Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

Susannah Cahalan was 24 years old and a reporter for the New York Post when she suddenly started developing strange behaviors.  She went from manic highs to extreme depression, paranoia, and eventually, seizures.  She consulted several doctors, including a psychologist, a neurologist, and even her gynecologist.  Each gave her a different diagnosis or were unable to find any answers.  One said that she was drinking and partying too much. None of them were able to stop the symptoms from getting worse.

Eventually the seizures were so severe she ended up in the emergency room.  Not knowing what was causing any of her symptoms, they decided to admit her to the epilepsy ward where they could at least monitor her seizures.  Cahalan eventually spent over a month in the hospital before a neurologist figured out she was suffering from an extremely rare, only recently discovered form of an immune disorder which caused swelling, or encephalitis, of the brain.   How this was discovered and treated is described in the second half of her book.

Cahalan decided that she would write her own story, Brain on Fire, after she returned to the newspaper.  Because she had little memory of what happened, she went over the medical reports and films of her time in the hospital and compared them with her diary.  She also interviewed her family, friends, and many of the doctors involved in her treatment.  What they said was so different from what she remembered it was shocking.

Cahalan was extremely fortunate because she was admitted to one of the premier hospitals in NYC, which led to her case being referred to the doctor who had recently discovered this new disorder.  Had she been treated anywhere else in the country, or at a different period of time, she may have been misdiagnosed with schizophrenia or some other severe mental disorder.  One wonders how many people admitted to psychiatric hospitals may have a rare or unknown physical rather than mental illness.  The author discusses this in the book, and states over and over how lucky she was to find not only a cause, but a successful treatment. Cahalan’s book was fascinating, although frightening.

Find and reserve this book in our catalog.

Front of the Class: How Tourette Syndrome Made Me the Teacher I Never Had, by Brad Cohen

When Brad Cohen was growing up in the 1980s, few people had even heard of Tourette Syndrome.  None of his family and friends, not even Brad himself, understood why he burst out with loud noises at inappropriate times, or jerked his neck suddenly, or felt an overwhelming urge to knock his knees against things.

School was especially hard for Brad.  His teachers had trouble understanding why he could not keep still and quiet.  The other kids mocked and mistreated him.  Even after he was finally diagnosed with the neurological disorder called Tourette Syndrome, it was an uphill battle to get people to accept him as he was.

With the help of a compassionate principal, Brad discovered that the key to helping people accept him was to educate them about Tourette’s.  Throughout the rest of his school days and years at college, he asked each new teacher to allow him a few minutes on the first day of class to introduce himself and explain about Tourette’s.  He always mentioned that he was open to talking about it and answering questions.  Many people did ask questions, and Brad’s natural friendliness and enthusiasm won them over quickly once they understood his situation.

Having seen the positive effects of educating people, Brad decided to become the teacher he had never had—one who meets his students where they are and gives them lots of acceptance and approval, no matter what their difficulties.

It was not easy; one principal after another turned him down, and the familiar heartache of rejection made him want to give up, but he kept going.  Finally, the twenty-fifth principal to interview him decided to look beyond the Tourette’s at the incredibly motivated and well-prepared person Brad was and is.

Mountain View Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia, was so impressed with their new teacher that they nominated him for a state-wide teachers’ competition, which he went on to win.  The kids loved him.  Once they got the idea that Brad could not stop his “barking” and muscle tics—it was like blinking or sneezing, he explained—they just accepted them as part of their fun-loving, energetic teacher.  Whether he was dancing on his desk when his kids got 100 stars on their chart or making a giant bubble big enough to sit in by using a fan and a huge piece of plastic, he was always coming up with creative ideas to keep their young minds engaged.

This story is an inspiration to all of us who have ever faced a problem, difficulty, or disability that stands in the way of our dreams.  Brad Cohen is living proof that we can find a way if we keep on trying.
Find and reserve this book in our catalog.

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

When Patrick Peoples leaves a neural health facility in Baltimore, he believes that he has spent a few months there. In reality, he has been in the psychiatric ward for four years.

But reality and Pat do not really get along. So now, he is living in the basement of his parent’s home, being part of a movie directed by none other than God. And God will – naturally – provide an awe-inspiring and uplifting ending. Pat is convinced that this will include the end of “apart time,” and his reunification with Nikki, the woman he married… some time ago.

Now, Pat may not be completely sane, but the world at large isn’t entirely rational either. Pat’s friends are convinced that he has cursed the beloved Philadelphia Eagles when he stops watching their games; Eagles fans taunt former Philadelphia player Terrell Owens who might be in the midst of a severe depression; his friend Danny – who for a long time didn’t talk at all – speaks to the dices when they play Parcheesi; his therapist seems to recommend adultery; his father goes through serious mood swings – sometimes because of the way Eagles play, sometimes, well, who knows why? – and then there is Tiffany, a strange bird who follows him whenever and wherever he is running. Is she scouting him, or what?

While Pat is looking up at clouds, constantly finding silver linings, he is haunted by what he has lost and his archenemy, Kenny G, the musician, who has the ability to show up everywhere, and Pat’s road to recovery is filled with “episodes” and setbacks.  But when things go wrong, he insists that this is how movies work and just before the happy ending there will be complications.

Will Pat get to experience the end of “apart time” and then watch the credits of his movie roll after a feel-good ending? Read and find out.

The film version of this debut novel has just been nominated for several major Academy Awards.  Click here to find out which ones.

Find and reserve this book in our catalog.

The Gendarme by Mark Mustian

Part mystery, part historical fiction and part love story, The Gendarme is a short book about many things.  The story takes place in two timelines as the 92- year- old protagonist endures the short remainder of his life following the removal of a brain tumor.  Emmet is an American Turkish immigrant who lost all prior memory of his life after a head injury sustained during WWI. When his brain tumor is removed, Emmet’s memory seems to slowly return.

In his dreams, he is transported to the past where he appears as a gendarme forcing a group of Armenians into Syria during a grueling and violent death march. Emmet relives his crime, but also his unlikely romance with a young Armenian girl. This girl, forgotten in the aftermath of his injury, obsesses him once more in his old age, and as more is successively experienced in his dreams, he is driven to find out her fate.

While Emmet is pursuing his dream life, his real life continues in the contemporary world. As his mental state deteriorates, he eventually needs to be institutionalized, and his daughters are forced to make arrangements for his day to day care and support. In this timeline, readers experience his confusion in the sense that we, too, are unable to decipher what is real and what is dream or hallucination. Emmet’s fear and paranoia increase the more his dream life develops until he can no longer distinguish one from the other.

Mustian does not always make clear distinctions for the reader either. After finishing the book, I would periodically have to call yet another part of the plot into question until it was no longer possible to depend on any part of it. Even the events in the contemporary timeline are questionable. Reality deteriorates for Emmet while we’ve been following him, so we are drawn into his illusions just as he is. We know there is something from his past that has been unlocked in his memory, but we don’t know how much of it is real and how much of it is construction. The conclusion satisfies, but by then readers will feel themselves at the mercy of the same feverish impulse controlling Emmet in his increasingly irrational push to find what he remembers as the love of his life – and perhaps a type of redemption.

We can’t call Emmet an unreliable narrator because he isn’t the one telling story. However, the narration does objectively follow his perceptions and emotions, so we experience the story as Emmet does. You’ll just have to decide what to believe and whether questioning reality is always worthwhile.

Find and reserve this book in our catalog.

Sybil Exposed: the Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan

I’m of the wrong era to have been obsessed with Sybil and her multiple personalities, and have never read the book or seen the movies, but I always have an interest in reading books about mental health, and this one was recommended highly to me.

I think we all know the basic premise of Sybil: a young woman, while under psychiatric care, manifests some 16 personalities, ranging from Ruthie (a baby) to Peggy Lou (assertive and angry) to The Blonde (an optimistic teen.) The book was released in 1973 and helped popularize the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (then called multiple personality disorder.)

Author Debbie Nathan re-examines the famous case under a new lens, and posits that not only was the diagnosis a hoax but that Sybil’s psychoanalyst, Dr. Connie Wilbur, had been searching for a patient with multiple personalities to make her famous. Shirley Ardell Mason (referred to as Sybil in the resulting book and movie in order to protect her identity) was in her 20s when she began seeing Dr. Wilbur, and her condition quickly declined. Although Mason had always had some amount of psychological issues, the 16 personalities that developed over time came about only while under psychological supervision.

Nathan’s research into Mason’s story is extensive, and, although Dr. Wilbur’s case files are sealed, documents from the archives and library of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice are used to support Nathan’s theory. The resulting book tells an alternate history of the still famous story and discredits aspects of the field of psychology, especially as relating to multiple personality disorder. I thoroughly enjoyed this read, and now have plans to go back and read the original book Sybil and then watch the 1976 version of the movie starring Sally Fields.

Find and request this book in our catalog.