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In this book, thirty-five young, recently diagnosed patients speak about schizophrenia and the process of recovery, while two specialists illuminate the medical science, psycho-education, and therapeutic needs of those who are coping with the illness and accessing medical benefits and community resources. The book offers an informative guide to patients, families, friends, and professionals, detailing the possible causes of schizophrenia, its medications and their side effects, the functioning of the brain, and the value of rehabilitation and other services. In their dialogues, participants confront shame, stigma, substance use, and relapse issues. They also highlight the necessity of healthy eating, safe sex practices, and coping skills during recovery. The clinicians in the book elaborate on the symptoms of schizophrenia, such as violent and suicidal thoughts, delusions, hallucinations, memory and concentration problems, trouble getting motivated or organized, and anxiety and mood disorders. The book adopts an uplifting tone of manageability. In this way the clinicians and patients who contribute to this volume offer more than just advice—they prescribe hope.

Howard Andrew Knox (1885–1949) served as assistant surgeon at Ellis Island during the 1910s, administering a range of verbal and nonverbal tests to determine the mental capacity of potential immigrants. An early proponent of nonverbal intelligence testing (largely through the use of formboards and picture puzzles), Knox developed an evaluative approach that today informs the techniques of practitioners and researchers. Whether adapted to measure intelligence and performance in children, military recruits, neurological and psychiatric patients, or the average job applicant, Knox’s pioneering methods are part of contemporary psychological practice and deserve in-depth investigation. This book takes stock of Knox’s understanding of intelligence and his legacy beyond Ellis Island. Consulting published and unpublished sources, the book establishes a chronology of Knox’s life, including details of his medical training and his time as a physician for the U.S. Army. It describes the conditions that gave rise to intelligence testing, including the public’s concern that the United States was opening its doors to the mentally unfit. It then recounts the development of intelligence tests by Knox and his colleagues and the widely discussed publication of their research. The book presents a useful and extremely human portrait of psychological testing and its limits, particularly the predicament of the people examined at Ellis Island. It concludes with the development of Knox’s work in later decades and its changing application in conjunction with modern psychological theory.