 
Science journalist Victoria Costello "presents a book of vigorous personal and factual research," says Publishers Weekly. It's "both an affecting chronicle of her family's mental illness and a useful guide to detection and prevention."
In a riveting story, Costello recounts how the mental unraveling of her seventeen-year-old son Alex compelled her to look back into family history for clues to his condition. She eventually tied Alex's descent into paranoid schizophrenia to his great grandfather's suicide in 1913. But this insight brought no quick relief. Within two years of Alex's diagnosis, both she and her youngest son succumbed to two different mental disorders: major depression and anxiety disorder.
While pursuing care for herself and her sons, Costello discovered startling new neuroscientific and genetic findings that explain how clusters of mental illness traverse family generations.
"Her compelling book combines a record of her and her sons' challenges, her search to understand exactly what happened to family members in generations past, and the innovations in today's diagnosis and treatment for mental illness," says Cleveland's Plain Dealer.
From this intensely personal and carefully documented account of her full decade of treatment and international research, readers will come away with a better understanding of the negative emotional and behavioral patterns that continue to wreak havoc in many families-including new evidence linking and explaining generations of depression and anxiety, self-medication with alcohol and drugs, even psychosis and suicides.
The San Jose Mercury News says, "Part science, part personal memoir, [A Lethal Inheritance] is a useful guide for families in crisis."
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View Victoria Costello's book trailer here:
 | | Book Trailer, A Lethal Inheritance (1:45) |
Read her Huffington Post article on how one's family history may contain hidden secrets that prove to be valuable to the family's present and future.
While writing A Lethal Inheritance, Costello learned that mental illness can be preventable and treatable and that parents can take measures to safeguard a child's mental health. Read her ten tips for family mental wellness here.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Victoria Costello (San Francisco, CA) is an Emmy Award-winning science writer with articles in Scientific American MIND and Brain World. She is the coauthor with child psychiatrist Jack Westman, MD, of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Child & Adolescent Psychology, and with family therapist Stephen Martin of The Everything Parent's Guide to Children with OCD. Her blog posts on psychology and family mental health can be read on the Huffington Post, Yahoo! News Health & Wellness, PsychCentral, Mamapedia, and MentalHealthMomBlog. With the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, Costello is a speaker, workshop facilitator, and state and federal advocate working to improve the mental health of youth and families.
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