The author provided insight into mental illness and the history of it. There wasn't any new information that I read, but the book was well written and extremely organized.

Where was this book when I needed it? It offers neat detailed info on various mental illnesses that a layman can understand. I have dealt with the mentally ill, not only in my own family, but for a very long time now on my job. I't's interesting to read about the various individuals who suffered from mental illness and their treatment. I was surprised Nijinsky suffered from schizophrenia. It's so weird that what we lock people up for in Western society, if actually venerated in more traditional societies.
I've known a few folks in my life who suffer from depression; a couple even succeeded in suicide. I never understood it when I was younger, and still don't entirely.
I have noticed that nothing has really changed in treating mental illness, I'm inclined to agree with Neel Burtons's assessment of treatment. The stigma of mental disorder does need to be erased and it needs to be accepted as part of the human conditon.
It's a pretty straight forward read and insightful, with lots of solid research. It's a short, but intersting read.

I love how this book explores our understanding of mental illness and the title does not fully do it justice because the author delves into years of history and interventions and culture and how all these shape what we mistakenly call as madness.
I loved more so the bit on Schizophrenia and the reference on Dr, Jekyll and Hyde and how literature also contributed to such a misunderstanding of the state of mind. It s an eye-opener and anyone who reads this will not think of mental illness and disorders the same.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

'How do you know I'm mad? How do you know you're not mad? '

These, questions form the basis of the discussion of all the main ills tjat afflict so many in the Western world: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, ADHD, anxiety disorders.

The discussion is always scholarly and provocative. Schizophrenia, it is claimed here, is a uniquely human disease as it attacks the very ability to conceptualise using language. Many highly creative individuals are a little bit bipolar, And so on.

We are also reminded that the criteria for assessing any kind of mental illness is also subjective. It depends on ticking chrckboxes of symptoms, not on taking a blood test or a swab. Mental illness is not like catching the flu. To illustrate the point, there is reference to that experiment were healthy students admitted themselves, just to see what would happen: all behaviour was subsequently labelled as pathological, and it proved difficult to escape the hospital without further help from outside. Once cast in the role of patient, always a patient.

Then there is the troubling recognition that mental illness seems to be almpst exclusively an American, or European disease. In many African countries, it is unheard of. The word 'depression' has similarly, only be become recognised in the Japanese lexicon until récently. Suicide, like depression, also seems to become a trend in the way a fashion might : it gives other people ideas. Beware, emo's!

It can be seen that the arguments set forth by this book firmly place it within the anti-psychiatric camp. Big Pharma and the need to make big profits mean that finding allopathic cures forrntsl illness become big business. It is an imperialistic construct that e slaves souls through stigma and loss of liberties, instead of making any attempt to look at what lies behind the symptoms of distress the patient may I itially present with. Symptoms that may have a lot more to do with the human condition of being thoroughly final and mortal, as the existentialists always recognised. Or a failure to meet the higher needs of the Maslovian pyramid. Or the ability, Frankl style to assign meaning to suffering.

Not all of these ideas are necessarily new, but in countries in the Western world where mental illness is as endemic as it is, the debate behind these ideas had best not be relinquished.