Janet Gotkin

I've been plugging away at this memoir for about four months now - not due to any fault on the book's part, but because the subject matter is so intense. This is what I hoped for when I picked up books like [Girl, Interrupted] and [The Bell Jar] in my teens: a book that gives insight into the mind of a mental health patient, and a glimpse into the world of the mental hospital. I'm manic depressive and agoraphobic - though I coexist with both quite comfortably these days - so I'm always interested in books like these, and pounced on this one when it arrived at our shop.

Janet Gotkin was diagnosed with schizophrenia around the age of 20, and her life was never the same again. She left college and spiralled into a vortex of psychiatrist appointments and hospitalisation, shock treatments, drugs and humiliation. Her memories of this time make up 'Part 1', and it is a grim and harrowing story. Her experiences of forced dependence and fear, medical abuses and breakdowns, are exhausting to read, but so fascinating and beautifully written that you can't help but read on.

Finally, in her mid-20s, Janet met Paul. At this point the viewpoint switches to show his take on their lives. For me, this section was easier to read, freshening up the narrative at a crucial point and allowing the reader to step back out of the black hole of Janet's existence a little. His new perspective on the doctors and hospitals, on Janet's state of mind, and on their struggles to get through each collapse together, in one piece, was heartbreakingly honest and offered new insight into the numbing existence Janet was living.

Ultimately, though, came enlightenment. After a horrific suicide attempt, after which Janet was in a coma for five days, she awoke with a new sense of life that changed everything. She found the strength to get away from her psychiatrist, who had so encouraged her absolute dependence on him and the drugs he doled out, and moved with Paul to Paris. There she finally found anger and clarity as to the abuse she had suffered at the hands of the psychiatric profession, the way they had labelled and humiliated her for their own benefit, not hers, and the way they had continually berated every emotion and idea she had as 'part of her sickness'. She was determined to speak out, wrote this book, and has been an activist for people like her ever since.

Janet's hospitalisation predominantly took place in the 60s, back when institutionalisation was brutal, treatments were misguided, drugs and shocks were handed out liberally, and the world bowed to the revered psychiatrists who were 'saving' the 'sick'. Today most people have a more enlightened view of mental illness, demand more from the specialists they see, and are encouraged to take a more proactive role in their own 'recovery'. Janet Gotkin's theory is that there is no mental illness, which I don't agree with. I do, however, agree that even today, psychiatric labels are often affixed to people too quickly and without thought for how they can become self-fulfilling prophecies, damaging lives and creating stigma unnecessarily. And insights like these into how it feels to live with mental illness - and treatment - are so important for helping to educate people and showing the reality behind the scary terminology and the damning news reports that make up too much of the public's knowledge of these issues.

Ultimately, this book was a very rewarding read. It gave me a lot to think about, about mental health and how it can be handled, about the way we defer to experts, and about how we can make our own futures as bright as we want them to be, with a little persistence and the right attitude. And I truly believe that the testimonies offered by brave people like the Gotkins into how it feels to live with and around mental illness - and its treatment - are always valuable in a world in which there is still a lot of ignorance and fear surrounding mental health sufferers. I don't feel the need to keep it to read again in the future, but I certainly won't forget it in a hurry.… (más)