Falling into the Fire
A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis
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- USD 7.99
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- USD 7.99
Descripción editorial
A woman habitually commits self-injury, ingesting light bulbs, a box of nails, zippers and a steak knife. A new mother is admitted with incessant visions of harming her child. A recent graduate, dressed in a tunic and declaring that love emanates from everything around him, is brought to A&E by his alarmed girlfriend. These are among the patients new physician Christine Montross meets during rounds at her hospital’s locked inpatient ward – and who we meet as she struggles to understand the mysteries of the mind, most especially when the tools of modern medicine are failing us. Beautifully written and deeply felt, Falling into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry and a moving reminder, in the words of the New York Times, of ‘our fragile, shared humanity’.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In describing her own experiences and providing a survey of both the history and the current state of the field, practicing psychiatrist and Brown University assistant professor Montross (Body of Work) tackles the professional, ethical, and moral difficulties of diagnosing and treating mental illnesses. By focusing on several galling case studies such as that of Anna, an otherwise caring and compassionate mother plagued by obsessive thoughts of killing her young child Montross exposes and explores the challenging, sometimes paradoxical role of psychiatric professionals. It becomes abundantly clear that in the field there are rarely simple solutions: it is often difficult to untangle a patient's symptoms from environmental factors, and what some might consider destructive behavior may provide the patient with genuine relief. On top of all that, Montross must also contend with wearying anxiety, uncertainty, and doubts regarding the efficacy of her aid. "Try as we might," she writes, "we simply cannot predict which of our patients... will leave the hospital healed, never to return." Her accounts of the complexities of mental illnesses encountered in the field stand in stark contrast to the tidy descriptions of those illnesses presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and her intriguing analysis is anchored by the humble and empathetic voice of a psychiatrist working in a field wherein "every diagnosis is an act of faith."
