Description
The patient is an ascetically pretty 151/2-year-old white female. She is intelligent, fearful, extremely anxious, and depressed. Her rage is poorly controlled and inappropriately expressed.
Diagnostic Impression: Program for social recovery in a supportive and structured environment appears favorable.
Life Inside
In 1967, three months before her sixteenth birthday, Mindy Lewis was sent to a state psychiatric hospital by court order. She had been skipping school, smoking pot, and listening to too much Dylan. Her mother, at a loss for what else to do, decided that Mindy remain in state custody until she turned eighteen and became a legal, law-abiding, healthy adult.
Life Inside is Mindy's story about her coming-of-age during those tumultuous years. In honest, unflinching prose, she paints a richly textured portrait of her stay on a psychiatric ward -- the close bonds and rivalries among adolescent patients, the politics and routines of institutional life, the extensive use of medication, and the prevalence of life-altering misdiagnoses. But this memoir also takes readers on a journey of recovery as Lewis describes her emergence into adulthood and her struggle to transcend the stigma of institutionalization. Bracingly told, and often terrifying in its truths, Life Inside is a life-affirming memoir that informs as it inspires.
Author: Mindy Lewis
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Published: 11/04/2003
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 8.24h x 5.32w x 0.97d
ISBN13: 9780743411509
ISBN10: 0743411501
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Biography & Autobiography | Women
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
Diagnostic Impression: Program for social recovery in a supportive and structured environment appears favorable.
Life Inside
In 1967, three months before her sixteenth birthday, Mindy Lewis was sent to a state psychiatric hospital by court order. She had been skipping school, smoking pot, and listening to too much Dylan. Her mother, at a loss for what else to do, decided that Mindy remain in state custody until she turned eighteen and became a legal, law-abiding, healthy adult.
Life Inside is Mindy's story about her coming-of-age during those tumultuous years. In honest, unflinching prose, she paints a richly textured portrait of her stay on a psychiatric ward -- the close bonds and rivalries among adolescent patients, the politics and routines of institutional life, the extensive use of medication, and the prevalence of life-altering misdiagnoses. But this memoir also takes readers on a journey of recovery as Lewis describes her emergence into adulthood and her struggle to transcend the stigma of institutionalization. Bracingly told, and often terrifying in its truths, Life Inside is a life-affirming memoir that informs as it inspires.
Author: Mindy Lewis
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Published: 11/04/2003
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 8.24h x 5.32w x 0.97d
ISBN13: 9780743411509
ISBN10: 0743411501
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Biography & Autobiography | Women
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
About the Author
Mindy Lewis, a graphic artist, painter, and writer, has published essays in Lilith magazine and in two anthologies, Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper and Voices from the Couch. She lives in New York City.