 13, 2005 Albuquerque Journal
Gail Griffith thought that writing "Will's Choice" would be a "piece of cake. " After all, the memoir was based on events that had occurred relatively recently and were painfully close to her heart.
Revisiting those events -- the depression, attempted suicide and recovery of her teenage son -- at times proved incapacitating.
"It was horrible. It was really gruesome," Griffith recalled during a phone interview from her home in Washington, D.C. "There were days when I sat in front of the computer and wrote nothing -- days when I sat in my pajamas under my desk."
Griffith forged ahead, exposing in excruciating detail a situation that's so prevalent, yet hidden and stigmatized in our society -- that turned her family's world on end. She decided to put her experiences on paper; she writes in the book's prologue, "because nothing in the therapeutic literature about teens or teen depression prepared us for the battle we waged against this illness."
That battle began on a Sunday morning in 2001, when Griffith went into her 17-year-old son Will's room to wake him. She found him foaming at the mouth, disoriented and feverish. As the minutes passed, and he was rushed to the hospital, his condition worsened as doctors scrambled to figure out what was wrong: Will had intentionally overdosed on his anti-depressant medication in an attempt to take his own life.
What followed was a frantic, desperate effort to find out what went wrong and to help Will -- a seemingly well-adjusted, well-behaved and studious young man -- recover from the depression that nearly claimed his life.
"Will's Choice" is actually about two choices: the young man's choice to die, and his choice to live. Griffith's story stands as a heartbreaking and hopeful account that highlights a public health crisis in dire need of attention.
The statistics Griffith cites are downright frightening. Nationally, some 2,000 13-to 18-year-olds attempt to take their own lives every day. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers and young adults ages 15 to 24. In the United States, there are nearly twice as many suicides as homicides.
Yet for its potentially fatal prevalence, mental illness, according to Griffith, is "regarded with superstition and shame" and must be destigmatized. To do that, Griffith -- who details her battle with depression -- focuses much energy on documenting mental illness, and more specifically depression, as a "bona fide" illness that deserves the same care and attention that one would give to cancer, diabetes or other chronic diseases.
Griffith's family's experience highlights what the author sees as an inadequate health-care system that is woefully unprepared when it comes to treating teenage mental illness. Part of the problem, she argues, is a managed care system more concerned with the bottom line and patient care.
"... because of managed care's prohibitive allowances for mental health, pediatric patients, whose diagnoses may be complex, are seldom thoroughly evaluated or referred to specialists," Griffith writes. HMOs, she continues, prefer medication over more expensive extended therapy sessions with trained psychiatrists or psychologists.
The problem with that, Griffith argues, is that "few doctors, outside of psychiatric specialties, were familiar with the nuances of the drugs or their range of side affects."
Griffith, who served as a member on a Food and Drug Administration panel that convened last year to study the risks of antidepressants on young people, criticizes the FDA approval process for new drugs, which relies on study findings provided by the pharmaceutical companies.
The system needs to change, Griffith says, but drug therapy remains a crucial tool in treating depression. All drugs involve some degree of risk, she says when addressing controversies surrounding anti-depressants' effects on pediatric populations. But she is convinced that the drugs are an important tool in fighting the disease.
"I am convinced that for Will and for me, antidepressants represent the life jacket preventing us from being sucked under by depression's powerful undertow," Griffith writes.
She said in an interview that she is amazed that when speaking publicly about her book, as she will do at Garcia Street Books today, so many audience members relate to her experience. Why then, she asks, do depression and suicide remain a shameful subject?
"I'm shocked," she said, "because when I've been speaking publicly about it and see people nodding their heads, I think, 'Why is this so difficult to talk about?' ''
--John Arnold, © 2005 Albuquerque Journal
From Publisher's Weekly
"The book is [also] a plea to society to recognize that depression is a serious but treatable illness."
There has been much controversy recently about whether antidepressants cause children and teens to become suicidal; this is the saga of one mother's nightmare-one that still leaves her believing antidepressants have a role to play in treating depression.
Four years ago, Griffith's 17-year-old son, Will, attempted suicide by overdosing on the antidepressant Remeron. Will had previously been treated for depression, but had never been suicidal. Griffith describes the effect of the suicide attempt on herself, her husband (Will's stepfather) and Will's girlfriend, Megan, who was addicted to cutting herself.
The author is painfully honest about her own battle with depression at age 40, and excerpts from Will's and Megan's diaries are heartrending. Although this is but a single case and so sheds little light on the relative benefits and dangers of antidepressant use, parents will find it instructive in how to recognize and respond to a child's depression.
The book is also a plea to society to recognize that depression is a serious but treatable illness: after a stint in a residential treatment center that combined therapy and medication, Will emerged from his depression and now attends college. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Library Journal -- Starred Review
" Griffith's stirring prose is supplemented by Megan's and Will's own reflections on their trauma; statistics and research on teen suicide and depression are integrated into the text along with useful and possibly life-saving advice for parents."
© April 15, 2005 Library Journal
In 2001, Griffith's promising yet unsettled son, Will, became one of the approximately 2000 American teens who attempt suicide every day. The author, an activist in international humanitarian and arts causes who has also served on an FDA advisory committee, explores the causes of Will's underlying depression and reveals his relationship with a sketchily described girlfriend (Megan) who indulged in various forms of self-harm. Once stabilized, Will was enrolled in a therapeutic school, where he apparently thrived despite initial trepidation. Griffith's stirring prose is supplemented by Megan's and Will's own reflections on their trauma; statistics and research on teen suicide and depression are integrated into the text along with useful and possibly life-saving advice for parents. The author also discusses the conundrum of treatment for adolescent depression, highlighting its high cost and current controversies about the risks of medicating children. Above all, this is a powerful personal story about a young man who finds a way to embrace life again. Highly recommended for public libraries and consumer mental health collections.
From Journal of Therapeutic Schools and Programs
Will's Choice, a review: a splendid book—vivid, well-researched, good-hearted, smart, honest, and beautifully written"
© National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (2006); Vol. 1. pp. 106 - 108
It is unconventional for one of a book's minor characters to compose a book's review. Readers may wonder how I can be objective, since I am a walk-on actor in Gail Griffith's urgent account of her son's depression, nearly-lethal try at suicide, and recovery. However, my role was quite minor during Will's grumpy passage through Montana Academy. Since I appear briefly in this story, I may have lost some objectivity, but I also can recall a dimension of her heartfelt story, because I was there, which I may usefully call attention to. That said, I do think this is a splendid book—vivid, well-researched, good-hearted, smart, honest, and beautifully written. All of us who work professionally with teenagers should read this and come away with a renewed humility about our limitations. And parents—all parents, for we all expect at some point to raise a teenager—can learn much that will be practical, should such troubles come, and can be inspired, after reading this book, by what parents do for their children when they are in trouble. And if that is not enough, Will's Choice (HarperCollins, 2005) is hard to put down. Given the title's echo of William Styron's blockbuster novel (Sophie's Choice, Vintage, 1979) and given that Styron also wrote an all-but-unbearable public account of his own struggle with melancholia (Darkness Visible, Vintage, 1992), it should surprise no one to learn that Will's Choice is about depression and attempted suicide. Unlike Styron's book, except in the breath-taking opening account of a woman finding her son dying in his bed, Griffith does not dwell on depression's bleak dysphoria. She thinks of depression from a more optimistic, biological point of view. Like Styron, she takes this misery to be a genetic, physiological syndrome. She thinks it can and ought to be detached conceptually from domestic, family and personal experience. And so, like many modern psychiatrists, she sees depressed mood as a disease caused by sub-atomic forces that are not tied up in the bonds of the nuclear family. She and her family struggle to live past this near-catastrophe, but she thinks of depression, both her own and Will's, as a neurological disease to be understood in physiological terms. And so she is unabashedly enthusiastic about the pharmacological approach to treatment. When the use of SSRI anti-depressants in adolescents recently came under public attack, Griffith took up the microphone in Congressional hearings to defend them. Certainly this biochemical approach has led to remarkable gains and to splendid agents that generate so few side effects and make so much difference to sufferers that they have even converted psycho-dynamic psychiatrists like Peter Kramer, MD, whose well-received professional memoir (Listening to Prozac, Penguin Books, 1993) could be a companion piece to Griffith's personal memoir. Both books are approachable, reliable guides. And both professional and lay readers will only come away from Will's Choice knowing a great deal about this technical subject. Griffith provides parents of troubled teen-agers a trove of sensible, well-informed advice.
John A. McKinnon, M.D., Clinical Director and Founder, Montana Academy
From RecoveryWorld.com
"An extraordinary portrait of a family in crisis."
© May 2005 RecoveryWorld.com
Gail Griffith's nightmare began one Sunday morning when she tried to rouse her teenage son, Will, from a semi-comatose, incoherent sleep. Her sixth sense told her immediately that something was seriously wrong. But despite the fact that Will was being treated for clinical depression, Gail could not process the truth -- that the once joyous and loving Will had attempted suicide by ingesting two bottles of his antidepressant medication. She also could not imagine the odyssey that Will, her family, and herself would need to embark on to make him well.
WILL'S CHOICE is a candid memoir of Gail Griffith's family ordeal. As she recounts Will's struggle with depression, and the slow and painful process of recovery, Griffith offers a singular look at one family's experience, as well as the broader issues that millions of families encounter when faced with the epidemic of teen depression and suicide.
Informed and galvanized by her experience, Griffith offers a report from the trenches that will help others struggling with the stigma of teen depression.
I found that Griffith's use of real journal entries and personal letters brought me, the reader, into the minds of the people involved in this real life drama. These letters and journal pages have us crossing the boundaries usually drawn by typical first person narratives. We are able to view this chaotic world through the eyes of many people.
Each letter and journal entry is a puzzle piece that, when added to the whole, makes the entire drama make sense.
As real life Recovery books go, "Wills Choice" is as powerful as they get.
Griffith does a wonderful job sharing with us her experience. If this is a topic you are interested in learning more about, you will not find many books as well written and interesting as this one.
--Chris D., © May 2005 Recovery World.com
From Psychiatric News
"The book will serve as an excellent teaching tool for clinicians as well." Jim Rosack, Psychiatric News
© May 20, 2005 Psychiatric News
Gail Griffith has written a riveting account of her son's recovery following his suicide attempt and the effects that his-and her own-illness has had on their family. Titled Will's Choice (HarperCollins), the book includes extensive first-person journal entries from Will and his girlfriend in the aftermath of his suicide attempt revealing remarkable insight about his illness. Will's Choice provides a look inside the minds of a patient and his family, and as Columbia University suicide expert David Shaffer, M.D., notes in his foreword, .
--Jim Rosack, American Psychiatric Publishing
From Preventing Suicide
"Much more than an account of Will's suicide attempt, "Will's Choice" is, in fact, many things."
© June 2005 Preventing Suicide: The National Journal (online)
Nobody in Will's family saw it coming. The 17-year-old had grown up in a comfortable, upper-middle-class family in Washington, DC, with countless blessings: a loving family, a place at a prestigious parochial high school and a lovely new girlfriend. Though Will suffered from depression, he was on medication and his mood seemed to have stabilized. And yet, one summer morning, his mother found him laying on his bed, unconscious and deathly ill. She had no choice but to face the fact that her son had attempted to end his life.
This is the story told by Gail Griffith in her book, "Will's Choice." It is the account of a mother, forced to deal with the stark reality that "your child has rejected the life you gave him." Luckily, Will's antidepressant overdose was not fatal and he was left without physical or mental damage. What remained, however, was a family in crisis, struggling to understand what went wrong, how they missed his suicidal symptoms and how to cope with the aftermath.
As it turned out, Will suffered from major depressive disorder. Though he manifested no overtly suicidal symptoms, he was trapped in an emotional hell from which he saw no escape. As Will puts it "I didn't want to die. I just didn't want to live anymore."
. It's a mother's attempt to understand and heal her child, an examination of her own experience with depression and an unflinching critique of the US mental health care system. It is also a story told through many voices including Will's journal entries, letters from his family and friends and conversations with the doctors involved in his care. But, most importantly, it is a message of hope for parents and teens suffering from this cruel and insidious illness.
Much of the book is devoted to the teen depression crisis itself, such as the difficulty in distinguishing depressive teen behavior from "normal" adolescent behavior, which is a common problem, says Griffith. Of the 3.5 million teens suffering from depression in 1999, over 80% go undiagnosed. The book is grounded in many such statistics and makes a persuasive case for the need for a mental health safety-net to address teen depression and suicide.
Also addressed is the staggering lack of resources available to both parents and teens suffering from this disease. Just how does a family whose child has attempted suicide wade through the often-conflicting sea of mental health literature? And what about the families who can't afford the costly care and treatment that was available to Will? Griffith takes on these and many other questions. She doesn't have solution to all the problems, but she prompts a long-overdue dialogue on why so many parents and teens are left to find their way in the dark.
We all want the best for our family, our children and others' children. "Will's Choice" documents an exceptional family's struggle and determination to save one of its own. But it is a story we can all relate to. In Will's family, we see ourselves and the hopes we all have for our loved ones. After all, says Griffith, "[this is] my child, my son. Any mother's son."
--Jason Halal, National Mental Health Association
From StrugglingTeens.com
"This book can be valuable for any parent of a teen"
© May 2005 StrugglingTeens.com
Will's Choice is one of the stories behind the headlines, and the drama behind those sterile statistics of attempted teen suicides. This is a memoir of a mother who faced one of the things parents fear the most in their teenage child - an attempted suicide stemming from chronic depression.
Throughout the book, the author shares her frustration with the search for adequate options to help her son, many of which proved inadequate. She explains the frustration of caring for her depressed son, and finding him unconscious one morning from an overdose of prescription medications. She expresses the confusing and conflicting professional suggestions, and coping with hospitalization.
With sheer luck, she stumbles across Susan Dranitzke, an educational consultant who steers her in the direction of several good therapeutic boarding schools and treatment centers. The final choice is Montana Academy, a well-regarded therapeutic/ emotional growth boarding school near Kalispell, MT. In the Montana wilderness, her son learns to handle his demons and rebuild his life, along with "rethreading a loom of tangled relationships between children and parents-and between children and the wider world."
This book can be valuable for any parent of a teen. Through one mother's experience, it provides a roadmap of what a family can go through when the bottom drops out of their child's life. She experiences the despair of watching her son self-destruct, the frustration of overly busy professionals providing rote solutions that are not adequate. She shares the hope that gradually builds when a proper intervention is found through a residential placement run by people who are "honest, decent and caring, and put their best efforts" into working with her son.
She explains all the false starts that do not work. She analyzes the routine suggestions by professionals that turn out to be un-suitable. Furthermore, she describes the fears that the solution she finds will not accept her and the chilling fears at those times when her son challenges the treatment and structure so necessary for his future well-being. In addition, she shares the simple but important things, like finally being able to sleep deeply once she makes the decision and her son is finally in a safe place with caring people.
At root, this is a book of hope. Hope that no matter how bleak the situation appears, there are solutions in the form of good quality residential programs for self-destructive young people, when parents research to find them. Contained in this book is a message to desperate parents of self-destructive children that there is no problem without a solution.
--Lon Woodbury, StrugglingTeens.com
From New Mexico Kids
"Will's Choice is many things: a heart-wrenching memoir of a family's response to a beloved young man's attempt to end his life; an honest exploration of the appallingly insufficient resources available to deal with such an attempt; a source book for people who love and care for teens during what can be the most difficult years of their lives; and a message of hope and recovery."
© July/August 2005 New Mexico Kids
I had only gotten as far as chapter three in Will's Choice, when I felt I had to call my daughter, a college sophomore, to talk to her about depression. Like my daughter, Will was the "good kid" in the family-seemingly carefree, moving through life with equanimity. His apparent ease with life, until a bout with major depression during his junior year of high school, followed by a suicide attempt that resulted in a 48-hour coma, caused his author mother to call him a "stealth candidate" for suicide, precisely because he kept any negative feelings under wraps. What compelled me to call my daughter was Gail Griffith's call to action: "It is important to talk to your kids about depression. Openly. Candidly. And at intervals as they grow up."
Every day two thousand young Americans attempt suicide; every two hours, one of them succeeds. In his foreword to Will's Choice, David Shaffer, MD, an expert on teen suicide, says that while statistics tell us who commits suicide, Griffith's book uniquely explains why people commit suicide. She lays the cause clearly and unequivocally at the door of depression. The book provides carefully researched information about the causes of depression, which can be both genetic and environmental, and its treatment. The most surprising and useful information to me as a parent, educator and counselor was the fact that we can prevent suicide far more effectively by helping young people recognize depression than by teaching them to recognize suicidal tendencies. Widespread depression screening is also recommended.
Will's Choice is many things: a heart-wrenching memoir of a family's response to a beloved young man's attempt to end his life; an honest exploration of the appallingly insufficient resources available to deal with such an attempt; a source book for people who love and care for teens during what can be the most difficult years of their lives; and a message of hope and recovery. A powerful portion of the book is found in excerpts from Will's journals and an epilogue written by him for the book, as well as writing by his girlfriend, Megan, who dealt with her depression by repeatedly cutting herself.
Griffith told me at her book-signing at Bound to Be Read Bookstore that she wrote the book because, in the aftermath of Will's attempt, she was so angry about how few adequate resources there are for treatment, and how difficult it was, even for a family with emotional and financial resources, to come up with a treatment plan for her son. Despite the anger that motivated her, the tone of the book is compassionate and balanced. It offers suggestions for prevention, how to research and evaluate treatment programs, and it deals informatively and honestly with controversies surrounding the use of anti-depressant medication. The resource section is practical and inclusive.
--Anna Redsand has more than thirty years of experience working with young people and their families as an educator and counselor and is the parent of a teenager. She is a freelance writer living in Albuquerque.
From Connect for Kids
Gail Griffith tells an unsparing tale of her son Will's attempt to kill himself, and the complicated road to recovery.
This is a harrowing account of how the author's son Will, mired in a deep depression, tried to kill himself with an overdose of anti-depressant medications, of the ensuing long nightmare of looking for the right treatment, and of Will's eventual, provisional recovery. It starts on a March morning in 2001, when author Gail Griffith goes to wake up her 17-year-old son, and finds him delirious and incoherent in his bed. From there, Griffith takes us along on Will's journey to the emergency room, hospital, psychiatric in-patient facility, countless therapy sessions, therapeutic boarding school in Montana, and finally home again, with side-trips through the family's emotional history, Griffith's own struggles with depression, expert views on the disease, Will's girlfriend's own experience with "cutting", and the family's battle to overcome the serious deficiencies in what our mental health care system offers for seriously depressed adolescents. As the parent of two adolescent boys, living in the same city (Washington, DC), and familiar with many of the landmarks, institutions and schools that make up the background of Gail Griffith's book, this was a hard book for me to read and a hard book to put down. There's a cliché that comes to mind—"Every Parent's Nightmare"—only in this case, it seemed more like my personal nightmare, as lived by someone else. Griffith negotiates the tricky emotional terrain of a book like this, which can seem like a terrible invasion of a child's privacy, in part by exploring her own role in such detail. Having been hospitalized for depression herself when Will was much younger, Griffith engages in some fierce maternal second-guessing, berating herself for not having fully acknowledged the depths of Will's depression. She takes a hard look at her divorce from her first husband and their remarriages, and wonders if they were too quick to assume that Will was weathering those storms as easily as it appeared. And she works in enough research and discussion about adolescence, depression, and treatment to take the book out of the realm of pure memoir. Will also contributes an epilogue, written in 2004, in which he acknowledges his discomfort with having his story told. "I'm not sure I really want anyone to know my so-called story," he writes. But he also explains how he faces the prospect of his depression returning in a way that makes it clear he does understand how other teens and adults could benefit from understanding what he's gone through. "I would be hard-pressed to handle it worse that I handled it the first time," writes Will. "I've pieced my sanity back together and the cracks have faded over time. If it comes apart again, I'll fix it again. But like a puzzle I've already solved, I now know where the pieces go." The question that animates the book is, of course, why? Why would a bright young teenager with loving parents and siblings try to end his life? Griffith looks back at Will's infancy and early childhood, and his early claim to the territory of the easy, cheerful, happy-go-lucky kid. Was it the divorce? Was it taking too much at face value Will's insistence that he was not bothered by the divorce? Is it genetic? What about the antidepressant medications Will had been taking before his attempt? (Griffith, by the way, while acknowledging the potential dangers of the newer antidepressants, comes down in favor of their remaining available. She can claim some particular expertise here: in 2004, she was the patient representative to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's scientific advisory committee charged with investigating the possible link between antidepressant medication and suicidal thinking in teenage patients.) True to life, the question "Why?" is never answered to Griffith's satisfaction. Instead, she finds her satisfaction in Will's continued existence and in each day that he chooses to live.
Susan Phillips
From Washington Parent, May 2005
"Celebrating Mothers"
Washington resident Gail Griffith knows firsthand the joys and challenges of being a mother. But when her 17-year-old son tried to commit suicide in 2001, Griffith had to confront not only her heartbreak but a system ill designed to help adolescents deal with their depression. Her memoir, Will's Choice, is a powerful wake-up call as well as a personal account of one family's journey from tragedy to hope. The prologue mentions some staggering statistics: "One young American (under the age of twenty-four) commits suicide every two hours." Griffith calls teenage depression a "national scourge." What can be done? Griffith offers no easy answers. Instead she intersperses her memoir with letters and journal entries from family and friends and even Will himself to provide a multifaceted view of teenage depression. At times harrowing, Griffith's account is also laced with determination and practical advice.
Mary Quattlebaum