ND ALWAYS TOMORROW

This, as was Arthur Woolson's Goodbye My Son (Harper & Row- 1960), is an account of mental illness from the vantage point of the parent whose child is disturbed. Whereas the earlier book left one with a sense of the parent's ineptitude in handling the situation, Mrs. Lorenz' account is even more dismaying in the picture of professional indifference, confusion and failure it leaves with the reader. They spent seven years, from the time when Kenneth was 16 to 23, in attempting to secure help for him; he became a ""treatment sponge"" for every kind of theory and therapy attempted after his disturbance was diagnosed vaguely as a ""compulsion neurosis"". From private doctors to private clinics, from insulin shock to drugs, and finally to a research project in which the entire family lived as a unit (her husband took a leave of absence from his job) which only turned out to be a civilized bedlam for all concerned, a this is a distressing account. Finally having delayed the seeming living death of a state hospital (2 psychiatrists to a 1000 patients) they were forced to commit Kenneth where he seems to be receiving as good care (without cure) as before.... An affecting, and disaffecting, true story-which may enlighten the many others in this position--at a price--discouragement.