Welcome to Litsy!

Absolutely flew through this. Each chapter covers a different person's life and mental illness. She includes lots of different perspectives so you begin to understand all the narratives that can exist around one experience. Loved. The parts where Aviv includes her own experiences and thoughts on both eating disorders and using antidepressants are fascinating. Would recommend to anyone.

3-5 May 23 (audiobook)
Very interesting book. Aviv was diagnosed with anorexia at the age of 6 (she is equally dubious about such a diagnosis) and in this book details a number of people from quite different backgrounds and stages of life who have been diagnosed with a form of mental illness, the treatment and drugs they received and their current outcome. Augurs well for my decision to quit law and study psych that I found it fascinating.

Medical ethics and what we don‘t know about psychosis, the connections between mental illness diagnosis and identity—these topics are explored with sensitivity. Journalist Rachel Aviv frames her questioning within her own experience of being hospitalized and diagnosed with anorexia nervosa when she was six years old. A fascinating audiobook narrated by Andi Arndt.

Friday Reads February 3: book cover design; CanLit; picture book biography; graphic novels; audiobooks for all ages; poetry; YA

https://youtu.be/ITofJsLCf3A

^^ p233 transformation rather than restoration

P26 “I find myself searching for the gap between people‘s experiences and the stories that organize their suffering, sometimes defining the course of their lives.”

p212 “I‘ve endowed my pill of choice with mystical capacities—it contains the things I‘m not but wish I was—and merely the idea of swallowing such a thing has healing power.”

Diagnosis as relief, danger of conforming to diagnosis.

Stories of deep trauma=always open to exploitation, which Aviv mostly avoids by withholding judgment of patients & instead judging treatment. Psychoanalysis vs. psychopharmacology. Narratives of illness. Being in uncertainties. Mysticism. Generational trauma. Systemic racism. Overprescription. Conclusion? Come at people as they are: individuals, influenced by “an interplay between biological, genetic, psychological, and environmental factors.”2022

When you already have 5 books checked out from the library and are in the middle of two others, and another the one you've really been waiting for comes in...welp, guess I know what I'm reading this evening.

In this provocative exploration of the limits of psychological understanding and the impact of the narratives we have about mental illness, a writer who was diagnosed with anorexia at six years old presents the stories of a man who sues his psychoanalysts, an Indian woman believed to be a saint, a Black mother in prison after a psychotic episode, an affluent white woman who stops taking her medications, and a woman she once shared an ED ward with.

Are we all living on the edge of madness? What tips the scales towards mental illness in one‘s life? How do some recover and why do others not? Aviv is fascinated with this thin line of mental illness vs mental health and explores it in the lives of herself and 5 others, each with their own chapters featuring personal diaries and extensive research. A great read, and perfect on audio. Loved it!
My first read from #NYTTopTen2022

This is one of the most thought-provoking books I‘ve read this year. Aviv was diagnosed with anorexia as a young child (6) and hospitalized with older kids and teens. This gave her an interesting perspective on mental healthcare and its evolution. She looks at four people who had very different interactions with mental health professionals in the US and India. The last woman she profiles talked about seeing herself through the lens of her ⬇️