Read an excerpt of Claire Phillips’s A Room With a Darker View: Chronicles of My Mother and Schizophrenia on Joyland.

The magazine’s selection documents Phillips’s experience as an undergraduate student in San Francisco slowly learning about her mother’s previously undiagnosed schizophrenia. Juxtaposing her college experience with her mother’s increasingly worrisome behavior, Phillips highlights the pain families endure, alongside their loved ones, when mental illnesses go untreated.

For more information on Phillip’s poignant memoir, click here!