`` An Unquiet Mind `` By Kay Redfield Jamison

Although the title suggests a comical book, Oliver Sacks presents an entirely different look on the mentally challenged/disturbed. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a book that explains why a patient shows signs of losses, excesses, transports, and simplicity. Coincidentally, the book opens with its titling story, letting the reader explore the mind of an accomplish doctor who seems to have lost his true sight on life. In the following context, the seriousness of the stories and their interpretative breakdowns should only cause a better understanding of how the ever-so-questionable human mind truly works from a professional perspective put into simple words.

In the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, Susanna Kaysen was only 18 years old when she agreed to enter a medium security psychiatric facility in Boston, McLean hospital in April 1967, after a failed suicide attempt. She insisted that her over dose on aspirin was not a suicide attempt, but after a 20 minute interview the doctor decided she needed to be admitted to a hospital. During her prolonged two-year stay at the hospital Kaysen describes the issues that most of the patients in her ward have to deal with and how they all differently deal with the amount of time they must stay in the hospital for. While in the hospital Kaysen experienced a case of depersonalization where she tried to pull the skin of her hands to see if there were bones underneath, after a failed escape attempt. Soon, after going to therapy and analysis she was labeled as having recovered from borderline personality disorder. After her release she realizes that McLean Hospital provided patients with more freedom than the outside world, by being free responsibility of parental pressure, free from school and job responsibilities, and being free from the “social norms” that society comes up with. Ultimately, being in captivity gave the patients more freedom then in society and created a safe environment in which patients wanted to stay in.

The book, Crazy, is an interesting, and informative non-fiction book, about the struggles that mental health patients and their family members encounter. Pete Earley starts off the story by talking about his son Mike, who started to act strangely in his senior year of college. (Earley page 9). It turned out that Mike would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and was prescribed medications. Mike thought he was fine, therefore would frequently stop taking his medications. Mike refused treatment from a hospital that he was admitted to. Because he was not a danger to himself, a danger to others, or gravely disabled; the doctor could not force him into treatment. Because, Mike stops taking his medications, his symptoms got worse. Pete discussed

Kay Redfield Jamison was born on June 22, 1946 in the United States of America. She received her Bachelors and Masters in the University of California, also known as UCLA. After accomplishing these goals, she set out to acquire her Ph.D., which she did, also at UCLA in the year 1975. UCLA is significant for a number of reasons. Upon completing her degrees, she began to work there as an assistant professor and then rose to the rank of associate professor. Though she was an associate professor of psychiatry in 1981, she made a significant impact by establishing the Affective Disorders Clinic at her alma mater in the year of ’77. Her experience as an associate professor in psychiatry helped her gain a significant position at John Hopkins

Psychoanalysis can be inscribed in many poems subliminally. Authors tend to use psychoanalysis to solve the concern of a psychological issue or dysfunction problem that they have encountered. It is the conscious awareness of not knowing what the problem is that gives it so much control of our destructive behavior. As human beings, we often repress our deepest fears, emotions and experiences that tend to unfurl in the future beyond our control. Until we can acknowledge and openly admit to ourselves the cause of this, we will continue to disguise the problems unconsciously. It benefits our mental state for a certain length of time, but we ultimately suffer from it in the end. In her poem, Surprise, Jane Kenyon utilizes fear of betrayal, the double and being forced into a regressive state that creates her fear to be intimate.

Life is a daring adventure. Throughout the lifespan, one will encounter many rewarding and challenging experiences. For example, during one’s youth, balancing academics and maintaining healthy relationships with both family and friends is perplexing. Nevertheless, imagine adding another element on top of the boat load of responsibilities and expectations that growing up beckons- mental illness. In 72 Hour Hold by Bebe Moore Campbell, the main character, Trina, truly defines how much of a rollercoaster life can be.

Relationships can be like a pack of wolves. There is an alpha and an omega, always a type of power structure. Jane Kenyon explores about this in her poem with the different roles the male and female take within in their relationship. She reveals how a power shift come about and the way in which each person in the relationship acts to accommodate it. “Surprise” In her poem “Surprise”, Jane Kenyon uses yonic and phallic symbols, regression, and the double to reveal the power dynamics within the relationship.

Earley highlights this with his son as he leaves the hospital system and is processed through the judicial system. The next responsibility is to understand where we are in a system and where we need to go. The book portrayed Mike, Earley’s son, could not be hospitalized unless he voluntarily committed himself or verbalized harm towards himself or others. It was clear to Earley, who knew his son’s baseline, was deescalating further into psychosis. The situation explains how we can get assistance for clients who may not be able to make adequate decisions in a psychotic episode. Lastly, the clinician should develop a strategic plan of how to achieve the desired results, and the key participants involved. Earley researched the systems involved for over a year before he concluded writing a book would reach the vast of persons involved. He interviewed and studied the systems involved to strategically plan how he could assist his son.

Flight can be associated with birds and the ability to spread the wings and fly. This can often be seen in the novel. In this quote Alcee Arobin tells Edna;

The movie “Girl, Interrupted” portrays several women admitted into a psychiatric ward for various illness and different lengths of stay. The movie is based on the book, by Susanna Kaysen, which voices a memoir of her life after her diagnosis and is also based on her own experiences in her stay in the hospital. The storyline follows the main character, Susanna Kaysen, during her stay and shows the process it takes for her to come to terms with her illness as well as her becoming “friends” with the other women while discovering herself. Although the psychiatric ward in this movie is not very strict and fails to adhere to rules in play today, many of the disorders the women are diagnosed with are accurate with the teachings and book notes learned throughout this abnormal psychology course.

In Brain on Fire, the readers gained insight on different the perspectives regarding mental illness from both Susannah Cahalan and the people in her life. From the author’s view, she considered the horror of individuals being misdiagnosed, due to the lack of knowledge the disease. In chapter 29, Dalmau’s Disease, Susannah questioned, “If it took so long for one of the best hospitals in the world to get to this step, how many other people were going untreated, diagnosed with a mental illness or condemned to a life in a nursing home or a psychiatric ward?” (p.151). Susannah mentioned how money and timing being factors contributing the fate of those misdiagnosed. With the lack of affordable treatments, children are often misdiagnosed with autism, as adults with schizophrenia (p.224).

A comparative literary study of the effect of mental illness on the central characters is the semi-autobiographical novels The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. Comparing two women trying to deal with mental illness and are trying to cope with the mental pressures they put on themselves and by other people. Although the differences between these two novels are The Bell Jar shows Esther’s life before she descends into mental illness whereas Susanna’s story is about her time in a mental institution and experiencing other patients who are in similar situations.

“At The Mind’s Limit” is a series of essays written by Jean Amery, a German born Jew who survived the holocaust, who gives the reader a very interesting perspective into the mind of a persecuted Jew from 1935 forward. Amery does not consider himself a religious Jew or one who follows any Jewish traditions. In fact, he did not know that Yiddish was a language until he was 18. So Amery describes the events leading up to and following the holocaust through the eyes of an “intellectual” and tries to find out whether being an “intellectual” helped or hindered his mental and spiritual capacity as he experienced

When I first set out to propose a project, I wasn’t sure what topic I wanted to conquer. Therefore, I quickly jumped when the professor suggested reading the memoir, “Darkness Visible” by William Styron. I have enjoyed all the class readings so far, I even did my last project on another memoir, and thought that reading a fresh perspective regarding mental illness would be engaging and inspiring.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach is a metaphorical novelette about a young gull and his life on earth. The story tells about Jonathan, and how when he was growing up his parents noticed that there was something different about him. Rather than going with all the gulls to the port to search for food, Jonathan would linger back and practice flying. Flying was his obsession, for he saw it to be more meaningful than the practice of begging for food and snatching up fish. However, flying, like any other symbol in this parable, has a deeper meaning than it appears to have.