Posted by Abby on January 24, 2000, at 17:56:35
Susanna Kaysen was on wbur's "The Connection" to discuss her book "Girl Interrupted"
and teh director put in a brief appearance too.It was an interesting discussion. Kaysen came off as
entirely human. There were things I really liked about her,and
things which really annoyed me, but nobody said that all
people with mental illness had to be nice--to be treated
well. I thought she erred a little too far on the side
of non intervention.You can listen via real audio bygoing to the site---
www.wbur.org
One caller who had been hospitalized for psychiatric illness
about 50 times, mentioned that when she was in the
hospital for a broken leg, she got 2 bouquets of
flowers, but that in all of her psychiatric hospitalizations,
she had never gotten any.I thought that this was interesting, because the stigma cuts both ways.
My sophomore year in college, a friend/acquaintance of
mine was hospitalized at McLean (she had excellent private insurance)
following some kind of severe depressive episode and a
whole bunch of strange reactions to medications.My House was more welfare oriented than most and the wife
of the Master did go to visit her. The girl was very secretive
about the whole thing. My Senior year she had become
much more open, but she only mentioned to her roommates
that she was going into the hospital, and then, only
to say that she was going away for a few days.At the time, I don't think she would have wanted flowers,
because she didn't want anyone to notice really. At
Harvard, if you were ill with anything other than cancer, it
was quite possible that it would go completely unnoticed by others
anyway.Just a few thoughts.
Abby
poster:Abby
thread:19551
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000112/msgs/19551.html