A review by lpm100
Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin by Norah Vincent
fast-paced
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Book Review
Voluntary Madness
1/5 stars
"If a man is meant to drown, he will drown in a spoonful of water."
*******
This lady is an idiot.
It's clear that she wanted to capitalize on the success of her book, "Self Made Man" and I think she wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
That had the unfortunate result of her writing a book before she actually had anything to say.
Not a good idea. Never a good idea.
But, she did do it and here we are with a memoir about time spent in three different hospitals. (It was 34 days, by the way, and NOT a year, as it says in the subtitle.)
Vincent had a lot of commentary about the mental health system (much of it negative), and she was exceedingly generous in sharing her superior insight. But, the thing is that: she ended up dying by assisted suicide in Switzerland because she thought that the pain of depression was just too much to bear.
Early on, she says that "I had gotten to that age when all well loved children of the upper middle class begin to discover that the world is not made for them."
Fancy that.
So, when you have a Stereotypical Bored White Person Seeking Inner Peace discover that for the first✓time✓ ever✓(!), it is enough to drive her to insanity.
And, even worse, she does what Stereotypically Bored White People Seeking Inner Peace tend to do---which is to turn every✓ single✓ topic✓ into something about them/ a chance for self-actualization therapy to solve these trivial-yet-blown-up emotional issues.
I think the expression in Yiddish is: "If a man is meant to drown, he will drown in a spoonful of water."
Authors such as Jonathan Haidt have noticed that when people live lives that are too cushy, they keep defining what is "stressful" downward - - with the end result that if you just curl your lip at one of these people, they will diagnose themselves with PTSD.
*******
Institution #1. A state mental hospital in the Inner City. (≈$14,500 [2006 dollars]for 10 days.)
Institution #2. Private hospital in a lily White city. There was exactly one half black person that showed up during the whole stay. ($14,700 for 10 days).
Institution #3. A private institution. Run by a hippie occultist psychologist (you know, the ones that cannot prescribe medication?). She learned "process therapy" and a lot of physical fitness. ($6, 000 for 2 weeks.)
*******
Among many other errors, Vincent commits the fallacy of composition: State hospitals are not the same thing as private care; her experience in a state hospital is not typical. Many of the people in state wards are indigent / homeless/refractory cases. (Remember, not all cases of mental illness can be resolved anymore than all cases of cancer. And refractory cases of mental illness have to go somewhere.)
In reality, there are a finite number of psychiatrists and they just cannot give unlimited time to each patient AND be a therapist to each one.
As I'm familiar with the mental health game, I will just choose the most egregiously stupid things that she wrote and correct them from an insider's perspective.
1. (p.86) "discernment can be hard to come by in psychiatrists..... The human touch is not very often there strong suit. Nor is true empathy."
CORRECTION: Psychiatrists are physicians and NOT therapists, and the relationship is not meant to be therapeutic and NOT personal. They see symptoms and attempt to medicate them and the patient will keep coming back until the symptoms become tolerable or the side effect profiles get too bad. Is anybody expecting a surgeon to be all warm and fuzzy?
2. (p.34) "of how thoroughly corrupt the drug development and approval processes are in this country."
CORRECTION: The US drug supply is the safest in the world and a lot of medications are approved for use outside of the US years before they make it through the FDA process. If you have enough people take medications in the country of 320 million people, there will just be some bad results by dint of statistical force.
3. (p.59) "... was on Haldol, among other things, a moldy old neuroleptic first used in the 1950s and developed on the basis of an entirely unproven theory that....."
CORRECTION: Haldol is a typical antipsychotic, and it is not commonly used nor a first line drug of choice. It is used for people that are very sick and for whom the substantial side effects are worth the cost of improvements in quality of life. Also, "theory" is some part of drug development, but the acid test is the effectiveness against placebo, in which case the "theory" is IRRELEVANT.
4. (p.65) "They're giving you Seroquel to sleep? That's an antipsychotic. Really. That's hardcore. Just hold it in your cheek and spit it in the toilet."
CORRECTION 1: Seroquel is an atypical antipsychotic, with low risk of side effects. It is given over a very large range of doses and a low dose (25-100 mg) is a mild sedative for insomnia.
CORRECTION 2: It's not like on TV. When they give you medication psychiatric inpatient, they do check to see if you have swallowed.
5. (p.130) "....being tagged is a gross insult to your dignity. It makes you feel like property, or a corpse, a body not a person."
CORRECTION: Wristbands are used in all hospitals always and everywhere--and not just the psychiatric ward. Indeed, if psychiatric wards did not use wristbands, they would be the only part of the hospital that did not use them. It's helpful to scan when nurses are giving medications and procedures are being done so that there are no mix-ups. Nothing personal.
The author was too old to be surprised by some of these things.
1. Inner City/black people= Urban Decay and deterioration in the quality of services. What did she think she was going to get in an inner city state funding mental hospital?
2. There is a subculture that treats mental illness as a way of being (I have an uncle who has been a ward of the state since 1982 even though he is perfectly healthy. He just preferred living in mental hospitals to going out and getting a job. I think the line from the movie "Trainspotting" was "We would have injected Vitamin C if they had made it illegal.")
Is it any surprise that if she became part of that culture, it might self-generate the mental illness?
3. The author observes that each 10-day hospitalization cost just under $15,000, and it would have been cheaper to go on a vacation.
But, what does that look like?
You say to your insurance company "I'm feeling stressed out. Can you send me on vacation with a $10,000 allowance?"
How does anyone think that would work out?
I'm pretty sure that that problem is easier to solve than it is to manage.
*******
Quote from the female author (p.233): "I've had pretty violent fantasies about raping men - - always people who royally deserved it, mind you......In the fantasy I'm a prisoner of theirs and they've had me for weeks, starving me, torturing me. At some point I break free, or more likely, I'm liberated in some trade or forced hostage relinquishment..... Then I yanked down his pants, still clutching his hair and pulling back his head as far as it will go, and then I shove my dry fist up his ass, or as much as it will fit, and as I'm ripping up his insides I say 'This is how rape feels.' the whole world is watching this, mind you."
AND
"I was molested as a kid. I had a venereal disease before I was 10.."
*******
Verdict: Save your time. She went through this whole babbling book, and ultimately she concluded what I did about the man drowning in a spoonful of water.
Just understanding that one sentence would have saved you this whole book.
Voluntary Madness
1/5 stars
"If a man is meant to drown, he will drown in a spoonful of water."
*******
This lady is an idiot.
It's clear that she wanted to capitalize on the success of her book, "Self Made Man" and I think she wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
That had the unfortunate result of her writing a book before she actually had anything to say.
Not a good idea. Never a good idea.
But, she did do it and here we are with a memoir about time spent in three different hospitals. (It was 34 days, by the way, and NOT a year, as it says in the subtitle.)
Vincent had a lot of commentary about the mental health system (much of it negative), and she was exceedingly generous in sharing her superior insight. But, the thing is that: she ended up dying by assisted suicide in Switzerland because she thought that the pain of depression was just too much to bear.
Early on, she says that "I had gotten to that age when all well loved children of the upper middle class begin to discover that the world is not made for them."
Fancy that.
So, when you have a Stereotypical Bored White Person Seeking Inner Peace discover that for the first✓time✓ ever✓(!), it is enough to drive her to insanity.
And, even worse, she does what Stereotypically Bored White People Seeking Inner Peace tend to do---which is to turn every✓ single✓ topic✓ into something about them/ a chance for self-actualization therapy to solve these trivial-yet-blown-up emotional issues.
I think the expression in Yiddish is: "If a man is meant to drown, he will drown in a spoonful of water."
Authors such as Jonathan Haidt have noticed that when people live lives that are too cushy, they keep defining what is "stressful" downward - - with the end result that if you just curl your lip at one of these people, they will diagnose themselves with PTSD.
*******
Institution #1. A state mental hospital in the Inner City. (≈$14,500 [2006 dollars]for 10 days.)
Institution #2. Private hospital in a lily White city. There was exactly one half black person that showed up during the whole stay. ($14,700 for 10 days).
Institution #3. A private institution. Run by a hippie occultist psychologist (you know, the ones that cannot prescribe medication?). She learned "process therapy" and a lot of physical fitness. ($6, 000 for 2 weeks.)
*******
Among many other errors, Vincent commits the fallacy of composition: State hospitals are not the same thing as private care; her experience in a state hospital is not typical. Many of the people in state wards are indigent / homeless/refractory cases. (Remember, not all cases of mental illness can be resolved anymore than all cases of cancer. And refractory cases of mental illness have to go somewhere.)
In reality, there are a finite number of psychiatrists and they just cannot give unlimited time to each patient AND be a therapist to each one.
As I'm familiar with the mental health game, I will just choose the most egregiously stupid things that she wrote and correct them from an insider's perspective.
1. (p.86) "discernment can be hard to come by in psychiatrists..... The human touch is not very often there strong suit. Nor is true empathy."
CORRECTION: Psychiatrists are physicians and NOT therapists, and the relationship is not meant to be therapeutic and NOT personal. They see symptoms and attempt to medicate them and the patient will keep coming back until the symptoms become tolerable or the side effect profiles get too bad. Is anybody expecting a surgeon to be all warm and fuzzy?
2. (p.34) "of how thoroughly corrupt the drug development and approval processes are in this country."
CORRECTION: The US drug supply is the safest in the world and a lot of medications are approved for use outside of the US years before they make it through the FDA process. If you have enough people take medications in the country of 320 million people, there will just be some bad results by dint of statistical force.
3. (p.59) "... was on Haldol, among other things, a moldy old neuroleptic first used in the 1950s and developed on the basis of an entirely unproven theory that....."
CORRECTION: Haldol is a typical antipsychotic, and it is not commonly used nor a first line drug of choice. It is used for people that are very sick and for whom the substantial side effects are worth the cost of improvements in quality of life. Also, "theory" is some part of drug development, but the acid test is the effectiveness against placebo, in which case the "theory" is IRRELEVANT.
4. (p.65) "They're giving you Seroquel to sleep? That's an antipsychotic. Really. That's hardcore. Just hold it in your cheek and spit it in the toilet."
CORRECTION 1: Seroquel is an atypical antipsychotic, with low risk of side effects. It is given over a very large range of doses and a low dose (25-100 mg) is a mild sedative for insomnia.
CORRECTION 2: It's not like on TV. When they give you medication psychiatric inpatient, they do check to see if you have swallowed.
5. (p.130) "....being tagged is a gross insult to your dignity. It makes you feel like property, or a corpse, a body not a person."
CORRECTION: Wristbands are used in all hospitals always and everywhere--and not just the psychiatric ward. Indeed, if psychiatric wards did not use wristbands, they would be the only part of the hospital that did not use them. It's helpful to scan when nurses are giving medications and procedures are being done so that there are no mix-ups. Nothing personal.
The author was too old to be surprised by some of these things.
1. Inner City/black people= Urban Decay and deterioration in the quality of services. What did she think she was going to get in an inner city state funding mental hospital?
2. There is a subculture that treats mental illness as a way of being (I have an uncle who has been a ward of the state since 1982 even though he is perfectly healthy. He just preferred living in mental hospitals to going out and getting a job. I think the line from the movie "Trainspotting" was "We would have injected Vitamin C if they had made it illegal.")
Is it any surprise that if she became part of that culture, it might self-generate the mental illness?
3. The author observes that each 10-day hospitalization cost just under $15,000, and it would have been cheaper to go on a vacation.
But, what does that look like?
You say to your insurance company "I'm feeling stressed out. Can you send me on vacation with a $10,000 allowance?"
How does anyone think that would work out?
I'm pretty sure that that problem is easier to solve than it is to manage.
*******
Quote from the female author (p.233): "I've had pretty violent fantasies about raping men - - always people who royally deserved it, mind you......In the fantasy I'm a prisoner of theirs and they've had me for weeks, starving me, torturing me. At some point I break free, or more likely, I'm liberated in some trade or forced hostage relinquishment..... Then I yanked down his pants, still clutching his hair and pulling back his head as far as it will go, and then I shove my dry fist up his ass, or as much as it will fit, and as I'm ripping up his insides I say 'This is how rape feels.' the whole world is watching this, mind you."
AND
"I was molested as a kid. I had a venereal disease before I was 10.."
*******
Verdict: Save your time. She went through this whole babbling book, and ultimately she concluded what I did about the man drowning in a spoonful of water.
Just understanding that one sentence would have saved you this whole book.