Getting Sane Without Going Crazy is a consumer’s guide to psychotherapy.

In the tradition of guides for the perplexed, Getting Sane Without Going Crazy provides a roadmap, a guide through the labyrinth of the numerous styles of psychotherapy, with tips on how to find the right therapy for you and your family, whether it be for schizophrenia, job-related stress, or points in between. Reading this book is a freeing and therefore empowering, experience.

The need for a comprehensive guide of this sort is obvious. When a crisis hits home, clear, methodical, thought is in short supply. Dr. Lynn takes the reader by the hand and, chapter by chapter, leads her/him through the process of reaching out for help, providing clear, detailed suggestions for where to begin the search, the difference between short-and long-term therapy and what to expect from each, how diagnosis are made and how to respond to them, the pros and cons of mood medications such as Prozac and St. John’s Wort, the pros and cons of alternative therapies, how and where psychotherapy and spirituality meet, how to deal with HMOs and PPOs, and how to best respond to our increasingly complex and depersonalized mental health institutions.

Many people feel increasingly constricted and helpless when it comes to professional help, be it for physical or emotional problems. Dr. Lynn informs us that, in fact, the patient is in charge. The patient is both the client and the employer with the power to hire and fire badly performing or inappropriate physicians, counselors, psychotherapists and even spiritual guides. None of these, she assures us, not even the insurance companies, necessarily have the last word. Even if your life at this moment is perfectly satisfactory, it will, at some point, throw you a curve ball. Be prepared. When that time comes, this book will be an invaluable guide.