The Quiet Room: Schizophrenia, Family, and Recovery

Introduction to The Quiet Room

The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett is the true story of a woman's decades-long battle with schizophrenia and her eventual recovery. Schiller, a schizophrenia patient, co-wrote the book with journalist Amanda Bennett to provide a first-person account of how the illness affected her and her family. She writes powerfully of how the disease shaped every aspect of her existence, beginning with the auditory hallucinations she calls "the Voices." She explains: "Sometimes those Voices have been dormant. Sometimes they have been overwhelming. At times over the years they have nearly destroyed me. Many times over the years I was ready to give up, believing they had won" (Schiller and Bennett 7). Despite the losses the illness caused — in career, relationships, and time — Schiller ultimately managed to conquer and manage her disease, and her memoir stands as a remarkable account of survival.

She makes clear from the outset that schizophrenia eroded the normalcy of her life: "Along the way I have lost many things: the career I might have pursued, the husband I might have married, the children I might have had" (Schiller and Bennett 7). She lost approximately eighteen years of her life to the disease, and that loss changed her profoundly — and changed her family as well.

Onset of Symptoms and Early Deterioration

Schiller first began hearing voices when she was seventeen years old and working at a summer camp. Initially, the voices came at night when she was trying to sleep. To escape them, she would jump on a trampoline through the night and then attempt to act normally during the day. The camp owner recognized that something was wrong and sent her home — a moment that marked the turning point in her life and in the lives of her family members.

The first symptoms were auditory hallucinations, followed by disturbing dreams of situations that had never occurred — such as beating a dog to death — and growing fear of ordinary sounds, like the telephone ringing or the nightly news broadcast. Although the voices seemed to recede when she entered college, they worsened as her studies continued. She became depressed and sought the help of a counselor and then a psychiatrist, but she could not bring herself to disclose the voices, so neither was able to help her effectively.

As her symptoms progressed, she began to experience visual hallucinations — for instance, seeing a state trooper transform into a monster — and she developed violent mood swings. She would isolate herself in her room for hours or days at a time and could be startlingly blunt or hostile toward near-strangers. Her depression deepened, and after her psychiatrist refused to see her during a crisis, she overdosed on pills. By the time she was committed to a psychiatric ward, her symptoms had become dramatically worse: she lived in a fantasy world, believed she could fly, experienced violent hallucinations, and heard voices constantly. Even after her hospital release, she suffered from significant memory loss and an inability to concentrate — challenges that surfaced when she attempted to return to school to train as a nurse.

Suicide Attempts and Hospitalization

Schiller's first suicide attempt occurred after she had graduated from college and was living in New York. She took an entire bottle of pills and was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where staff recommended psychiatric admission; however, her parents did not permit it at that time. Three months later, she attempted suicide again, and it was only then that her father fully recognized the severity of her illness. This second attempt led to her commitment to the Payne Whitney Clinic in New York, and it was at this point that her family began to understand how seriously ill she truly was.

She had been admitted to Payne Whitney because of two suicide attempts within three months. Her father persuaded her to commit herself voluntarily when he witnessed her symptoms firsthand. In September 1982, she transferred to the Westchester Division of New York Hospital, a long-term psychiatric facility. She was discharged in April 1983, largely because a regimen of medications had stabilized her symptoms sufficiently that she appeared well enough to attempt life outside the hospital.

Even after her release and return to the working world, suicidal ideation persisted. She writes, "Killing myself was my job, my responsibility. I mentally punished myself each day for not having done it yet" (Schiller and Bennett 132). She made further semi-suicidal gestures, such as cutting herself on rose bushes, which resulted in her being confined to yet another psychiatric facility. These repeated crises illustrate the cyclical and chronic nature of her illness during this period.