I just started reading Madness Made Me by Mary O’Hagen, and I’ll finish it before the end of tomorrow. It’s a good read. It offers good insight into someone’s

I just started reading Madness Made Me by Mary O’Hagen, and I’ll finish it before the end of tomorrow. It’s a good read. It offers good insight into someone’s journey through madness and dealing with the mental health system. My personal favourite part of the book: “After a few sessions Dr L’Estrange tells me I need anti-depressants. ‘You’re very slowed down and physically depressed,’ he says. He doesn’t know I am recovering from a night of smoking Buddha sticks laced with horse tranquilliser”. I just loved that particular part of the book because it just really highlights the absurdity that so many mental health professionals, and general doctors, think they have the authority to assign these really rather powerfully debilitating labels based on all their years of learning and knowledge, yet have so little insight into the lives of their own patients when they assign these labels, as if to say they know you and your life better than you do. And I study psychology, but there are still aspects of the discipline, particularly when it comes to diagnosing and treating mental health problems that I think are inherently flawed and problematic. Reading of other people’s experiences offers more insight than the DSM-5. That’s for sure!