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Item Details
| Title:
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VOLUNTARY MADNESS
MY YEAR LOST AND FOUND IN THE LOONY BIN |
| By: |
Norah Vincent |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| List price:
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£12.99 |
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We currently do not stock this item, please contact the publisher directly for
further information.
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| ISBN 10: |
070118177X |
| ISBN 13: |
9780701181772 |
| Publisher: |
VINTAGE PUBLISHING |
| Pub. date: |
15 January, 2009 |
| Pages: |
304 |
| Description: |
Takes a fearless view of mental health care - from the inside out. The author demonstrates the power of common sense and human connection: how much better a patient can feel when treated like a person and not a petri dish. She also analyses the sometimes damaging and occasionally transformative relationships between patients and their caregivers. |
| Synopsis: |
Norah Vincent has always suffered from depression but at the end of a book project that required her to spend eighteen months disguised as a man she felt that she was a danger to herself and was committed to a 'loony bin'. As a result of this traumatic experience Norah came out resolved to go back undercover to report on a range of mental institutions - three difficult, pressurized and very different environments - and to experience first hand their effect on the body and mind. Her journey starts in a huge inner city hospital where most patients are 'repeats', often poor and dispossessed. There Norah confronts the boredom and babbling of an underfunded facility: a place where medication is a process of containment: its purpose to make life easier for the rest of us, not the patients themselves. Cut to the calming green carpet of St Lukes: plenty of 'loonies' here too of course but Norah is taken aback when her doctor allows her to reduce her medication, have a room of her own and a regular jog in the park.Then to Mobius, and a Buddhist-inspired brand of healing, where Norah is forced to plunge deep into her emotional past, and swim through the psycho-babble to some unexpected conclusions. In "Voluntary Madness", Norah Vincent takes a fearless and unprecedented view of mental health care - from the inside out. She demonstrates the power of common sense and human connection: how much better a patient can feel when treated like a person and not a petri dish. In analysing the peculiar, sometimes damaging and occasionally transformative relationships between patients and their caregivers, her consummate, fearless and darkly funny reportage makes for riveting reading. |
| Publication: |
UK |
| Imprint: |
Chatto & Windus |
| Returns: |
Returnable |
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