Methodica

by Marc Peraino

Living in a near-futuristic America where tolerance and understanding for the mentally ill has reached an all-time low, Ferris Calhoun develops a disabling case of clinical depression and is forced into involuntary treatment at the country's most famous psychiatric facility named Methodica.
Fearing Methodica to be the worst of institutions, Ferris is terrified that his life and freedom will be taken away and he'll never again live as a healthy free man. But Methodica and its doctors turn out to be something entirely different, something Ferris has never seen before: a psychiatric hospital that actually helps its patients recover and heal through revolutionary treatment methods and advanced technology. At Methodica, psychiatry has finally caught up with every other field of medicine.
Methodica is a vision for what psychiatry should be, a field of medical science that seeks to cure the mentally ill rather than simply "manage" them. A field in which doctors treat their patients with compassion and take the time to understand them personally. And ultimately, a field of medicine that spells the end to the suffering that millions of psychiatric patients have endured for millennia. Methodica is a call for reform not only within psychiatry, but also a plea for society to let go of age old stereotypes and stigmas and begin seeing mental illness as a legitimate illness that America has fallen victim to.

105 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 23, 2012

About the author

My name is Marc Peraino, I'm 26 years-old, and I'm a full-time fiction author from Mount Vernon, Washington. I've been writing short stories and novellas for the past six years and I'm passionate about this work. I love using the written word as a means of sharing truth and important messages with others and simply sharing my own life experiences through stories. I also love foreign languages and I speak Japanese, Spanish, and Russian. My hobbies include cooking, playing piano, reading (of course), and watching movies.

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This interesting little book depicts a dystopian system with a society that seems dystopian at first but is in fact very closely to today's society, and a utopian mental health clinic, that may appear more utopian than it actually is...
The story is intriguing and delves deep into the mind of a depressed person, granting quite a lot of insight.
It's also a passionate rant about the American mental health care system, the pharmaceutical industry and the Catholic church's and general society's stand on the issue of mental health problems.
It's a quick and entertaining read that makes you think but sometimes it felt a little too much like a lecture.