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Voluntary Madness: Lost and Found in the Mental Healthcare System |  | Author: Norah Vincent
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 419698
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0143116851
Dewey Decimal Number: 362
EAN: 9780143116851
ASIN: 0143116851
Publication Date: December 29, 2009
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Product Description
From the author of The New York Times bestseller Self- Made Man, a captivating expose of depression and mental illness in America
Revelatory, deeply personal, and utterly relevant, Voluntary Madness is a controversial work that unveils the state of mental healthcare in the United States from the inside out. At the conclusion of her celebrated first book--Self-Made Man, in which she soent eighteen months disguised as a man-Norah Vincent found herself emotionally drained and severely depressed.
Determined but uncertain about maintaining her own equilibrium, she boldly committed herself to three different facilities-a big-city hospital, a private clinic in the Midwest, and finally an upscale retreat in the South. Voluntary Madness is the chronicle of Vincent's journey through the world of the mentally ill as she struggles to find her own health and happiness.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
 Uncomfortable with author's methods August 24, 2010
SRA (United States)
I have not read this book, but heard an interview done with the author. The author apparently checked herself into at least one of the several medical facilities visited when she felt well, faked symptoms, and lied to the staff to get herself committed. She then faked improvement and lied to the staff to get out again.
I am sure the overworked staff, who may be trying to do the best they can under less than ideal circumstances, were glad to find their resources were wasted on someone who was a phony so she could write a book.
I also heard the author say her health insurance was canceled in between her several voluntary stays. This leads me to ask, was she charging her unneeded visit where she faked symptoms to her medical insurance? Letting them foot the bill for book research? Or did she pay for these experiments herself?
I am sure there are serious problems in many health care facilities. However, the interview I heard made me uncomfortable with the ethics of the methods used here to write about them.
 Maddening, not Madness July 10, 2010
scott c (Seattle)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book confounded me if for no other reason than Norah Vincent can write, and well, yet I kept feeling like I was being talked at by a news station. She tries to straddle the line between the personal and journalistic and the combination does not work. I have a hard time working up any kind of empathy or seriousness for someone who purports to write an exposé of sorts about psych wards. Is she a reporter? A patient? And whatever depression she supposedly suffers from is at best a bad mood. The way she left Meriweather, embracing the outside world like the joy she believes it is, with its wonderful people and steaks and fresh air, was too phony for words. There is a huge difference between psych wards and prisons and I'm not sure she knows this. Leaving a psych ward is often more terrifying than entering one.
Speaking of prisons, that's how this book read; like a crime free citizen going into Attica under false pretenses not to write about prison life per se but the emotions and realities of being an inmate. She's not qualified.
Does she know how it feels to have your mind betray you? No. Is she qualified to only point out the negative side effects of medications that can and do save lives? No. (For this to be better, she should have taken the meds) I never once got the feeling like she was really there. At best, she was engaging in an experiment while her bills and nice apartment in the city were taken care of and she never forgot she'd get back home. To write about hopelessness, it's best to understand its bleak landscape.
It's not that she lacks insight into the system of psych wards, the burnt out nurses and doctors but, like I said, I felt like she was trying to teach me a lesson from which I was supposed to form new opinions. She really can write but her detached, disingenuous "I'm gonna show you something" sensibility ruined this book to the point I could not finish it. Plus, she mentioned that she was on The View. That pretty much did it for me.
Started strong, ended with a fizzle May 2, 2010
Elisabeth Brookshire (OH, USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
At first, I kept telling my husband all about this book and how someone was finally talking about all the problems she has encountered with mental health and depression drugs. I myself have had a horrible time with five or so different drugs for depression and anxiety but the longer I read the book, the less engaged I became with Ms. Vincent. The author is sometimes likable but then will go in a tirade about lazy diabetics and their McDonalds, or she will go on and on about bowel movements. I didn't finish the last few chapters. I couldn't take anymore. I am sorry she is depressed. That is understandable. Her lack of compassion for the others she encountered while in the system is not.
Critique of Voluntary Madness May 1, 2010
E. Miller (NJ)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book was definitely well-written and thoughtful in some areas. However, I have to critique this author's objectiveness and her use of the title "voluntary" as she has herself admitted to the second hospital for a supposed bout of "severe" depression and suicidal tendencies and feels she actually needs treatment. I feel she is self-indulgent and self-pitying. She is not an objective journalist on this subject. I myself am dealing with the death of my child and spouse and am not hospitalized. What kind of indulgent society do we live in where people like this author can just walk into a mental facility and be admitted? She is clearly not depressed. Only self-absorbed. It is pretty clear to see why we are having a health care crisis since each of these bogus hospitalizations cost around $14,000. No one should buy this book and put money into her pocket. She is a swindler who is totally concerned for herself alone. If she concentrated on others just a little more she wouldn't be dwelling on her own "depression" and supposed "symptoms."
More Narcissistic "Journalism" April 24, 2010
PeaceBang (New England, USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The first chapter of the book seemed very promising, but it soon devolved into one of those gimmicky memoirs that are all the rage right now. Vincent's constant reassurance that she is "just" sharing her own opinion doesn't balance against her incessant haranguing against the over-prescription of drugs (an argument that I am not against, by the way). This isn't immersion journalism, it's journalism-lite, where the subject is excused actual immersion and deep research by subjecting herself to a sensationalistic little dip into an intense experience out of which she squeezes optimum dramatic mileage. In the end I found her exploitation of other patients distasteful, her broad-brushing of big city psych wards as virtual prisons staffed by unenlightened goons ignorant, and her "please love me" narcissism (a popular tone for which I blame the nauseatingly self-absorbed Elizabeth Gilbert) a huge turn-off. I'll finish the book, but it will be a chore.
I wonder if any other readers or reviewers noticed Vincent's disdain for overweight people and her obviously pathological fat-phobia. I dread that her next project will involve disguising herself as a fat person for a year. Lord help us all.
If you're going to write a book about your own struggle with mental illness, by all means write one. If you're going to write an analysis of what's wrong with the mental health system in America, do the research. This book tries to do both, ends up doing neither.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
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