Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the L

Norah Vincent has always suffered from severe depression, and after 18 months of living her life as a man for a book project, she unravelled. Upon the advice of her therapist, she committed herself to a locked mental institution. From this raw and overwhelming experience came her next book idea. She would get healthy and go back in as a 'patient' to study the effect of treatment on the depressed and insane on the mental health wards of America. In a journey that takes her from an underfunded inner-city hospital to a facility in the Midwest and finally an upscale spa-like 'retreat' down south, Norah analyzes the impact of institutionalization on the unwell, the centrality and tyranny of drugs-as-treatment, and the dysfunctional dynamic between caregivers and patients.

Norah also exposes her personal struggle with depression and with great empathy describes her relationships with fellow 'inmates' as well as the doctors and the nurses. She applies her brilliant mind to the methodologies that guide these strange, often scary, and mostly bizarre places. Deeply humane, harrowing yet brilliantly written and darkly comic, Vincent's new book promises to be even more controversial, riveting and relevant than her first.