Liza Long Price of Silence

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Liza Long is the mother of a child with an undiagnosedmental disorder. When she heard about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, her first thoughtwas, "What if my son does that someday?" She wrote an emotional response to thetragedy, which the Boise State University online journal posted as "I Am AdamLanza's Mother." The post went viral, receiving 1.2 million Facebook likes,nearly 17,000 tweets, and 30,000 emails.Now, in The Price of Silence she takes a devastatinglook at how we address mental illness, especially in children, who are funneledthrough a system of education, mental health care, and juvenile detention thatleads far too often to prison. In the end she asks one central question: Ifthere's a poster child for cancer, why can't there be one for mental illness?The answer: the stigma. Liza Long is speaking in a way that we cannot help but hear,and she won't stop until something changes.