An eye-opening and humane book treatment of a difficult subject.
A Toronto-based Reuters journalist examines her struggles with depression within a larger narrative about mental health and its treatment.
Paperny first tried to kill herself in 2011 by drinking antifreeze. Just 24 years old, the author seemed destined for success. She was writing for the Globe and Mail, her “dream newspaper,” and had the love of a supportive family. However, a profound self-hatred continued to push toward self-annihilation for years after her first attempt. In this multipart memoir/depression exposé, Paperny tells the story of how she fought her way back to functionality while exploring treatment options and the experiences of fellow depression sufferers within the North American mental health system. First—and with a generous dose of sardonic humor—the author traces a journey to (relative) wellness that took her through several hospitals and crisis units. In the second section, she discusses the “fourteen different drugs in dozens of different combinations” she tried to combat her disease, none of which succeeded in completely eradicating her symptoms. She also examines other surgical options, such as electroconvulsive therapy and electrode implantation, and discusses the reasons why pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to invest more in the development of new depression drugs. In the third part, Paperny explores the stigma associated with depression by presenting stories of men and women from a variety of backgrounds and how that stigma affected their lives. The author also looks at the way the mental health system is biased in favor of white and affluent patients and how rates of suicide have spiked among adolescents in the last decade. Paperny concludes with a brief section about the many troubling legal and ethical questions that can arise—e.g., “deciding when someone’s too crazy to make decisions”—as a result of hospitalization. In this well-researched, engaging, and highly readable text, the author demystifies depression and calls for “compassionate, equitable [and] informed” care for what has become “the most fatal psychiatric phenomenon we’re up against.”
An eye-opening and humane book treatment of a difficult subject.Pub Date: April 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61519-492-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: The Experiment
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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