Will's Choice - by Gail Griffith (Paperback)

About the Book

This timely and compelling family memoir candidly tells the story of one family, an attempted teen suicide, and the emotional and practical struggle to get help.

From the Back Cover

On March 11, 2001, seventeen-year-old Will ingested a near-fatal dose of his antidepressant medication, an event that would forever change his life and the lives of his family. In Will's Choice, his mother, Gail Griffith, tells the story of her family's struggle to renew Will's interest in life and to regain their equilibrium in the aftermath.

Griffith intersperses her own finely wrought prose with dozens of letters and journal entries from family and friends, including many from Will himself. A memoir with a social conscience, Will's Choice lays bare the social and political challenges that American families face in combating this most mysterious and stigmatized of illnesses. In Gail Griffith, depressed teens have found themselves a formidable advocate, and in the evocative and fiercely compelling narrative of Will's Choice, we all discover the promise of a second chance.

Review Quotes

"A courageous and unflinching chronicle .... A beautifully written handbook of help and hope." - Emmylou Harris
"A comfort and resource for people of any age struggling out of that pitch-dark place of the soul." - Washingtonian Magazine
"A look inside the minds of a patient and his family, and...an excellent teaching tool for clinicians." - Psychiatric News
"Powerful prose...Griffith educates and empathizes. With the story of Will's choice--life--she gives hope to families in crisis." - Washington Post Book World
"Ground-breaking...If this book serves as a wake-up call, it is truly one that could save lives. - Judith Guest, author of Ordinary People
"Perceptive and instructive...a valuable document in the fight for better health care for our mentally ill children." - Paul Raeburn, author of Acquainted with the Night
"A heartbreaking and hopeful account that highlights a public health crisis in dire need of attention." - Albuquerque Journal
"Griffith's stirring prose is supplemented by...useful and possibly life-saving advice for parents...a powerful personal story." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Gripping, grueling and entrancing...A knowledgeable guide's revelatory report on a disturbing phenomenon." - Kirkus Reviews
"This is a book about the struggle to supplement love with wisdom in the face of great pain." - Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon
"Painfully honest...heartrending...a plea to society to recognize that depression is a serious but treatable illness." - Publishers Weekly