Mejor dejarlo tranquilo: Vivir con un familiar psicótico en Nicaragua

Identifier:  PC:1281

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/PC1281

Authors:  Rimke van der Geest

Abstract:
This book is based on an anthropological study and on social care work carried out in the Nicaraguan city of Matagalpa. Over the course of five years, the author regularly visited families in which one or more members had developed a psychotic disorder during adolescence. This book relates the moving stories of four of these families. The stories describe poverty, violence and the fruitless search for a cure. The title Better leave him alone refers to a survival strategy that the families, after years of struggling, have been forced to adopt simply in order to make each day bearable. In addition to the families, the book also gives a voice to the care assistants and other people in the families’ immediate surroundings. In this way the reader can begin to understand the level of help available for psychotic patients and what society thinks of them. Finally, the author describes how, together with the families, an organisation is created to face the challenges posed by psychosis and the problems that it brings with it. The publication of this book aims to provide students, professionals and legislators with a picture of the problem in Nicaragua regarding psychosis. The book also offers a defence of psychiatric care in the home and the involvement of family members in the treatment of patients with psychosis.