Amy Bloom's ¨silver Water

Do you know someone who suffers from a mental illness? In Amy Bloom's story, ¨Silver Water¨ the narrator tells the story of her sister, Rose. Rose was a popular girl when she was younger, but as she starts to mature, she begins to change. Rose is diagnosed at the young age of 14, with a mental illness and spends the next 10 years in and out of different hospitals. Throughout the story Rose and her family struggle to find good hospitals and therapists. In the 10 years they spend in and out of hospitals and working with different therapists, the narrator describes how rare it is to find suitable people and places to take care of Rose. In ¨Silver Water¨ Bloom uses the struggles of Rose and the care she was given, to depict how mental illness patients are poorly treated, as well as treated much worse than other patients with different illnesses. In the beginning of the story, the narrator describes Rose's endeavours in and out of different hospitals. For 10 years her family could not find places with proper care. The narrator states: ¨One place had no pictures on the walls, no windows, and the patients all wore slippers with the hospital crest on them¨ (Bloom 1). This quote describes how terrible these mental illness hospitals actually were. They are described just like the mental …show more content…
It seems as though many people do not know how to properly act around mental illness patients. Rose's family had a hard time finding her a good therapist, that treated her how she should be treated, someone who treated her like a person. The narrator says, ¨This was the seventh family therapist we had seen, and none of them had lasted very long¨(2). The many therapists that Rose's family had seen, were harsh, or just not good at working with Rose. Finding a good therapist should not be this hard. Therapists are supposed to be specialized in helping these patients and their families through their