Everyone struggles with these things from time to time, and her presentation if free of the self-pity and/or glibness that are endemic to the this sort of story. She is wonderfully dry-eyed and skeptical, and acquires not pat solutions, but the logical means for navigating past the twin whirlpools of rage and despair. I hasten to add that this isn't the sentimental Hollywood version. The journalistic narrative is gradually displaced by her struggle for self-knowledge, and in the process she discovers all kinds of things that many people already know, in this case that interpersonal psychotherapy - the kind that doesn't need a prescription pad - actually works. Eye opening, emotionally wrenching, and at times very funny, Voluntary Madness is a riveting work that exposes the state of mental healthcare in America from the inside out.As with her last book, 'Self-Made Man', this is an inadvertent coming-of-age story. Vincent applies brilliant insight as she exposes her personal struggle with depression and explores the range of people, caregivers, and methodologies that guide these strange, often scary, and bizarre environments.
Vincent's journey takes her from a big city hospital to a facility in the Midwest and finally to an upscale retreat down south, as she analyzes the impact of institutionalization on the unwell, the tyranny of drugs-as-treatment, and the dysfunctional dynamic between caregivers and patients. She decided to get healthy and to study the effect of treatment on the depressed and insane "in the bin," as she calls it. Out of this raw and overwhelming experience came the idea for her next book.
On the advice of her psychologist she committed herself to a mental institution. Suffering from severe depression after her eighteen months living disguised as a man, Vincent felt she was a danger to herself.
Norah Vincent's New York Times bestselling book, Self-Made Man, ended on a harrowing note.
0 kommentar(er)
