Under Observation: Life Inside the McLean Psychiatric Hospital

by Lisa Berger, Alexander Vuckovic

Behind closed doors at one of the country’s premier psychiatric hospitals.
 
Keisha is a delusional pregnant woman who believes her unborn child is the messiah. David is a suicidal compulsive foot washer who undergoes electroshock therapy. Julie has multiple personality disorder, a controversial illness that some doctors believe doesn’t really exist. Combining the case histories and personal stories of these and several other patients with information about mental illness, psychiatric research, treatment theory, and government and insurance regulations, veteran writer Lisa Berger and psychopharmacologist Alexander Vuckovic, MD, chronicle the work of the doctors and staff at McLean Hospital and draw a picture of life at psychiatric institutions across the country. Informative, powerful, important, and moving, Under Observation pushes beyond stereotypes about mental illness and its treatment to portray the alternatively dismaying and uplifting truth.
 
“Fascinating, complex, and important.”—Joanne Greenberg, author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Genres: Nonfiction, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Psychology, Medical, Medicine

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 1994

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the author confesses to having to mask all the identifying details of the patients she describes, you wouldn't know it by reading this book. She clearly has a grasp on psychatric disorders and knows how to craft characters from her notes that are an amalgamation of all the patients she observed but realistic enough to be believable.
While I am interested in medicine, psychiatry is not something I would ever consider pursuing a career in, and this book reaffirms my decision. The staff is constantly challenged by the patients and finds themselves questioning how much healing is actually taking place.
The book is written from observations in 1992, but I can tell you that nearly 20 years later, these same struggles are happening, based on my mom's experience working in a school for the mentally ill. She is a stronger woman than me, for I wouldn't last more than a month at her school without questioning my own mental health.
A very comprehensive look at a variety of mental disorders and the challenges each presents when in the company of patients diagnosed with the others.

[Kristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview of life inside a Psychiatric Hospital. Still something is missing, the author doesn't really grasp how difficult this life is or what being under observation would really be like. The loss of being seen as a person is lost on her quite a bit. Dr. Vuckovic does his rounds and dispenses meds, but thinks his potions will help, but probably not cure his population. There is a definite divide between them/us~doctors,staff/patients. However, this is not reality and is a big difficult discussion that needs to take place. More of an exploitative, let's write about something strange and interesting viewpoint.

[Faith Tyler-Rasmussen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never learned so easily about up-and-coming treatments/ past history of psychiatric illnesses in under 200 pages before in my entire life.