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dafni's review
5.0
People with no mental health background should read this book, understand various aspects of the so-called schizophrenia and change the conversation around it. I loved the non-judgmental writing style he adopts, while providing pros/cons around diagnosis, medication and other controversy topics.
Quoting the experience he had from a Hearing Voices support group, thinking we all could have a similar experience when disclosing a mental health difficulty to like-minded people.
“Imagine, once more, that you’re walking down that dark alley we’ve been talking about. You hear the sudden noise. It’s footsteps. Only this time, it doesn’t resolve itself to be rustling leaves by virtue of you listening more attentively. It remains footsteps. It’s always footsteps. Something is always following you. Always wanting to harm you. And it’s caught you before, whatever this thing is, and when it did, when that happened, it was too terrifying to contemplate. Now imagine you look to your left, and there’s a friend walking beside you. Your friend can hear the footsteps behind you, too. And to your right is another friend, and another, and another. You’re not alone at all. There’s a whole gang of you. You’re all walking this dark alley together. It’s longer than you thought. It’s darker than you feared. But you’re doing it, and come to think of it, when you’re all together like this – your own footsteps sound the loudest.”
Quoting the experience he had from a Hearing Voices support group, thinking we all could have a similar experience when disclosing a mental health difficulty to like-minded people.
“Imagine, once more, that you’re walking down that dark alley we’ve been talking about. You hear the sudden noise. It’s footsteps. Only this time, it doesn’t resolve itself to be rustling leaves by virtue of you listening more attentively. It remains footsteps. It’s always footsteps. Something is always following you. Always wanting to harm you. And it’s caught you before, whatever this thing is, and when it did, when that happened, it was too terrifying to contemplate. Now imagine you look to your left, and there’s a friend walking beside you. Your friend can hear the footsteps behind you, too. And to your right is another friend, and another, and another. You’re not alone at all. There’s a whole gang of you. You’re all walking this dark alley together. It’s longer than you thought. It’s darker than you feared. But you’re doing it, and come to think of it, when you’re all together like this – your own footsteps sound the loudest.”
michalacaney's review
5.0
This is the most important book on mental health I’ve ever read. The primary attention is on schizophrenia, but it delves into the history of psychiatry and diagnosis, as well as the effects of childhood trauma, poverty, and racism on access and quality of treatment. Filer did an incredible job of explaining things (and citing them extensively!) in an easily understandable scientific way AND in an emotionally humanistic way. This is one that will be reread.
steve97886's review
3.0
Good but flawed. The parts where the author interviews people were hugely interesting and I would have loved a book full of them. There were two things that dragged this down, unfortunately:
1) the tone was unnecessarily informal. The jokes about Ant and Dec just seemed pointless and made it seem like the author wasn’t taking his job seriously.
2) the analysis of the interviews got quite tedious towards the end and increasingly disconnected from the interviews. More human experiences would have been more affecting.
1) the tone was unnecessarily informal. The jokes about Ant and Dec just seemed pointless and made it seem like the author wasn’t taking his job seriously.
2) the analysis of the interviews got quite tedious towards the end and increasingly disconnected from the interviews. More human experiences would have been more affecting.
swakefield978867's review
3.0
Good but flawed. The parts where the author interviews people were hugely interesting and I would have loved a book full of them. There were two things that dragged this down, unfortunately:
1) the tone was unnecessarily informal. The jokes about Ant and Dec just seemed pointless and made it seem like the author wasn’t taking his job seriously.
2) the analysis of the interviews got quite tedious towards the end and increasingly disconnected from the interviews. More human experiences would have been more affecting.
1) the tone was unnecessarily informal. The jokes about Ant and Dec just seemed pointless and made it seem like the author wasn’t taking his job seriously.
2) the analysis of the interviews got quite tedious towards the end and increasingly disconnected from the interviews. More human experiences would have been more affecting.
ruth_power's review
5.0
Nathan Filer absolutely debunks the myths and lies told about those who have so-called Schizophrenia. The writing is accesible to a whole range of readers and uses personal stories of those with a so-called Schizophrenia diagnosis to open up a discussion about various mental health issues. I loved it - very enlightening!
koyasten's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
brilliant read, brilliant balance between scientific and casual language that makes the book engaging for those who have knowledge of schizophrenia or don’t, very interesting to read and brilliantly written
cateemma's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Eating disorder, Forced institutionalization, and Mental illness
victoriaheldt's review against another edition
5.0
I thought I had a good understanding of mental health until I read this book.
It made me rethink the topic of stigma (especially it made me question why we are talking about stigma as opposed to "discrimination" when it comes to mental illness).
Shocking was the realisation that the diagnosis of mental illnesses is in general only focused on the clustering of certain symptoms into groups - so it is only about labeling symptoms as supposed to pointing to an underlying disease. For issues not relating mental health you go to your GP and tell him your symptoms, he might come up with an idea what it is and after some tests this hypothesis will be confirmed or not (e.g. "my leg hurts, can't move it. - > might be broken - >x ray - >yes, it's broken"). However, this logic does not apply to mental illness where it stops at labeling the symptoms. This realisation changed my perspective as seeing mental health diagnoses as something important, that you must accept and live with it. It's not.
I enjoyed the structure of the book since it has a perfect balance between writing in essay form about the theory and giving great examples. The author has a talent for showing that behind numbers and statistic real humans and their personal stories hide.
Also, it is the first time that I truyly enjoyed listening to an audio book which was narrated by the author.
It made me rethink the topic of stigma (especially it made me question why we are talking about stigma as opposed to "discrimination" when it comes to mental illness).
Shocking was the realisation that the diagnosis of mental illnesses is in general only focused on the clustering of certain symptoms into groups - so it is only about labeling symptoms as supposed to pointing to an underlying disease. For issues not relating mental health you go to your GP and tell him your symptoms, he might come up with an idea what it is and after some tests this hypothesis will be confirmed or not (e.g. "my leg hurts, can't move it. - > might be broken - >x ray - >yes, it's broken"). However, this logic does not apply to mental illness where it stops at labeling the symptoms. This realisation changed my perspective as seeing mental health diagnoses as something important, that you must accept and live with it. It's not.
I enjoyed the structure of the book since it has a perfect balance between writing in essay form about the theory and giving great examples. The author has a talent for showing that behind numbers and statistic real humans and their personal stories hide.
Also, it is the first time that I truyly enjoyed listening to an audio book which was narrated by the author.
abbiek_'s review against another edition
5.0
Read this book in preparation for a course in Psychology to gain a deeper insight into the topic and this book a has fully achieved. As promised by the title this book did truly change my mind about mental health, explaining the stigma, science and reasoning behind it. The stories and experiences included in the book give a face to the otherwise cold and harsh name of mental health. Would recommend to anyone even the slightest bit interested in this topic.