Title: The Centre Cannot Hold - A
memoir of my schizophrenia
Author: Elyn R. Saks
Published: 2007
Genre: Memoir
I enjoyed this book tremendously
and was also completely horrified by some aspects of it. Why horrified? The
thought that one can go through the experiences that she went through; the
misdiagnosis of her illness, the forced admission into mental hospitals and
subsequent forced drug treatment - and all due to the fragile definition of
what is defined as mentally stable. Mild depression or complete
psychosis can, if there is no one there to speak up for you, earn you the type
of treatment reserved solely for mentally 'unstable' people. Every time I
gather with family and friends around a dinner table, I always insist that we
all have a gratitude moment...the one constant for me is always 'I am grateful
for my sanity'. I always either manage to elicit chuckles or curiously-raised
eyebrows. And such is the reaction that mental health issues elicit wherever
you are in the world. Elyn Saks takes the reader through a process of
explaining what 'losing one's mind' truly means.
The Centre Cannot Hold delves into the life of someone living with schizophrenia. Elyn's
journey to a point where where she is finally accepting of her illness and
comes to terms with the fact that her mind in not 'broken' is a painful one,
and even as I was reading it, there were some moments when I felt some
frustration and thought; 'it has been such a rough ride for you to this point,
you know what works and what does not - STAY ON YOUR MEDS!' She takes the
reader though the harrowing journey of her life that consists of complete
lucidity interspersed with episodes of complete psychosis; all in a calm, and
almost self-deprecating manner. I could not help but be drawn to her strength
through it all.
Although the subject matter is
frightening, it is an inspiring story because throughout her life dealing with
her schizophrenia and always struggling to 'keep the demons at bay' she
accomplishes more than most people do without the added health issues.
Her belief in what she thought for a long time could be accomplished with a
simple mind over matter attitude regarding her illness, is shaken when
she questions how she is meant to achieve this if the mind is 'broken'.
The book made me curious about
the different ways that mental health is treated both in the US and in the UK,
where as a student at Oxford she experienced the reality of the mental health
institutions when she was admitted during one of her psychotic breaks.
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