Weird book! There’s almost no analysis here. It’s primarily the narrative of these lives as it relates to their mental health. A main theme is the challenge of diagnosis and the ways in which we have muddled through what effective mental health treatment is.

Sometimes this was boring because it was really quite exhaustive. It’s a play by play of every step in their mental health journeys. At other times it was thought provoking, but not always because the author brought up a question. It was more that the book just made me reflect. The one exception is how Aviv discussed anti depressants in Laura’s chapter. She herself reflects on the goal of treatment and how to determine what a person’s baseline is.

I appreciate how Aviv covered systemic problems and Western biases in mental health care. I thought she did a good job recognizing the bigger picture.

But overall I’m not sure what my takeaway is here? What was the goal of this book? I wanted a layer of analysis or a thesis that this book doesn’t have. It just ends!