MED HEAD

From five to 18, Cory Friedman was prescribed over 30 different medications to control obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette’s syndrome. He battled addiction, learning difficulties and tics before embarking on a wilderness retreat and an intensive school process. Working from Cory’s recollections, family medical records and observations, Patterson and Friedman (Cory’s father) create a rich and engaging first-person narrative based on the co-authors’ previous work, Against Medical Advice (2008). Readers will wonder about some of the Friedmans’ parenting choices, especially as Cory’s behavior gets more extreme; a showdown over smoking at school, for example, may generate very little sympathy. There is a plethora of additional content: family photographs, medicine logs, question-and-answer sessions with both Cory and his father and a brief guide to mental-health resources. A perfect prescription for misery-memoir maniacs. (Memoir. YA)