A review by cordiallychloe
Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness by Roy Richard Grinker

3.5

• non-fiction book, i don’t really know how to review these? 
• talks about how stigma around mental health came to be, sort of a history of mental health that i found pretty interesting 
• i still don’t think non-fiction’s my thing but i liked it fine 
• found out that graham crackers were created so people wouldn’t masturbate which is weird 
• one of my favourite takeaways was that war often was actually in some ways better for mental health because it was finally taken seriously. it was still taboo but people paid more attention to it, because it wasn’t just “crazy” and poor people having mental disorders but rather strong men who were fine enough to be on the front-lines of war 
• i also appreciated that the author didn’t just look at mental health in white communities but also asian and african communities, because mental health is perceived differently in each culture and it’s honestly one of my favourite parts of psychology