Kirstin’s Story: No Place to Stand
The story of a young Canadian girl’s struggle with social phobia from the time it surfaced, as school phobia or school refusal, when she was nine, through years of misconception, misunderstanding, misdiagnosis and plain mistiming, to her death ten years later is told by her mother with honest candour and admirable objectivity.
While there is higher awareness and recognition of social phobia and related social anxiety disorders, today, than ever before, the zeal of pharmaceutical companies in selling their products has created an even higher level of confusion about what it actually is. One thing it is NOT, is simple shyness.
If a child has become afraid of people, going to school, the shopping mall, parties and all sorts of other things in which he/she once happily and eagerly participated, the problem could be social phobia and it is not solved simply by finding the right pill to take.
Instead, parents must negotiate many pitfalls and jump through many hoops to get help and understanding from schools, medical facilities, their communities and even their families when a child falls victim to an anxiety disorder. Empathy is often non-existent and acceptance elusive… This book documents a family’s quest for that elusive empathy and attempts to make it easier for everybody to understand what is happening when somebody – child or adult – has social phobia.
Author, Jean Jardine Miller, is editor of the Lifeline Anxiety Disorder Newsletter, a print and online quarterly publication which she has been publishing since 1994.
Softcover, 122 pages.
Psych Central's Recommendation: Worth Your Time! +++
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Dr. John Grohol is the founder & CEO of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.Grohol, J. (2004). Kirstin’s Story. Psych Central. Retrieved on May 18, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2004/kirstins-story/
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 30 Jan 2013
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