Friday, August 31, 2012

Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent


I went into Voluntary Madness with really high expectations. I had heard that this book was a critique on the mental health system, specifically, the inpatient mental health system, from the point of view of an immersion journalist. My expectations were met for the most part, and surpassed in many parts. I have some problems with Norah Vincent's overall conclusions, but I'm really so glad I read this book and think it's one that everyone in the mental health profession should take the time to read.

Norah Vincent wrote a book prior to this one called Self Made Man, where she lived as a man for 18 months and reported on what men do and how they behave when women are away, and then wrote about it from the point of view of a woman. I haven't read this one yet, but you can bet that I already have my hands on it! After doing her form of journalism (immersion journalism) for that book, she had a breakdown and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. She starts the book by saying she left that hospital worse off than how she went in and faked being better just to get out. She never wanted to see the inside of a psychiatric hospital again, but knew in her heart that's where her next book would be.

Vincent says from page one that she has a history of depression, has been on numerous medications, and seen many therapists throughout the years, all of which helped her sadly with this book....aka, made it easy to get into hospitals. This alone got me thinking. Working at a psychiatric hospital, I know we admit pretty much anyone who says they need to be in. I don't know what percentage of those people ACTUALLY would benefit from our treatment, but I imagine it's a small percentage unfortunately. As Vincent concludes at the end of her book, there has to be a want to get better from the person before any treatment can work and many times, our hospital is just a holding cell for people who are at their wits end or who need to dry out for a few days. More on this in a second.

What Vincent does for her research is checks herself in to three different hospitals...a public/state funded hospital, a private hospital (similar to the one I work at), and an "alternative treatment center", the type of facility that focuses more on therapy, meditation, mind and body connection and less on medication. The short of it is that treatment gets progressively better as you move up with the state hospital actually making her worse.

She legitimately goes through her own crises throughout this book. She's not making this up just to get a book out of it and that's what I appreciated the most. The honesty behind this. She lets the reader in in her own journey through healing or trying to find healing and I think she does in the end find some sort of healing.

She has similar complaints as I do about the mental health system. Complaints about the hospital that I work at even. They are basically holding cells for people who are either placed on commitments or don't feel safe on their own, or have an addiction that has become physical and they need to sober up (whether that be for financial reasons, reason being pressured by others, or because they legitimately want to sober up). Mental health inpatient hospitalization has become a medication farm these days. They throw different medicines at every patient, expect them to be alert and oriented enough to go to therapy daily, and when they seem to not want to kill themselves for a day or two or are no longer talking to the wall, they let them go. Sadly that's what we do too.

Part of me says it's awful that we do that and part of me resigns myself to that's the best that there is to offer right now. And at least we're keeping people safe in the middle of a current crisis. But there's no true healing going on there except for maybe a very small percentage that WANT the true healing AND are connected with the right therapist. The stars have to be aligned. For some people, working at the hospital is just a job, and that's obvious. But I know for a fact that there are people at our hospital who genuinely care about the patients they work with and want to see them get better.

We do offer a few programs, a program that specializes in the treatment of people who have been through trauma, and a program that specializes in treating eating disorders that I believe make a real difference in people's lives. They're nationally recognized programs and people come because they want to be there and the treatment is much different from an acute unit. It's much more like what Vincent describes at the last treatment center she goes to, the one she finds the most help with.

Her final thoughts are that these programs really can't help people. That only the person themselves can help themselves. And I agree with that to an extent. A person has to want help to get help. I DO agree with that. But maybe I'm doe eyed, but I'd like to think that sometimes even if a person is committed, SOMETHING might get through to someone every now and then that will make them see things in a different light. I know it's a small percentage..probably a very small percentage of people who are helped when they don't want to be there, but I do think some people end up being helped.

I've ranted for long enough now, but this book really just hit home for me. As someone who's had my own share of depression AND who works in the mental health field, it was really enlightening to read this book that looks at things from both sides of the desk. And I honestly learned a lot from this book that I will carry with me. Woke up a lot more in me than I had initially expected! Highly recommended.

Friday, August 24, 2012

What Waddled In

Well the Penguins and Pelicans continue to come into the house! Not as quickly as they did last week, but still quickly enough :p Here's what came in this week!

Penguin Signet 

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Vintage Pelicans

A43 - Introducing Shakespeare by G.B. Harrison
A236 - Facts From Figures by M.J. Moroney

Penguin Sherlock Holmes

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Penguin Great Books For Boys

The 39 Steps by John Buchan

Vintage Penguins

#3 - St. Joan by Bernard Shaw

Pelican Shakespeares

Troilus and Cressida (love discovering new Shakespeare plays!)
Much Ado About Nothing

Penguin Books

Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005 by Phil Baines (Excited about this one!!!)

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

A Place For The Penguins

I wanted to get a little two or three shelf bookshelf for the penguins that are now coming into the house. Last weekend me and Matt went shopping at antique stores to see if we could find anything unique and I found this little three shelf bookshelf made from old plantation wood that I absolutely loved! With a door that closes with glass on the outside. Sadly, it was raining...hard...and we couldn't park anywhere close to the shop, so we couldn't get the shelf. Well I came home after a really LONG day at work today and walked into the house to see the shelf sitting here in the living room :) Yep...Matt went and bought it for me! And styled it beautifully! He also got a little frame and framed one of my favorite Anne Julie-Aubry prints and bought this little apple that goes perfectly with it and put my favorite little vase with the dried poppy pods on top of it too. This really was the perfect little present to come home to. I do indeed have the best boyfriend :) Now I can't wait to fill this puppy with Penguins :D


Saturday, August 18, 2012

What Waddled In

Get it? Penguins waddle? Clever, huh? :p So I've decided to keep the Penguins, Pelicans and Puffins totally separate from the Bad Bloggers posts over on Stuff as Dreams are Made on. These books are collected for the collection and yes, because I like the design and they sound pretty good too :p But they're mostly because I want to collect them, not because I can assign blame for them. Of course I WILL occasionally have blame to give for a Penguin and when I do, those will go on Bad Bloggers :p A LOT has come in this first week. Mostly because I found a crapload of books I wanted on Paperback Swap and I had a lot of points to spend. Still do actually :p And the generosity of friends brought a few in as well :) So I'm not going to post individual pics of all the books. I will post a pic of the shelf though! Now not everything on this shelf was brought in this week. Some of these are penguins I've had for awhile. So here's the list, separated by type of book brought in:


Pelican Shakespeare's

Shakespeare's Sonnets
Cymbeline (hadn't even heard of this play before!)
Twelfth Night
A Midsummer Night's Dream
King Lear
Antony and Cleopatra
Macbeth
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
The Winter's Tale
The Tempest

Penguin's Sherlock Holmes 

The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Penguin Classic Crime

The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

Penguin English Library

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

Penguin Books

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
When the Green Woods Laugh by H.E. Bates
Self Made Man by Norah Vincent
How to Be Good by Nick Hornby

Vintage Penguins

#848 Reunion with Murder by Timothy Fuller
#2 Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw
#20 Erewhon by Samuel Butler
#754 The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence
#560 Plays Pleasant by Bernard Shaw
#999 The Journals of Arnold Bennett edited by Frank Swinnerton

Vintage Pelican

A227 Our Language by Simeon Potter
A32 My Apprenticeship Vol. 2 by Beatrice Webb

Penguin Classics

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Penguin Celebrations

English Passengers by Matthew Kneale

Penguin American Library

Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward by Horatio Alger Jr.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The Best Laid Intentions

So why start this blog? That's a good way to start this blog, huh? I'm a lover of books. That's no surprise to anyone who knows me. I think that few publishers have had as rich and influential of an influence on the publishing industry and as remarkable of a history as Penguin has. They've consistently put out amazing titles and I think they've been trendsetters in their designs.

I'm the first to admit that a good cover will ALWAYS cause me to gain some curiosity on a book, often to the point of just buying it :p Penguin, along with their many imprints now, continue to put out amazing lines of books.

What originally started me wanting to do this project was wanting to read the original Penguin paperbacks. Though they're SO hard to find here in the US. But that won't stop me :p The design was so simple, yet so aesthetically pleasing. They were published during the wars when people were looking for distractions and were color coded based on the subject matter of the book. I'd love to own them all one day, but that's a bit ambitious!

Since then they've put out MULTIPLE lines of other amazing books including their Penguin classics line, their gorgeous penguin hardcover classics with the amazing cloth covers, and tons of different smaller imprints that have unique covers. One of my favorites are their Penguin Great Food series which I'm lucky enough to have a few of. They've also put out a series of Shakespeare books through their Pelican imprint and continue to put out amazing childrens books through their Puffin imprint.

Yeah...you can see why I'd like to read as many of this publisher's books as I can. Even their regular old literary fiction titles are some of my favorites out there. So this blog will sort of be a learning experience for me. It'll be about what I find and bring into the house, my thoughts on the different designs that Penguin is putting out, reviews of course on the Penguins I read, and my journey through it all.

Is it dangerous to add yet ANOTHER specific type of book I'd like to collect when it's already bad enough? Well of course....but there could be much worse problems, right? RIGHT? :p