BOOKS FROM BRIDGEROSS (BRC) MOST CURRENT FIRST

For Films on Schizophrenia Visit

Now Available  Love's All That Makes Sense: A Mother Daughter Memoir - growing up with a mother with schizophrenia as told by both from their own unique perspectives  

New Release From Writer/Psychiatrist, David Laing Dawson 

Now Available  Peril: From Jackboots to Jack Benny by Pearl Goodman

The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Pearl Goodman grew up in Toronto in the 1960s. In this exceptionally original memoir, written with wry humor and a sharp satirical eye, she juxtaposes popular culture with the jarring transitions and contradictions in her and her parents' lives. Striving to make sense of her emerging identity, she invokes TV shows, ads, movies, and distinctive details of the material and ideological landscape, while interweaving them with her parents’ harrowing wartime experiences of concentration and refugee camps, and the drama and uncertainty of their postwar emigration first to Israel, and then to Canada.

When Quietness Came: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey With Schizophrenia by Erin L. Hawkes MSc with an introduction by Dr. Richard O'Reilly, professor of psychiatry, University of Western Ontario.

The true story of a young woman studying neuroscience who, in her final undergraduate year, has a psychotic break, attempts suicide and ends up in hospital. Her struggles to get well and to pursue her PhD are described in this book. Her story is geared to  people from a variety of backgrounds. For full details, visit the book page

What A Life Can Be: One Therapist's Take on Schizo-affective Disorder By Carolyn Dobbins PhD (A Must have book on Schizophrenia Healthy Place)

"powerful and revealing, and provides a unique insight into chronic mental disease" Dr. Thomas G Burish, a professor of psychology and Provost of Notre Dame.

The story of Dr Carolyn Dobbins struggles with schizo-affective disorder who, after a 25 year career as a successful therapist, admits that she suffers with this disease. The book chronicles her descent into madness, homeless and jail and her struggles to obtain a PhD from Vanderbilt in clinical psychology. 

"It will challenge your thinking about mental illness, about hope, about faith, about who you are." George E Doebler  M Div.  Special Advisor, Dept. of Pastoral Care, U of Tennessee Medical Center:, Executive Director, emeritus: Association of Mental Health Clergy  (now Association of Professional Chaplains). For more information visit the book page.

Prose To Go: Tales From A Private List, edited by Irene Davis, Fred Desjardins and Barbara Florio Graham

Peek into the private lives of 18 professional writers from the NWT to PEI "This eclectic mix of memories of shared love, laughter, and hope should appeal to a wide readership, and deserves to find a place in every public library collection." New York Journal of Books 

For details, visit

The Adolescent Owners Manual by Dr David Laing Dawson

 Recommended by Library Journal.  Your goal as a parent,  Dawson says, should be to get your adolescent child into adulthood, alive, healthy, preferably educated and skilled, without a major drug problem or criminal record or pregnancy. Anything more is icing and a pleasure to behold.

And, this book is your support and encouragement to do the right thing to achieve the above goal.

For details, visit

My Schizophrenic Life: The Road To Recovery From Mental Illness By Sandra Yuen MacKay

(A Must have book on Schizophrenia Healthy Place)

Winner of the Courage To Come Back Award - Mental Health BC for 2012

LIBRARY JOURNAL: "remarkably compelling.....will hold readers captive.....provides a surprisingly gripping narrative"

June 2011 issue of the Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy - "I recommend this book to students, novice therapists, clients and care givers as it not only helps us understand.....but also because it is inspirational and fosters some hope for recovery", Paulette Guitard. Recommended by NAMI and The Mood Disorders Society of Canada. For full details, Visit

After Her Brain Broke: Helping My Daughter Recovery Her Sanity By Susan Inman

(A Must have book on Schizophrenia Healthy Place)

Susan Inman's memoir describes her family's nine year journey to help her younger daughter recover from a catastrophic schizoaffective disorder.  "...one of the best accounts I have read of serious mental illness as told by a mother." and "Highly  recommended" E. Fuller Torrey, MD author of Surviving Schizophrenia.

Recommended by NAMI in the US, EUFAMI in Europe and The Mood Disorders Society of Canada. With an introduction by former Senator Michael Kirby, Chair Emeritus, Mental Health Commission of Canada. For details visit For a Reviews and Inman presentations and articles. To request a presentation, contact info@bridgeross.com

Schizophrenia Medicine's Mystery Society's Shame By Marvin Ross

"a powerful resource for anyone looking for answers and insight into the world of mental illness."  Schizophrenia Digest Magazine, Fall 2008.

Recommended by the World Fellowship For Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders

"a helpful and empowering guide" Abilities Magazine - Issue 77, Winter 2008/09

For full details visit 

My Life And Other Lies: Tales From A Writer's List By Steve Pitt

From Blog Critics: Pitt displays an ability to weave wit, humor and nostalgia into artful story-telling similar to the works of Garrison Keillor, the celebrated author of Lake Wobegone Days, and Jean Shepherd whose collected anecdotes eventually became the holiday classic A Christmas Story.

Five Stars on Amazon - a truly gifted humour writer, Humour in the Leacock style

For more information including a link to an interview with Steve, please visit

Two New Mysteries From the Pen of David Laing Dawson

Don't Look Down Four men, age 18 to 81, have murdered, and now share a room in the secure forensic psychiatry ward."it feels authentic from beginning to end. It's  not a comfortable book to read, but it is thought-provoking."  From Blog Critics

Slide in All Direction crime, addictions, love and redemption, played out in the shadows of a post-industrial steel town. Known as a Canadian Elmore Leonard, Dawson is perhaps a little kinder and gentler but no less real

Two Paperback Reprints of Earlier Dawson Works

The Intern - During the tumultuous sixties, Dr. Robert Snow interns in a big city hospital. Dawson lets his readers feel the triumphs and tragedies, the exhausting, overwhelming experiences of hospital life and death.

Essondale - A Psychological thriller - Is this hell, or just a psychiatric hospital? Dr. Robert Snow isn't sure. Waking from a drunken stupor in a small green room, the doctor finds he's on the other side of the diagnosis - in a place where life and mental health seem to be going pretty cheap these days.

For details on all four books and an interview with the author, visit 

And for something totally different - The Original Reigning Cats and Dogs: A Humorous Look at Pets and Their Owners - featuring the illustrations of David Shaw

The ideal book for everyone who has a pet, has had a pet or who is thinking of getting a pet. And not just cats and dogs but exotic and even surrogate pets are covered in this highly amusing look at life with our favorite friends. Picking the right pet for you, training them,and caring for them are covered along with some fascinating trivia like pet contributions to society, pets in films and music and just about everything else you could possibly think of when it comes to pets

For Details Visit