The first story that author Rachel Aviv shares is her own. As a very young girl, Aviv was deeply troubled and struggling with several eating disorders. In fact, Aviv shares that she was one of the youngest people in history to be diagnosed with Anorexia. Because of her illness, Aviv shares that she was sent to an inpatient mental hospital by her parents. There, Aviv says, she met quite a few wonderful people, including doctors and fellow patients, who helped her recover from her eating disorder. And now, she says, she is able to lead a mostly happy and successful life thanks to the support she received from her parents, medical professionals, and other patients—one of whom took her under her wings and helped her navigate the tricky world of the inpatient mental hospital.
The following story in Aviv's book tells the story of a man named Ray Osheroff, who sought treatment at a famed institution called Chestnut Lodge. There, Ray was dismayed to learn that the institution was using a psychoanalytic approach to treatment, not treatment that was evidence-based. And despite the fact that Ray was getting more and more ill, Chestnut Lodge refused to put him on medication that would have eased his suffering. After he was discharged from "the Lodge," as Aviv calls it, Ray sued Chestnut Lodge for not using evidence-based treatment methods and for malpractice. This lawsuit caused quite a debate within the psychiatric community, a debate which Aviv explores in depth.
Next, Aviv tells the story of an Indian woman named Bapu who lived in a healing temple in Kerala, a state in India. That woman lived under the delusion that she was a saint capable of healing and blessing anyone that she came across. Instead of being ridiculed, however, the woman is celebrated and considered a saint by people around her—except some of her family, most significantly. Eventually, the woman abandons her family and goes to live in what she considers a sacred place. But her family tries to stop her. Those in Indian society, and in her family, didn't recognize that the woman was suffering from mental illness and was thus unable to help her. Culture, Aviv shows through this story, affects how people perceive and treat the mentally ill.
Aviv then follows a woman named Naomi who was sent to prison after suffering a long psychotic episode, during which she accidentally murdered one of her children. After recovering from her psychosis with the help of her team of doctors (none of whom were able to provide her truly adequate care because mental health care is often overlooked and underfunded—Naomi's badly-needed antipsychotic was stopped because it cost the State too much—in prison), Naomi tries to reconnect with one of her other children. Her child, however, doesn't want to reconnect with her. In this section, Aviv examines how racism impacts mental illness and those who suffer from it. In Naomi's case, Aviv explains, no one that treated her (or her public defender) thought that she met the standard for an insanity plea.
The next, and final, section of Aviv's book follows a young woman named Laura. Laura was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder and took nineteen medications over the course of many years, hoping to find something that helped her. Unlike Naomi, who is black, Aviv observes that white women like Laura are often overmedicated. And Laura was certainly overmedicated: she ended up stopping taking her medication because she felt sexually and emotionally numb. But Laura struggled tremendously to get off her psychiatric drugs. She felt excruciating withdrawal symptoms and sought help from online forums to get off her medication. Eventually, Laura was able to get off her psychiatric medication, but Aviv was not. Aviv explains that she went on Lexapro to help her, but when she wanted to stop, she couldn't because she felt addicted.
