Hey, lovely readers, I am deciding to start a new series that really focuses on mental health. This can be fiction or non-fiction but it must be a positive outlook. There is way to much bad attitude about mental health. So this is going to. be a subarctic series potentially but I will get a better grasp of my schedule this weekend. Read more posts from this series here. ( if not linked that means I have only done one of these in this series.
When thinking about how to write this review it took me several hours to find the right words. This book really gave me a good look into personality disorders and how it can majorly mess up relationships. This book will leave you speechless. I regularly had to put down this book and cry for this women at times. She seemed so nice and being haunted by these demons really didn't every stop.
Mental health hospitals are now picnic. It has always amazed me how we believe people can get better in those conditions. This was an interesting book because I had mixed feeling about it. I sort of liked the message but also disliked a lot of the practices by psychiatrists, but I have to remember this is an older. In 1967 most people thought mentally ill people should just be locked up. This young woman's story is quite inspiring though. They used progressive methods to help gain her sanity back.
There was one line in this book that sparked some debate in my head. That line was, "“Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?" Is mental illness just a person who doesn't wear a mask in front of people to hide or being secretive. Unfortunately, a lot of people in psych hospitals are on so many drugs they hand the cognitive function of a potato, that's a criticism of the system, not patient.
I think keeping those things in mind, the main woman in this story Kaysen is so refreshing and interesting. I like that book was written from her perspective versus her therapist or psychologist giving a rather brief overview. I also like that she had enough self-awareness to really get treatment. She knew she was losing her mid. That is something you don't see every day.
I also love the real message in this book.They also weren't overly optimistic that they could actually help her. That personality disorders can't just go away. You do learn how to live and overcome them but every day is a battle. For that, I believe all mentally ill people are very strong.
When we first learn about Kaysen we realize that she's never matched up with societies views. She always had sort of strange obsessions and ideas about things. Through the book, we learn that there are a lot of red flags people missed. She was obsessed with her body and at times seemed to lose her grip on reality vs. delusions.
This book is very interesting and fast paced. Girl, Interrupted gets ups set over my lunch break. It was a harrowing tale of finding your self through the madness. This book has got to be the most brutally honest memoir I have read. She lets you in on the good, the bad, and the down right ugly. I think this book is also good because I feel like right now society has made mental illness cooler, so there are a lot of people clogging up the system that they desperately need.
There are so many beautiful quotes in this book I loved. Below is a sampling of my current favorites:
I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.
"They had a special language: regression, acting out, hostility, withdrawal, indulging in behavior. This last phrase could be attached to any activity and make it sound suspicious: indulging in eating behavior, talking behavior, writing behavior. In the outside world, people ate and talked and wrote, but nothing we did was simple."
“When you’re sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound."
What is a book that's been on your TBR pile for ages? Post your answers in the comment section below!
Goodreads Description:
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital as renowned for its famous clientele -- Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles -- as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.
Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.(less)
No comments:
Post a Comment