Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin

by NorahVincent (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $4.33

  In Norah Vincent's acclaimed first book she described how she spent eighteen months disguised as a man, an experience that ended on a locked ward in a psychiatric hospital. She left determined to learn more about the world of psychiatry and to examine whether different mental institutions would offer different solutions to their patients, but rather than researching it as a journalist she chose to experience it as a patient. Her journey begins in a huge inner-city hospital, before moving to the calming green carpet of St Lukes where patients are offered a room of their own and a regular jog in the park. From there she moves to Mobius, and a Buddhist-inspired brand of healing where she is forced to swim through West Coast psychobabble to some unexpected conclusions. The result is a fearless and unprecedented view of mental health care - from the inside out.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.40

  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.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.40