Description
The patient is an ascetically pretty 151/2-year-old white female. She is intelligent, fearful, extremely anxious, and depressed. Her rage is poorly controlled and inappropriately expressed.
Diagnostic Impression: Program for social recovery in a supportive and structured environment appears favorable.
Life Inside
In 1967, three months before her sixteenth birthday, Mindy Lewis was sent to a state psychiatric hospital by court order. She had been skipping school, smoking pot, and listening to too much Dylan. Her mother, at a loss for what else to do, decided that Mindy remain in state custody until she turned eighteen and became a legal, law-abiding, "healthy" adult.
Life Inside is Mindy's story about her coming-of-age during those tumultuous years. In honest, unflinching prose, she paints a richly textured portrait of her stay on a psychiatric ward -- the close bonds and rivalries among adolescent patients, the politics and routines of institutional life, the extensive use of medication, and the prevalence of life-altering misdiagnoses. But this memoir also takes readers on a journey of recovery as Lewis describes her emergence into adulthood and her struggle to transcend the stigma of institutionalization. Bracingly told, and often terrifying in its truths, Life Inside is a life-affirming memoir that informs as it inspires.
About the Author
Mindy Lewis, a graphic artist, painter, and writer, has published essays in Lilith magazine and in two anthologies, Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper and Voices from the Couch. She lives in New York City.
Reviews
Publishers Weekly [A] moving, poignant and enraging, yet redemptive account of one woman's refusal to accept victimization...powerfully told in vivid, poetic prose.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Complex, chilling, luminous: not one false step.
Book Information
ISBN 9780743411509
Author Mindy Lewis
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Washington Square Press Inc.,N.Y.
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Weight(grams) 338g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 135mm * 25mm
Diagnostic Impression: Program for social recovery in a supportive and structured environment appears favorable.
Life Inside
In 1967, three months before her sixteenth birthday, Mindy Lewis was sent to a state psychiatric hospital by court order. She had been skipping school, smoking pot, and listening to too much Dylan. Her mother, at a loss for what else to do, decided that Mindy remain in state custody until she turned eighteen and became a legal, law-abiding, "healthy" adult.
Life Inside is Mindy's story about her coming-of-age during those tumultuous years. In honest, unflinching prose, she paints a richly textured portrait of her stay on a psychiatric ward -- the close bonds and rivalries among adolescent patients, the politics and routines of institutional life, the extensive use of medication, and the prevalence of life-altering misdiagnoses. But this memoir also takes readers on a journey of recovery as Lewis describes her emergence into adulthood and her struggle to transcend the stigma of institutionalization. Bracingly told, and often terrifying in its truths, Life Inside is a life-affirming memoir that informs as it inspires.
About the Author
Mindy Lewis, a graphic artist, painter, and writer, has published essays in Lilith magazine and in two anthologies, Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper and Voices from the Couch. She lives in New York City.
Reviews
Publishers Weekly [A] moving, poignant and enraging, yet redemptive account of one woman's refusal to accept victimization...powerfully told in vivid, poetic prose.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Complex, chilling, luminous: not one false step.
Book Information
ISBN 9780743411509
Author Mindy Lewis
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Washington Square Press Inc.,N.Y.
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Weight(grams) 338g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 135mm * 25mm
