Schizophrenic Women is a fascinating report on the lives of seventeen families that suffered the experiences associated with the hospitalization of the wife and mother for mental illness. A description and analysis of representative experiences is presented here in an attempt to investigate various key issues--the patterns of family living preceding the crisis leading to medical hospitalization; how the patterns fell apart; how personal and family crises became psychiatric emergencies; how the hospital experiences modified both the immediate crises and the earlier patterns of living--and how durable those changes were once the patients had returned home.