A well-written, novellike story offering hope for recovery for families in the throes of mental illness.
Ramprasad chronicles her harrowing journey through depression, from which she emerged with the light of hope to become a mental health advocate.
Now the head of ASHA International, a nonprofit organization that promotes wellness, the author writes that 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. While 60 to 80 percent of those diagnosed “can be effectively treated with antidepressant medications and brief, structured forms of psychotherapy,” fewer than 25 percent receive such treatments. The author begins with her idyllic childhood in a loving family in India, which came to an end when, as a teenager, she began to suffer from crying spells and outbursts that escalated in college. Unable to eat, she spent hours in bed crying, but the doctor found nothing wrong with her. Due to the stigma attached to mental illness, Ramprasad began a cycle of denial, secrecy and shame. Eventually, she entered into an arranged marriage with a successful Indian engineer, Ram, and joined him in America, but she lived in fear that he and his family would learn of her “crazy” bouts and disown her. So she continued to hide her symptoms, but after the birth of their daughter, she sunk into a postpartum depression that could not be concealed. While in India visiting her parents with the baby, she suffered a nervous breakdown that resulted in a diagnosis of chronic depression. She received electroconvulsive therapy and medications that offered little relief. Thankfully, Ram remained loving and supportive, but antidepressant medications and cognitive therapy failed to stop the suicidal thoughts and violent outbursts that landed her in a mental hospital. It was in her lowest moment that the author realized that the keys to her wellness were within her, and she began searching for other remedies. Breathing techniques, meditation, exercise and openness about her illness slowly helped her climb out of that dark place.
A well-written, novellike story offering hope for recovery for families in the throes of mental illness.Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61649-475-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hazelden
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
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
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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