cover image Fth-Rickie

Fth-Rickie

Frederic F. Flach, Rickie F. Hartman. Fawcett Books, $18.95 (274pp) ISBN 978-0-449-90349-0

After 10 years of his daughter's institutionalization for schizophrenia, New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center psychiatrist Flach ( Resilence ) decided she should be treated with experimental, physiologically-based nutritional (vitamin) therapy and visual perception training, which proved successful. Now a licensed practical nurse and mother of three, Hartman has not seen a psychiatrist since 1978. The poignant story of the pain of patient and parents during repeated episodes of improvement and regression on conventional therapy is told in alternate segments by the father and daughter. Singularly devoid of self-pity and bitterness, Flach pere makes palpable the anguish of being torn between parental and professional concerns during his daughter's illness. (Feb.)