HOPE AND HELP FOR YOUR NERVES

ow-to addressed to the sufferer of nervous disorders from the milder ad nerves"" to more serious illness short of delusion, this is a direct, optimistic, supportive approach to a difficult area of counselling-in-print. The author sees nervous breakdown as emotional and mental exhaustion usually begun and maintained by ear. Much of her attention is given to the symptoms relayed by the sympathetic nervous system which responds to stress -- the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle which she sees at the base of the difficulties. Her approach to the mastering of palpitations, giddiness, nausea, etc. and the more oppressive hurdles of problems, sorrow, guilt and disgrace, obsession, sleeplessness and other elements of breakdown, is not to fight or flail, but to face, accept, float, let time pass, for true acceptance is the key to recovery. Each symptom or cause for anxiety is faced here with the irectness and matter-of-fact acceptance the author urges on her readers, and is thus deprived of its frightening strangeness. Dr. Weekes, Consulting Physician at the Rachel Forster Hospital, Sydney, seems to be trying to take on a comprehensive therapeutic role here, and to be writing in a situation where professional help is not so prevalent as it is in our major urban areas. She is interested mainly in the out-patient approach and has a distressing tendency to equate shock treatment with hospitalization, which detracts a little from an immensely helpful book which an well be used and referred to patients by g.p.s.