Andrés S. Martin
"The growing awareness of childhood mental illness has uncomfortably collided with fewer community resources through which to provide effective care. Overburdened emergency rooms across the nation have often become the one available clinical haven for children and their families at times of need. In Suicide by Security Blanket, Prager and Donovan capture with palpable empathy and concern the realities of these seldom-seen regions. Their book alerts us to a rising pediatric tide we ignore at our own peril."
Carolyn Roy-Bornstein
“Suicide by Security Blanket, and Other Stories from the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service is a rare and candid look at the state of child psychiatry today. In twelve unflinchingly told vignettes, Laura Prager and Abigail Donovan, two child psychiatrists from Massachusetts General Hospital, limn the fine balance between the pathologic and the merely unusual, the dangerous and the just wild ... The book alternates between scene and narration, showing us clinical scenarios in painful detail, then sharing with us the doctors’ thought processes and decision-making strategies ... A compelling read and should be required reading for any child psychiatry residency program.”
Elizabeth Berger
"This unusual, refreshing, and valuable book presents the stories of individual children in the psychiatric emergency room, with a clarity and depth of detail rarely accessible to an audience of general readers. Each case is presented from multiple viewpoints: the child, the family, and the responding professional team. Engrossing as these narratives are as specific cases, they also speak eloquently to the overall failures in social responsibility which help propel families and children into crisis. The vignettes beautifully reflect the complexity and sometimes ambiguity of real-life emergency room child psychiatry while remaining coherent and comprehensible to the layperson. At the same time, the inadequacy of our system of mental health services for children and adolescents is painfully apparent. This volume is a clearly-expressed, sensible, and persuasive addition to public dialogue on mental health care as it meets (at its best) and does not meet (as is typical) urgent psychiatric needs of children and families."
Andrés S. Martin
"The growing awareness of childhood mental illness has uncomfortably collided with fewer community resources through which to provide effective care. Overburdened emergency rooms across the nation have often become the one available clinical haven for children and their families at times of need. In Suicide by Security Blanket, Prager and Donovan capture with palpable empathy and concern the realities of these seldom-seen regions. Their book alerts us to a rising pediatric tide we ignore at our own peril."
Andres S. Martin
"The growing awareness of childhood mental illness has uncomfortably collided with fewer community resources through which to provide effective care. Overburdened emergency rooms across the nation have often become the one available clinical haven for children and their families at times of need. In Suicide by Security Blanket, Prager and Donovan capture with palpable empathy and concern the realities of these seldom-seen regions. Their book alerts us to a rising pediatric tide we ignore at our own peril."
