Since yesterday was World Mental Health day, I thought now would be a good time to bring this book to your attention, as it is a great one on the topic. As those of you who have been here for a while know, mental health is of interest to me. Both because I find the complexity of the human brain (and therefore all the myriad small and large things that could go wrong with it) fascinating, and because my own mental health has required some effort. I also find the way society interacts with issues of mental health absolutely abhorrent and beyond frustrating. Society generally doesn’t deal well with any kind of failing or frailty (even those that only exist in perception), but when it comes to things that aren’t visible, tangible and that we can’t easily identify, define or fix, we are completely useless.
This book does an excellent job of making this abundantly clear. Paperny uses her own experiences in the mental health system in Ontario (both helpful and decidedly not) to illustrate how difficult it is to ask for and access help, and how inadequate that help often is even if you do get it. She then goes on to look at the different forms of treatment that are available (and how well or poorly the work), the services that we both do and don’t have access to, and what it is like to try to navigate the system. She interviews scientists, doctors and other patients. She looks at communities that are particularly vulnerable to mental health issues like suicide or are geographically remote, and the issues that face both patients and workers trying to help those communities.
Since Paperny is a journalist, she has a wonderful background for undertaking such an ambitious book. She knows how to do the research, she is able to gain access to people most of us could not, and she knows how to put information together in a way that is engaging and very, very interesting.
But the thing that underpins this entire book is Paperny’s own story, the many attempts she made to end her life, the various in-patients facilities she ends up in, all the medications her doctors try, and how none of them actually “fix” her. No matter what she tries, she seems to be in a cyclical pattern of feeling okay for a while, then feeling worse, then ending up back in hospital. Because depression is a bitch of a disease, and treating it is still a very imprecise science.
I learned a lot from this book, and though it’s a hard book in many ways, it was also one that I didn’t want to stop listening to. It had a magnetic pull on me such that I managed to finish it in two days, and when I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. I was impressed with how well Paperny covers the various aspects of mental health, and liked the pace and order of the information as she laid it out.
If you’re interested in finding out more about mental health – whether you suffer from your own struggles, know someone who does, or are just interested to find out more about what it means to suffer from a mental health issue or to try and navigate Canadian mental health services, this book will definitely provide you with what you are looking for. It’s one I now highly recommend as a starting point into this daunting subject, and the audiobook was a great way to absorb it!
A vibrant, compelling memoir from a remarkable young woman that bravely reveals the real-life havoc wrought by depression and the urgent search for solutions. Illuminating, completely engaging—it’s essential reading for all since we all know someone whose life, family or friends are touched by the disease that directly afflicts a fifth of Canadians.
In her early twenties, while outwardly thriving in her dream job and enjoying warm familial support and a strong social network, award-winning journalist Anna Mehler Paperny found herself trapped by feelings of failure and despair. Her first suicide attempt—ingesting a deadly mix of sleeping pills and antifreeze—landed her in the ICU, followed by weeks of enforced detention that ran the gamut of horrifying, boring, hilarious, and absurd. This was Anna’s entry into the labyrinthine psychiatric care system responsible for providing care to millions of Canadians.
As she struggled to survive the psych ward and as an outpatient—enduring the “survivor’s” shame of facing concerned family, friends, and co-workers; finding (or not) the right therapist, the right meds; staying healthy, insured, and employed—Anna could not help but turn her demanding journalist’s eye on her condition and on the system in which she found herself. She set off on a quest to “know her enemy,” interviewing leading practitioners in the field across Canada and the US—from psychiatrists to neurological experts, brain-mapping pioneers to heroic family practitioners, and others dabbling in novel hypotheses. She reveals in courageously frank detail her own experiences with the pharmacological pitfalls and side effects of long-term treatment, and offers moving case studies of conversations with others, opening wide a window into how we treat (and fail to treat) the disease that accounts for more years swallowed up by disability than any other in the world. – Goodreads
Book Title:Â Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me
Author:Â Anna Mehler Paperny
Series: No
Edition:Â Paperback/Audiobook
Published By:Â Random House Canada/Audible
Released:Â August 6, 2019
Genre:Â Non-Fiction, Memoir, Mental Health
Pages: 352
Date Read:Â September 5-7, 2020
Rating: 8/10
Average Goodreads Rating:Â 4.04/5 (942 ratings)
Sounds like a great read, though maybe a bit too heavy for me at the moment. The way doctors, work/school, and society in general treat mental health, is really abhorrent. I do think we’re slowly getting better as people are becoming more open on the topic, but there’s still so far to go.