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Behind the Gates of Gomorrah: A Year with the Criminally Insane
A darker twist on Orange is the New Black, this true insider's account delivers an eye-opening look into the nation’s largest state-run forensic hospital, a facility that houses the real-life Hannibal Lecters of the world.Psychiatrist Stephen Seager was no stranger to locked psych wards when he accepted a job at California’s Gorman State hospital, known locally as “Gomorrah,” but nothing could have prepared him for what he encountered when he stepped through its gates, a triple sally port behind the twenty-foot walls topped with shining coils of razor wire. Gorman State is one of the nation’s largest forensic mental hospitals, dedicated to treating the criminally insane. Unit C, where Seager was assigned, was reserved for the “bad actors,” the mass murderers, serial killers, and the real-life Hannibal Lecters of the world.Against a backdrop of surreal beauty—a verdant campus-like setting where peacocks strolled the grounds—is a place of remarkable violence, a place where a small staff of clinicians are expected to manage a volatile population of prison-hardened ex-cons, where lone therapists lead sharing circles with sociopaths, where an illicit underground economy flourishes, and where patients and physicians often measure their lives according to how fast they can run. To cross through the gates of Gomorrah is to enter a looking-glass world, where the trappings of the normal calendar year exist—Halloween dances and Christmas parties (complete with visits from Santa), springtime softball teams and basketball leagues, but marked with paroxysms of brutality (Santa goes berserk), and peopled by figures from our nightmares.Behind the Gates of Gomorrah affords an eye-opening look inside a facility to which few people have ever had access. Honest, rueful, and at times darkly funny, Seager’s gripping account of his rookie year blends memoir with a narrative science, explaining both the aberrant mind and his own, at times incomprehensible, determination to remain in a job with a perilously steep learning curve.
269 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 16, 2014
175 people are currently reading
2579 people want to read
About the author
Stephen B. Seager
8 books44 followersStephen Seager was born in Ogden, Utah, descended from Mormon pioneers. He grew up in Daly City, California, a San Francisco suburb. Seager graduated from University of California at Davis and received his MD degree from Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. He worked as an Emergency Room physician for ten years which inspired his first two books, and then returned to residency training for four years and became a psychiatrist. Seager wrote of his internship in Psychward: A Year Behind Locked Doors. Seager is a board-certified psychiatrist employed at Napa State Hospital in Napa, California. From this experience comes his newest book to be released September 16, 2014, entitled "Gates of Gomorrah; A Year with the Criminally Insane".
He lives in Northern California with his wife and son; they are all competitive badminton players. Four dogs and two cats have kindly consented to share their lovely home with Seager and his family.
He lives in Northern California with his wife and son; they are all competitive badminton players. Four dogs and two cats have kindly consented to share their lovely home with Seager and his family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 235 reviews
December 19, 2015
These people are insane. They can go hours, days or even a week or two without becoming involved in some violent brawl and inevitably getting hurt. These are the doctors, this is the author. Why would anyone sane go to a job where people get killed, others have long recovery periods from violent episodes and where cuts and bruises are just part of the job? Who else would do that without ever-present Security, or even being allowed to carry Mace, stun guns or other means of subduing violent attackers other than just their hands? Only the insane. What else would you call them?
The patients are creepy. Most are psychopaths who act quite normally until they feel the need to become controlling or violent, which is fairly frequently as few of them actually want to rub along together, there is always some dominance issue to sort out. Those who aren't psychopaths are psychotic or just plain mad, anything can set these people off. The doctors and nurses, just take long absences recovering from beatings and trying to sort fights out in their stride, even when one of their number dies.
How the author stood it for a year I don't know. He certainly suffered. Did he help the patients? No, not really, they are beyond it, they just need locking up for life, so that their violence is wreaked on them and those who choose to look after them and not us.
But still, the question remains, who would choose this job, do they have martyr complexes? And why are the criminally insane, murderers all, at least in the US, get treated more as patients than prisoners so that the normal protections against the incarcerated violent aren't allowed? These psychopaths are some wicked people surely those caring for them should be allowed some protection against their calculated violence?
Good book, but not great.
The patients are creepy. Most are psychopaths who act quite normally until they feel the need to become controlling or violent, which is fairly frequently as few of them actually want to rub along together, there is always some dominance issue to sort out. Those who aren't psychopaths are psychotic or just plain mad, anything can set these people off. The doctors and nurses, just take long absences recovering from beatings and trying to sort fights out in their stride, even when one of their number dies.
How the author stood it for a year I don't know. He certainly suffered. Did he help the patients? No, not really, they are beyond it, they just need locking up for life, so that their violence is wreaked on them and those who choose to look after them and not us.
But still, the question remains, who would choose this job, do they have martyr complexes? And why are the criminally insane, murderers all, at least in the US, get treated more as patients than prisoners so that the normal protections against the incarcerated violent aren't allowed? These psychopaths are some wicked people surely those caring for them should be allowed some protection against their calculated violence?
Good book, but not great.
November 5, 2014
All in a day’s work for Dr Seager at Napa State Hospital in California:
I’d just made it back to my office door when an alarm rang. I joined Cohen and a crowd that surged toward Unit C, where another battle had begun. “Stupid bitch!” Mathews yelled as three staff members hustled him toward the restraint room. Luella sat on the floor, forehead resting on bent knees, blood dripping. p47
And a week after that
I pushed my alarm. Sirens erupted. A brief melee ensued. The staff broke it up and , surprisingly, tempers quickly cooled. Carver limped to the seclusion room; Xiang followed, a syringe ready. p76
And a week or so after that
I leaned back in my office chair. Then an alarm went off. I ran ahead of Cohen, unlocked the door to Unit C, and followed a crowd to the nurses’ station. “I warned you,” yelled Xiang, and kicked at Gomez, who lay on the ground covered by staff. Cohen restrained Xiang but only just. p171
Dr Stephen Seager replaced Dr Tom at Unit C. Dr Tom was involuntarily retired by a patient, Mr Mathews, who beat him and kicked him into a coma. After a few months Dr Tom died. But his murderer faced no consequences. Mr Mathews was in Unit C having committed various homicides and having been found to be chronically insane. There was no other place for Mr Mathews to be. Unit C was the end point. This meant that the staff had to deal every day with a person who murdered their colleague and who could, if he got lucky again, murder them, and who would never suffer any consequences. Would Mathews be prosecuted for the murder of Dr Tom? No. What would be the point? Just money wasted on a meaningless court proceeding.
THANKSGIVING
The staff organise a Thanksgiving dinner for the patients, whose families are invited. Some families don’t attend, because the patient has no family, because the patient killed all their family. The ones who do come bring their children.
”Let me get this straight,” I said. “The hospital is going to invite a bunch of children to have lunch in a room into which they’ve also invited the state’s most notorious child molesters?”
“Not to worry,” Cohen said. “They’re going to keep an eye on them.”
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE PSYCHOTIC
The majority of this book deals with the day to day barely-controlled-violence and the regular shakedowns to find shanks and stills. It’s never less than compelling, although the author will be winning no prizes for his prose style, which has a tendency to spray clichés around in a curt style of journalese which can grate (“Facing shared adversity, we’d bonded.” “Lost in thought, I felt a tug on my sleeve.”) But heck, what a story.
And also, on occasion Dr Seager bursts into a different mode, where he lets rip with some strong personal views about the whole psychiatric/legal morass, and these parts were great and all too few. In one section he outlines how America has got to its present unhappy situation (and truly America is not alone in this).
SHORT HISTORY OF THE CHRONICALLY MENTALLY UNWELL IN AMERICA
For the best part of a century, the criminally insane were warehoused in distant state hospitals. In 1963, the Community Mental Health Act, promoted by John Kennedy, established community mental health centres. These would be much more humane. The state hospitals were emptied.
Local communities, however, had not been consulted and they showed no interest whatever in a massive influx of psychotic individuals.
Also, Congress never funded most community mental health centres, so they weren’t built.
The newly-released state hospital patients, with nowhere to live and nowhere to receive treatment, took up residence on city streets and became the homeless mentally ill.
70% of those guys eventually end up in jail. So jails started to fill up with mentally ill people. The really violent perpetrators, the ones unfit to plead or not guilty by reason of insanity, were sent back to re-tooled state hospitals like Napa.
SANDY HOOK, VIRGINIA TECH, RED LAKE
Towards the end of the book, one subject begins to take over : gun rampages. It’s not clear if any of Dr Seager’s Unit C patients ever committed any of these offences, he never says so. His guys are in there for normal family massacres, serial rapes and murders, and child murders. But he quotes an outburst from his wife who sees a newspaper account about the Adam Lanza’s school shooting in which 21 children and 6 adults died.
Christ, there’s a new one every week. And the same crap happens each time. A morbid picture of the shooter appears on the news – never the victims, always the shooter – followed by an emotional call for gun control, then a plea for better mental health treatment, and finally an article explaining the insanity defense. Then nothing. Nothing ever happens.
At the end of his book, Dr Seager offers a wants list which he believes would begin to tackle these random massacre guys. He says that none of these shootings come out of a clear blue sky – when it turns out that the shooter was Adam Lanza or Elliot Rodger or Seung-Hui Cho no one who knew them is surprised. These people all have shown signs of particular types of behaviour. What Dr Seager says is that they all are suffering from one specific form of mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, which means they can function at a high level (fill out forms, pass tests, etc) and yet have a grotesquely distorted view of reality in which usually there’s a giant conspiracy and they are its principal victim. (He points out that the homeless schizophrenic on the street will never commit a rampage, they’re never organised enough.) Another crucial fact about paranoid schizophrenia is that the sufferers do not have any insight, i.e. they never realise they are ill or even that they are wrong and the children or their family or that audience of moviegoers did not actually deserve to be killed. Which means that they will always refuse any offered treatment.
Dr Seager is therefore suggesting that the state should intervene before the rampage occurs. But I do not see how any kind of intervention into their lives before they erupt can be done unless we grant the state powers over the individual which we used to denounce in the USSR.
In Britain we don’t have school shootings. We have very strong gun control laws, so we’ve only had three crazed gun rampages. But only yesterday a 16 year old kid was sent to the British equivalent of Napa for stabbing a 62 year old teacher to death and returning to his chair where he announced “Good times!” and waited for the cops. He never apologised, he told police he was proud of what he’d done. You can organise your society any old how, but these things are going to happen now and then.
This book does what it says on the tin. If you want a fast account of what it’s like working with the most deranged, violent, psychotic people in America, and be made to think about what we’re supposed to do with them, here it is.
I’d just made it back to my office door when an alarm rang. I joined Cohen and a crowd that surged toward Unit C, where another battle had begun. “Stupid bitch!” Mathews yelled as three staff members hustled him toward the restraint room. Luella sat on the floor, forehead resting on bent knees, blood dripping. p47
And a week after that
I pushed my alarm. Sirens erupted. A brief melee ensued. The staff broke it up and , surprisingly, tempers quickly cooled. Carver limped to the seclusion room; Xiang followed, a syringe ready. p76
And a week or so after that
I leaned back in my office chair. Then an alarm went off. I ran ahead of Cohen, unlocked the door to Unit C, and followed a crowd to the nurses’ station. “I warned you,” yelled Xiang, and kicked at Gomez, who lay on the ground covered by staff. Cohen restrained Xiang but only just. p171
Dr Stephen Seager replaced Dr Tom at Unit C. Dr Tom was involuntarily retired by a patient, Mr Mathews, who beat him and kicked him into a coma. After a few months Dr Tom died. But his murderer faced no consequences. Mr Mathews was in Unit C having committed various homicides and having been found to be chronically insane. There was no other place for Mr Mathews to be. Unit C was the end point. This meant that the staff had to deal every day with a person who murdered their colleague and who could, if he got lucky again, murder them, and who would never suffer any consequences. Would Mathews be prosecuted for the murder of Dr Tom? No. What would be the point? Just money wasted on a meaningless court proceeding.
THANKSGIVING
The staff organise a Thanksgiving dinner for the patients, whose families are invited. Some families don’t attend, because the patient has no family, because the patient killed all their family. The ones who do come bring their children.
”Let me get this straight,” I said. “The hospital is going to invite a bunch of children to have lunch in a room into which they’ve also invited the state’s most notorious child molesters?”
“Not to worry,” Cohen said. “They’re going to keep an eye on them.”
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE PSYCHOTIC
The majority of this book deals with the day to day barely-controlled-violence and the regular shakedowns to find shanks and stills. It’s never less than compelling, although the author will be winning no prizes for his prose style, which has a tendency to spray clichés around in a curt style of journalese which can grate (“Facing shared adversity, we’d bonded.” “Lost in thought, I felt a tug on my sleeve.”) But heck, what a story.
And also, on occasion Dr Seager bursts into a different mode, where he lets rip with some strong personal views about the whole psychiatric/legal morass, and these parts were great and all too few. In one section he outlines how America has got to its present unhappy situation (and truly America is not alone in this).
SHORT HISTORY OF THE CHRONICALLY MENTALLY UNWELL IN AMERICA
For the best part of a century, the criminally insane were warehoused in distant state hospitals. In 1963, the Community Mental Health Act, promoted by John Kennedy, established community mental health centres. These would be much more humane. The state hospitals were emptied.
Local communities, however, had not been consulted and they showed no interest whatever in a massive influx of psychotic individuals.
Also, Congress never funded most community mental health centres, so they weren’t built.
The newly-released state hospital patients, with nowhere to live and nowhere to receive treatment, took up residence on city streets and became the homeless mentally ill.
70% of those guys eventually end up in jail. So jails started to fill up with mentally ill people. The really violent perpetrators, the ones unfit to plead or not guilty by reason of insanity, were sent back to re-tooled state hospitals like Napa.
SANDY HOOK, VIRGINIA TECH, RED LAKE
Towards the end of the book, one subject begins to take over : gun rampages. It’s not clear if any of Dr Seager’s Unit C patients ever committed any of these offences, he never says so. His guys are in there for normal family massacres, serial rapes and murders, and child murders. But he quotes an outburst from his wife who sees a newspaper account about the Adam Lanza’s school shooting in which 21 children and 6 adults died.
Christ, there’s a new one every week. And the same crap happens each time. A morbid picture of the shooter appears on the news – never the victims, always the shooter – followed by an emotional call for gun control, then a plea for better mental health treatment, and finally an article explaining the insanity defense. Then nothing. Nothing ever happens.
At the end of his book, Dr Seager offers a wants list which he believes would begin to tackle these random massacre guys. He says that none of these shootings come out of a clear blue sky – when it turns out that the shooter was Adam Lanza or Elliot Rodger or Seung-Hui Cho no one who knew them is surprised. These people all have shown signs of particular types of behaviour. What Dr Seager says is that they all are suffering from one specific form of mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, which means they can function at a high level (fill out forms, pass tests, etc) and yet have a grotesquely distorted view of reality in which usually there’s a giant conspiracy and they are its principal victim. (He points out that the homeless schizophrenic on the street will never commit a rampage, they’re never organised enough.) Another crucial fact about paranoid schizophrenia is that the sufferers do not have any insight, i.e. they never realise they are ill or even that they are wrong and the children or their family or that audience of moviegoers did not actually deserve to be killed. Which means that they will always refuse any offered treatment.
Dr Seager is therefore suggesting that the state should intervene before the rampage occurs. But I do not see how any kind of intervention into their lives before they erupt can be done unless we grant the state powers over the individual which we used to denounce in the USSR.
In Britain we don’t have school shootings. We have very strong gun control laws, so we’ve only had three crazed gun rampages. But only yesterday a 16 year old kid was sent to the British equivalent of Napa for stabbing a 62 year old teacher to death and returning to his chair where he announced “Good times!” and waited for the cops. He never apologised, he told police he was proud of what he’d done. You can organise your society any old how, but these things are going to happen now and then.
This book does what it says on the tin. If you want a fast account of what it’s like working with the most deranged, violent, psychotic people in America, and be made to think about what we’re supposed to do with them, here it is.
November 3, 2014
A very enlightening book and a book that evoked for me, many strong emotions. On one hand I feel the greatest admiration for all that work in these type of places. They daily put their safety and lives on the line. In this book we meet many of the doctors, the techs, the nurses and of course the patients.
It is the patients that brought out another strong emotion. Anger, because this asylum is a forensic one. They take the worst criminals, that have committed horrible acts but have been found not guilty by reason of insanity. There is a part in the book where the author says that many of the regular mentally ill are now our street people. They do not get the help they need because of the constant reduction of funds, by our government. But, our government does pay to keep these supposed mentally ill criminals. In a place where they play basketball, have regular group sessions and a place where even if they stab another patient or professional, they are just returned back to the unit.
Very informative, so much is covered even early psychiatric treatments, barbaric at best. So much is wrong with the way the true mentally ill are viewed and their lack of access to real treatment. Enough to make your head spin. Yet, this book has humor too, a real bonding between staff and even a look at the individuality of some of the patients. There are kindnesses and mishaps and a hard look at the why and what it takes to make such a place, their place of employment.
It is the patients that brought out another strong emotion. Anger, because this asylum is a forensic one. They take the worst criminals, that have committed horrible acts but have been found not guilty by reason of insanity. There is a part in the book where the author says that many of the regular mentally ill are now our street people. They do not get the help they need because of the constant reduction of funds, by our government. But, our government does pay to keep these supposed mentally ill criminals. In a place where they play basketball, have regular group sessions and a place where even if they stab another patient or professional, they are just returned back to the unit.
Very informative, so much is covered even early psychiatric treatments, barbaric at best. So much is wrong with the way the true mentally ill are viewed and their lack of access to real treatment. Enough to make your head spin. Yet, this book has humor too, a real bonding between staff and even a look at the individuality of some of the patients. There are kindnesses and mishaps and a hard look at the why and what it takes to make such a place, their place of employment.
January 19, 2015
Why on earth was this the book I could quickly sail through, when I’m struggling with so many other books?! It literally gave me nightmares. Thank goodness it has some comic relief and family aspects in the narrative. I felt horrified (I guess I was supposed to) and I could never work there, at least not on a similar unit. The place seems to have changed so much. I was there as a student 3 decades ago, and while there were some forensic psych patents there, more on the adolescent unit than the adult unit of the units to which I was assigned, it was nothing like what this author describes.
I have really mixed feeling about the author and this book. It was able to hold my attention but some connection was missing for me. I did take away, yet again, that we have a broken system, in so many ways.
I have really mixed feeling about the author and this book. It was able to hold my attention but some connection was missing for me. I did take away, yet again, that we have a broken system, in so many ways.
May 13, 2022
Soo I'm on chapter nine and I'm questioning most of what I've read so far mostly because of life experiences teaching in an acute or lockdown hospital. So I go to check out the publishing info and come across a review that basically said the same thing, but the author actually posted a response to that review. And then I proceeded to rant, which basically became the beginnings of a review, which is a bit funny because I haven't really been writing reviews much lately. My main concern is with the violence and what appears to be absolutely no (god I know the word I want to use but I cannot spell anymore) guidance or training on take-downs. It's practically a zoo and a train wreck that caught on fire. I'm guessing what makes a difference is the word "criminal".
January 13, 2015
This book left me flabbergasted. On the one hand Dr. Seager nicely evokes the ambiguity and danger of housing violent, mentally ill offenders, a substantial number of them murderers, in a hospital setting without guards. Yet his descriptions of events on his ward read like sensationalist fiction not fact. Yes, staff and patients can both be victims of violence in this kind of hospital, but not on an everyday basis as his account suggests. (Just for the record, between 2006 and 2014 I logged 2-3000 hours at the same hospital conducting interviews on every single unit. I don’t recall meeting Dr. Seager but I may have. At least 90% of the time I interviewed patients alone and I was never verbally threatened much less assaulted. I never personally witnessed an assault It happens to be sure but not at the frequency Dr. Seager’s book suggests.) I was confounded by the factual errors. His grasp of the various legal commitments seemed confused. Psychopaths are not always psychotic p. 55; in my experience not often. Ten percent of the patients in the secure area (behind the fence) are not civil commitments; I never came across a civil commitment unless they also had a concurrent criminal commitment. Patients cannot, for obvious reasons, lock themselves into their rooms like Caruthers, p 219. Dr. Seager states that “...only about one-third of psychotic persons have a mental illness.” p.223. That seems impossibly low. All this said, the book is a compelling read, partly truth and partly fiction, and one hopes it might inspire changes in the system. The staff, as he repeatedly notes, are devoted, hard working, remarkable people. I could sing out many names.
August 27, 2014
“Behind the Gates of Gomorrah” by Stephen Seager, published by Gallery Books.
Category – Memoir Publication Date – September 16, 2014
Stephen Seager is a psychiatrist and has lived in the real world of “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. His story is based on his year living with the criminally insane.
Stephen accepted a position at Napa State Hospital, yes in the Napa California Area, a state run forensic mental institution. There are two hundred of these facilities in the United States. These facilities house the mass murderers and serial killers, many convicted of rape, both of children and women. The Napa facility has come to be known as “Gomorrah”. It borders on the impossible to believe that the things that happen in this facility actually occur. Seager tells the story of men who have been committed to Gomorrah for their crimes and often commit the same crimes in the hospital but are not prosecuted because the system will just put them back in the same facility.
Seager not only tells the story of the incarcerated but the nurses, doctors, and staff that work in conditions that put their lives at risk daily. It is a wonder that some of them come back to work after witnessing some of the atrocities perpetrated by the inmates. In this “crazy” world, Seager tells of the Halloween dances, Thanksgiving and Christmas programs. They even have a basketball tournament among inmates who have no interest in cooperating with one another.
This book is an eye opener that is both funny and tragic, a book that will scare you, but also show the care and compassion of the staffs of these hospitals. The book also screams for a better method of handling people with serious mental problems.
Category – Memoir Publication Date – September 16, 2014
Stephen Seager is a psychiatrist and has lived in the real world of “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. His story is based on his year living with the criminally insane.
Stephen accepted a position at Napa State Hospital, yes in the Napa California Area, a state run forensic mental institution. There are two hundred of these facilities in the United States. These facilities house the mass murderers and serial killers, many convicted of rape, both of children and women. The Napa facility has come to be known as “Gomorrah”. It borders on the impossible to believe that the things that happen in this facility actually occur. Seager tells the story of men who have been committed to Gomorrah for their crimes and often commit the same crimes in the hospital but are not prosecuted because the system will just put them back in the same facility.
Seager not only tells the story of the incarcerated but the nurses, doctors, and staff that work in conditions that put their lives at risk daily. It is a wonder that some of them come back to work after witnessing some of the atrocities perpetrated by the inmates. In this “crazy” world, Seager tells of the Halloween dances, Thanksgiving and Christmas programs. They even have a basketball tournament among inmates who have no interest in cooperating with one another.
This book is an eye opener that is both funny and tragic, a book that will scare you, but also show the care and compassion of the staffs of these hospitals. The book also screams for a better method of handling people with serious mental problems.
July 30, 2014
Received this as an ARC from the publisher. Started 7-28-14. Finished the next day 7-29-14. Fast read and fascinating. I could relate to Dr. Seager's experience. As a Psych major at Penn State in the early 60's, I earned extra credit by spending a week-end at a nearby state psychiatric hospital, an overwhelming experience that I'll never forget. Then 35 years at juvenile court, and I could understand the fascination and challenge of trying to help others. In spite of the difficulties of the job, I still enjoyed it. The administration sucked however, and that's why I retired. This book should be required reading in every college psych department;not only for Dr. Seager's personal experiences but also his suggestions for how to treat the mentally ill.
June 10, 2015
I was quite disappointed with this book. For some reason the "events" didn't ring true. I can't explain it but I just felt something was amiss.
The last few chapters he goes on to a whole mass murder and gun control rant which had nothing really to do with the Forensic Napa Hospital. I suspect these issues may have been his true reasons for writing the book in the first place.
UPDATE 12th May 2015
After talking to the author it seems that the rant was the Editor's idea. I also now believe that was amiss in this book was the inexperience of writing a book. I have therefore adjusted my rating.
I would like to read more from this author but hopefully he gets a different editor and a little more help with his writing. I am sure he has many other experiences to share with us.
The last few chapters he goes on to a whole mass murder and gun control rant which had nothing really to do with the Forensic Napa Hospital. I suspect these issues may have been his true reasons for writing the book in the first place.
UPDATE 12th May 2015
After talking to the author it seems that the rant was the Editor's idea. I also now believe that was amiss in this book was the inexperience of writing a book. I have therefore adjusted my rating.
I would like to read more from this author but hopefully he gets a different editor and a little more help with his writing. I am sure he has many other experiences to share with us.
March 16, 2020
Nadspodziewanie dobra książka. Ujęcie psychopatii od strony psychiatrii połączone z osobistymi obserwacjami i doświadczeniami psychiatry Stephena B. Seagera. Doktor ma zadziwiająco lekkie pióro i dobre wyczucie - choć książka jest pisana w pierwszoosobowej narracji, osoba doktora Seagera w niej nie przytłacza. Wszystko jest tak, jak być powinno.
Jest jeden mały mankament, ale nie obniżam oceny z prostej przyczyny. Nie mogę winić autora za polskie wydanie. To, co się tu zdarzyło nie powinno mieć miejsca. Ktoś chyba sobie przysnął nad korektą. I to nie raz. Powiedzmy, że błędy typu "resyscytacja" mogą się zdarzyć (choć, jeśli już są, powinny być niechlubnymi pojedynczymi potknięciami), ale Darth VEDER?! Jak można było do tego dopuścić? Wstydź się, Filio!
Jest jeden mały mankament, ale nie obniżam oceny z prostej przyczyny. Nie mogę winić autora za polskie wydanie. To, co się tu zdarzyło nie powinno mieć miejsca. Ktoś chyba sobie przysnął nad korektą. I to nie raz. Powiedzmy, że błędy typu "resyscytacja" mogą się zdarzyć (choć, jeśli już są, powinny być niechlubnymi pojedynczymi potknięciami), ale Darth VEDER?! Jak można było do tego dopuścić? Wstydź się, Filio!
August 2, 2020
Nie dość, że była to nudnawa opowieść o pracowniczej rutynie, zamiast historii o pacjentach, to mam poczucie, że autor trochę minął się z powołaniem. Jak można być psychiatrą i pisać o swoim pacjencie per "wariat"? Żenujące.
September 28, 2014
This book is both terrifying (because it's based on real problems in our criminal justice system and has descriptions of horrifying physical violence) and compelling (because it's well-written and the author explains the many problems in the system in layman's terms).
I got the book last Friday afternoon and finished it after lunch on the following day. It's about a psychiatrist who takes a job in a forensic state hospital -- one of the places where the criminally insane are sent when they're judged incompetent to stand trail for their crimes or if they're found not guilty by reason of insanity. Basically, a hospital campus full of violent offenders without guards. Scary, right?
This book is a firsthand account of the terrible violence that occurs in this hospital and the broken justice system that puts patients, nurses, doctors, and other staff at risk on a daily basis. These healthcare workers face ridiculously high levels of stress and risk of physical harm (even death) at the hands of their patients, yet they are committed to the care and well-being of the criminal patients.
I can't get this book out of my head. I knew there were many problems in the treatment of mental health and the treatment (or lack thereof) of the criminal element. I just didn't know it was so brutal on the people that are in charge of caring for them. I highly recommend it.
January 10, 2015
Behind the Gates of Gomorrah is a fascinating insider's view of life inside the Napa State Psychiatric Hospital in California by physician/psychiatrist, Dr Stephen Seager.
Napa State is a low to moderate security facility, housing around 1300 men and women committed to the hospital by both civil and forensic (court mandated) referral. The patients suffer from a range of serious mental health problems including mood, personality and anxiety disorders, a proportion of whom have been declared criminally insane.
Dr Seager spent a year working in 'Unit C' amongst some of the state's most frightening men convicted of serious crimes including multiple murders and violent rapes of both women and children. This is the eye opening account of his time at the facility, the people he met and the lessons he learned.
"You can't be a hospital and a prison at he same time."
Treated like hospital patients instead of prison inmates, these violent criminals have frightening freedoms. The 'Patients Right's Charter' means they cannot be compelled to take medication to treat their illness, they are free to roam the ward, and there are no guards on the unit despite the fact that serious assaults between patients occur on a regular basis. On his first day Seager witnessed a patient almost beat another man to death with a chair and received 10 stitches to his head when he tried to intervene. The offender, a high functioning sociopath with a tattoo reading HELL across his forehead, was never charged with either assault.
"I realized that the sickness of Gomorrah was violence but the symptom was denial."
I have nothing but admiration for the staff who work in Unit C. Despite the high level of stress and very real risks to their safety - staff have been brutally injured, and even killed by patients- Seager portrays them as being committed to the care and well being of their charges. I share Seager's contempt for the administration and bureaucracy that fails to protect them, I don't understand how they can ignore the realities of dealing with violent offenders, essentially fostering an environment of "...overwhelming impotence".
"And then nothing. Nothing ever changes."
Seager wrote Behind the Gates of Gomorrah not only to expose the flaws of the facility, and the other 200 like it, but also as a plea for something to be done. His suggestions for dealing with forensic patients are sensible and practical - implementing mandated treatment, creating a housing environment that maintains safety and order, providing a law enforcement security presence on every ward/unit and encouraging staff to assert their right to safe working conditions. Something has to change.
Written with compassion, humour and purpose, Behind the Gates of Gomorrah is a compelling read of mental illness, monsters and madness.
March 5, 2015
I don’t know what motivated Dr. Seager to portray the REAL Napa State Hospital in the disparaging and scandalous way he did, but in my opinion this is not a book that should be held out to the reading public as a fair and accurate representation of ANY modern psychiatric hospital and certainly not Napa State.
The fact that it's written by a member of the hospital's professional medical staff and presented as non-fiction is tantamount to libel and one has to wonder why Dr. Seager feels the need to throw NSH under the bus in such a lurid and completely inaccurate way... except perhaps to try to garner notoriety and sell more books.
This book should have been published as a work of fiction (which, trust me, it is), but as a novel, it's not even well-written. Robin Cook he is NOT; a critical audience would not be impressed. I have to wonder why he presents this garbage as an expose. Perhaps he hoped to achieve fame, but at what price?? The now tarnished reputation of a wonderful state facility that should be held up as an example for the rest of the country as to how to do it right??
This book sensationalizes and promotes out of date stereotypes about state funded mental health care. A "Clockwork Orange" was a movie; it's NOT alive and well and reincarnated at Napa State. Pretty much everything Dr. Seager has written in this book about NSH is completely misrepresented, exaggerated in the worst possible way, and does a tremendous disservice to all of the staff on Unit C, one of whom I happen to be related to.
Behind the Gates of Gomorrah is the worst kind of propaganda because Dr. Seager uses his position as a member of the hospital staff to write a supposed expose of the State Hospital System that is given credibility because he identifies himself as the physician at the heart of the incidents and situations he describes. Anyone who reads this travesty has a legitimate reason to believe that things happened exactly the way he says they did because he is a board certified psychiatrist who is still currently on the staff of the hospital.
I'm surprised the hospital administration and the State of California haven't taken action against him for libel. In my view, they should, and the book should be pulled from bookshelves by the publisher.
The fact that it's written by a member of the hospital's professional medical staff and presented as non-fiction is tantamount to libel and one has to wonder why Dr. Seager feels the need to throw NSH under the bus in such a lurid and completely inaccurate way... except perhaps to try to garner notoriety and sell more books.
This book should have been published as a work of fiction (which, trust me, it is), but as a novel, it's not even well-written. Robin Cook he is NOT; a critical audience would not be impressed. I have to wonder why he presents this garbage as an expose. Perhaps he hoped to achieve fame, but at what price?? The now tarnished reputation of a wonderful state facility that should be held up as an example for the rest of the country as to how to do it right??
This book sensationalizes and promotes out of date stereotypes about state funded mental health care. A "Clockwork Orange" was a movie; it's NOT alive and well and reincarnated at Napa State. Pretty much everything Dr. Seager has written in this book about NSH is completely misrepresented, exaggerated in the worst possible way, and does a tremendous disservice to all of the staff on Unit C, one of whom I happen to be related to.
Behind the Gates of Gomorrah is the worst kind of propaganda because Dr. Seager uses his position as a member of the hospital staff to write a supposed expose of the State Hospital System that is given credibility because he identifies himself as the physician at the heart of the incidents and situations he describes. Anyone who reads this travesty has a legitimate reason to believe that things happened exactly the way he says they did because he is a board certified psychiatrist who is still currently on the staff of the hospital.
I'm surprised the hospital administration and the State of California haven't taken action against him for libel. In my view, they should, and the book should be pulled from bookshelves by the publisher.
September 28, 2014
Wow, I cannot fathom working with people with extreme mental illness much less the criminally insane of our society. Imagine going to work each day wondering if you will be punched, cut or even killed. Stephen Seager you are a brave man for taking on this job at Gorman State. I doubt that many would want your job.
Kudos for a well written and informative book. Be sure to read the afterward. Stephen tells how we should house and treat the criminally insane. Wake up America! Our legal system is not giving these facilities what they need to do the job. Write your Congressmen and Senators.
Kudos for a well written and informative book. Be sure to read the afterward. Stephen tells how we should house and treat the criminally insane. Wake up America! Our legal system is not giving these facilities what they need to do the job. Write your Congressmen and Senators.
January 31, 2023
Ta książka jest o niczym. Liczyłam na jakieś drastyczne smaczki, a dostałam pamiętniczek z opisami meczów koszykówki i imprezami okolicznościowymi. Jak na szpital, który podobno leczy najgorsze przypadki mordujących psycholi to było tam spokojnie jak w przedszkolu.
September 28, 2025
Wydawnictwo powinno przestać wprowadzać ludzi w błąd tytułem, który ani nie jest przekładem oryginalnego, ani nie pasuje do zawartości. Kolejny raz. Jeśli chodzi natomiast o zawartość — książki Seagera nie są dobre, ale czyta się je ok i dają jakieś informacje odnośnie doświadczeń autora.
September 26, 2014
A Year with the Criminally Insane
Behind the Gates of Gomorrah
By: Stephen Seager
First off let me catch my breath...
Because and I truly mean this, you will spend more time holding your breath, gripping your book or reading devise, with your eyes glued to every page waiting for what comes next.
I almost don't know how to express the admiration that I have for the people who work at { Gomorrah} and the family that stand beside them. They are waging their very own war and no one ever truly knows or acknowledges them.
Until now, this was a eye opening book. And it held me captive until the very end. Each page was a anticipation of what more could happen, what more didn't I know, how much more knowledge could I soak up. At the same time I started to think of the people who worked there and the people who lived there as people, family, friends, even as danger lurked around every corner. I could see so clearly why Dr. Seager kept working there even in the face of such diversity. It's like a adrenalin junky, except with this job not only was he and the workers involved professionally but emotionally invested as well. In my views most people are not capable of separating their hearts for something they see as important, or people who they are emotionally invested in, whether it be their co workers or their patients. Who decides that the insane, the criminals do not deserve to feel love, be cared for, be treated with respect. Yet it's hard to feel compassion when you are watching the news of someone who killed with such destruction, who killed babies, a child or children. A pregnant woman or the guy who shot a cop who had a wife, a newborn son because he skipped probation, the list goes on. This book will make you feel so many things.
Empathy, hope, sadness, anger, outrage, horror, sympathy, dismay, love. You will also realize killers are people, who turn into monsters. Professionals can be fallible, weak, and can be just as criminal.
We will never know what each day will bring, so we should carry more appreciation for the good days to carry us through the bad.
Thank you to all the people out there who work in such chaos, you are all brave in what some would consider a thankless job. And maybe just a wee bit of a adrenalin junkie. :) thankfully so.
Five stars, would highly recommend. Not for young readers!!
Behind the Gates of Gomorrah
By: Stephen Seager
First off let me catch my breath...
Because and I truly mean this, you will spend more time holding your breath, gripping your book or reading devise, with your eyes glued to every page waiting for what comes next.
I almost don't know how to express the admiration that I have for the people who work at { Gomorrah} and the family that stand beside them. They are waging their very own war and no one ever truly knows or acknowledges them.
Until now, this was a eye opening book. And it held me captive until the very end. Each page was a anticipation of what more could happen, what more didn't I know, how much more knowledge could I soak up. At the same time I started to think of the people who worked there and the people who lived there as people, family, friends, even as danger lurked around every corner. I could see so clearly why Dr. Seager kept working there even in the face of such diversity. It's like a adrenalin junky, except with this job not only was he and the workers involved professionally but emotionally invested as well. In my views most people are not capable of separating their hearts for something they see as important, or people who they are emotionally invested in, whether it be their co workers or their patients. Who decides that the insane, the criminals do not deserve to feel love, be cared for, be treated with respect. Yet it's hard to feel compassion when you are watching the news of someone who killed with such destruction, who killed babies, a child or children. A pregnant woman or the guy who shot a cop who had a wife, a newborn son because he skipped probation, the list goes on. This book will make you feel so many things.
Empathy, hope, sadness, anger, outrage, horror, sympathy, dismay, love. You will also realize killers are people, who turn into monsters. Professionals can be fallible, weak, and can be just as criminal.
We will never know what each day will bring, so we should carry more appreciation for the good days to carry us through the bad.
Thank you to all the people out there who work in such chaos, you are all brave in what some would consider a thankless job. And maybe just a wee bit of a adrenalin junkie. :) thankfully so.
Five stars, would highly recommend. Not for young readers!!
June 9, 2024
Years ago I read Seager's "Psychward", and while I liked a lot of the humanity he displayed in it, it ultimately really irked me because it became abundantly clear that Seager had amped up whatever reality he had experienced while at LA County Hospital. Many of the stories and situations, not to mention the dialog, reeked of tired TV tropes. People, even the crazy and those who care for them, simply don't act the way he portrayed them as acting. I mention this because I started reading this book, and began to feel more than a bit of familiarity with how everything was portrayed. I had not realized that I had picked up a book by the same guy. I found the same sorts of problems with this book as I did "Psychward". I think there is an important message to be conveyed about the issues surrounding forensic hospitals, and Seager clearly has something important to say, but it all gets swamped in his bombast, melodrama, and what has to be fictionalization. People do not behave the way he portrays them, and life does not work as though it were written by a poor screenwriter. If you believe this book, you have to believe that Seager was assaulted immediately after coming in on his first day, stumbled upon a smuggling operation, came under the attention of a stereotypical, overly suspicious cop, met a guy who spoke only in NPR tags, and throughout was the only sane and reasonable person at the Napa State Hospital. I just don't believe it. At least he didn't have anything equivalent to the scene in "Psychward" in which he curls up under a blanket, catatonic, and repeating "baby man" over and over. Still, you should avoid this book unless you wish to read it only for entertainment value.
October 31, 2014
Thought-provoking, Entertaining, Enlightening
Thoroughly fascinating read that kept my attention to the very last page. The author's premise "You can't be a hospital and a prison at he same time" is demonstrated by a smoothly flowing story, reminiscent of 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest', only from a compassionate staff psychiatrist's POV.
Dr Seager addresses the problem of mental illness and crime, which includes scammers and opportunists, who have anti-social personality disorder. They are con men, mimicking mental illness convincingly. He also brings up psychotic sociopaths, the most dangerous patients of all. They endanger fellow patients and staff alike. "I realized that the sickness of Gomorrah was violence but the symptom was denial". The author proposes changes to make state forensic mental hospitals safer for patients and staff.
Thoroughly fascinating read that kept my attention to the very last page. The author's premise "You can't be a hospital and a prison at he same time" is demonstrated by a smoothly flowing story, reminiscent of 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest', only from a compassionate staff psychiatrist's POV.
Dr Seager addresses the problem of mental illness and crime, which includes scammers and opportunists, who have anti-social personality disorder. They are con men, mimicking mental illness convincingly. He also brings up psychotic sociopaths, the most dangerous patients of all. They endanger fellow patients and staff alike. "I realized that the sickness of Gomorrah was violence but the symptom was denial". The author proposes changes to make state forensic mental hospitals safer for patients and staff.
October 20, 2014
If you think the mental health system and the penal system are both messed up, wait til they are combined. The people who work in the these types of hospital have to be the most compassionate people on earth to put up with the conditions they have to work under.
February 17, 2025
Czekałam na taką książkę długo aż się udało. Jednym słowem - świetna. Można się dowiedzieć jak wygląda praca psychiatry w szpitalu psychiatrycznym na ciężkim oddziale,jest ona mocna ale i bardzo ciekawa oraz wciągająca od początku.
November 2, 2019
I have the utmost respect for those who work in mental institutions and we probably need more people like Dr Seager. He writes of the huge respect he has for his colleagues and the humanity he finds in his patients. He is brutally honest in the conflict and confusion he finds within the institution but the overall feeling of the book is still a positive one. There are a large number of characters that are hard to keep track of, but a very thought provoking book.
January 28, 2025
„PSYCHOPACI”
Stephen Seager Wydawnictwo Filia
Jak już pewnie wiecie uwielbiam książki na faktach o psychopatach. Kiedy zobaczyłam na portalu legimi ebook „Psychopaci” nie mogłam przejść wobec niego obojętnie. Koniecznie musiałam go przeczytać. Nie żałuję.
Autor i psychiatra Stephen Seager opisuje swoją pracę w Kalifornijskim szpitalu psychiatrycznym Gorman State. Tutaj znajdują się najgorsi psychopaci na świecie. Zwłaszcza w bloku C. Pacjenci odsyłani są z więzień w celu leczenia. Niektórzy z nich mają schizofrenie paranoidalną, różnego typu paranoje, a jeszcze inni udają chorych psychicznie. Tutaj trzeba mieć oczy szeroko otwarte i nigdy nie wolno obracać się tyłem do pacjentów. Co tutaj w „Gomorze” się dzieje to głowa mała. Nie ma żadnych praw. Tutaj nikt nie liczy się z nikim. Często psychopaci atakują lekarzy, pielęgniarzy i samych siebie. Dokładnie trzeba patrzeć im na ręce. Sprawdzać, czy nie przemycili jakiś niebezpiecznych przedmiotów.
Niestety „Gomora” pochłonęła nie jedno istnienie. Dzięki autorowi możemy wejść do miejsca głęboko ukrytego przed zwykłym obywatelem. Szczerze mówiąc mało osób chciałoby pracować w takim szpitalu. Doktor Seager idąc do pracy nie był pewien czy wróci z niej żywy.
Książka „Psychopaci” głównie skupia się na pracy doktora oraz jego codziennego życia. Zabrakło mi bardziej rozwiniętych opisów pacjentów.
Po przeczytaniu „Psychopatów” jestem cały czas w szoku. Nie mogę dojść do siebie. Nigdy w życiu nie chciałaby pracować w „Gomorze”. Uważajcie żebyście wy nie trafili do podobnego szpitala.
Polecam historię doktora Seagera.
Stephen Seager Wydawnictwo Filia
Jak już pewnie wiecie uwielbiam książki na faktach o psychopatach. Kiedy zobaczyłam na portalu legimi ebook „Psychopaci” nie mogłam przejść wobec niego obojętnie. Koniecznie musiałam go przeczytać. Nie żałuję.
Autor i psychiatra Stephen Seager opisuje swoją pracę w Kalifornijskim szpitalu psychiatrycznym Gorman State. Tutaj znajdują się najgorsi psychopaci na świecie. Zwłaszcza w bloku C. Pacjenci odsyłani są z więzień w celu leczenia. Niektórzy z nich mają schizofrenie paranoidalną, różnego typu paranoje, a jeszcze inni udają chorych psychicznie. Tutaj trzeba mieć oczy szeroko otwarte i nigdy nie wolno obracać się tyłem do pacjentów. Co tutaj w „Gomorze” się dzieje to głowa mała. Nie ma żadnych praw. Tutaj nikt nie liczy się z nikim. Często psychopaci atakują lekarzy, pielęgniarzy i samych siebie. Dokładnie trzeba patrzeć im na ręce. Sprawdzać, czy nie przemycili jakiś niebezpiecznych przedmiotów.
Niestety „Gomora” pochłonęła nie jedno istnienie. Dzięki autorowi możemy wejść do miejsca głęboko ukrytego przed zwykłym obywatelem. Szczerze mówiąc mało osób chciałoby pracować w takim szpitalu. Doktor Seager idąc do pracy nie był pewien czy wróci z niej żywy.
Książka „Psychopaci” głównie skupia się na pracy doktora oraz jego codziennego życia. Zabrakło mi bardziej rozwiniętych opisów pacjentów.
Po przeczytaniu „Psychopatów” jestem cały czas w szoku. Nie mogę dojść do siebie. Nigdy w życiu nie chciałaby pracować w „Gomorze”. Uważajcie żebyście wy nie trafili do podobnego szpitala.
Polecam historię doktora Seagera.
January 31, 2025
„Psychopaci” autorstwa Stephena Seagera to reportaż, w którym autor, prywatnie lekarz psychiatra, zabiera nas do szpitala psychiatrycznego Gorman State w Kalifornii. Seager jest doświadczonym psychiatrą, a przed podjęciem pracy w Gorman State pracował w wielu podobnych placówkach, mając do czynienia z różnorodnymi pacjentami. Jednak do tego, czego doświadczył i był świadkiem w Gorman State, oraz z jakimi osobami przyszło mu współpracować, w żaden sposób nie mógł się przygotować.
Reportaż Seagera to szczera relacja z pracy z pacjentami szpitala psychiatrycznego; autor nie koloryzuje, przedstawiając wszystko w sposób bardzo autentyczny. Jego doświadczenia oraz to, z czym musiał się zmierzyć, szokują czytelnika i wzbudzają mnóstwo emocji. Szczególnie poruszające są momenty, w których autor wspomina swoją rodzinę i ich reakcje, gdy dowiedzieli się, gdzie będzie pracował. Czytając książkę, można odczuć ich strach i obawy o Seagera, a także uczucia, które towarzyszyły im każdego dnia, gdy musiał przekroczyć próg szpitala. Oprócz relacji z pracy w szpitalu autor przybliża nam również sylwetki niektórych pacjentów, z którymi miał do czynienia w swojej karierze, zabrakło mi jednak ich głębszej analizy psychologicznej.
„Psychopaci” autorstwa Stephena SeaGera to bardzo dobry reportaż, który czytałam z dużym zaciekawieniem. Nie jest to łatwa lektura, momentami wstrząsająca i przerażająca, ale z pewnością bardzo wartościowa. Dla osób interesujących się pracą psychiatry w trudnych, czasami wręcz ekstremalnych warunkach, jest to pozycja obowiązkowa.
Reportaż Seagera to szczera relacja z pracy z pacjentami szpitala psychiatrycznego; autor nie koloryzuje, przedstawiając wszystko w sposób bardzo autentyczny. Jego doświadczenia oraz to, z czym musiał się zmierzyć, szokują czytelnika i wzbudzają mnóstwo emocji. Szczególnie poruszające są momenty, w których autor wspomina swoją rodzinę i ich reakcje, gdy dowiedzieli się, gdzie będzie pracował. Czytając książkę, można odczuć ich strach i obawy o Seagera, a także uczucia, które towarzyszyły im każdego dnia, gdy musiał przekroczyć próg szpitala. Oprócz relacji z pracy w szpitalu autor przybliża nam również sylwetki niektórych pacjentów, z którymi miał do czynienia w swojej karierze, zabrakło mi jednak ich głębszej analizy psychologicznej.
„Psychopaci” autorstwa Stephena SeaGera to bardzo dobry reportaż, który czytałam z dużym zaciekawieniem. Nie jest to łatwa lektura, momentami wstrząsająca i przerażająca, ale z pewnością bardzo wartościowa. Dla osób interesujących się pracą psychiatry w trudnych, czasami wręcz ekstremalnych warunkach, jest to pozycja obowiązkowa.
September 16, 2014
There is a reason why this book is on the top best seller list, it's truly an amazing read.
The true story of one Psychiatrist, a Mr. Seager, whom excepted a job at Gomorrah State Hospital in California and the incredible journey it would take him through. It is well written and full of twists and turns that you would never expect to find from such a subject. From the very start of the book, the explicit description of scenery and magnificent surroundings of the building is breath taking. You can literally feel yourself being drawn in, as though you are right there seeing all this in the moment and for the first time. Stephen explains this hospitals history of a past dormant, though not forgotten, then into the present with his own adventures while working there.
You wont believe what goes on behind closed gates e.g: home made brews being just one.... I don't want to give anything away, Just don't let the patients near the cafeteria unchaperoned to steal fruit punch to let ferment into alcohol.
He talks about patients there that once had normal lives with 2.3 kids, a wife, wore a suit and tie to work at professional jobs. You get drawn in to their stories and you feel their pain and emotional turmoil. Don't get me wrong though, their is plenty of funny little tit bits in this unique and pleasurable book. Highly recommended.
The true story of one Psychiatrist, a Mr. Seager, whom excepted a job at Gomorrah State Hospital in California and the incredible journey it would take him through. It is well written and full of twists and turns that you would never expect to find from such a subject. From the very start of the book, the explicit description of scenery and magnificent surroundings of the building is breath taking. You can literally feel yourself being drawn in, as though you are right there seeing all this in the moment and for the first time. Stephen explains this hospitals history of a past dormant, though not forgotten, then into the present with his own adventures while working there.
You wont believe what goes on behind closed gates e.g: home made brews being just one.... I don't want to give anything away, Just don't let the patients near the cafeteria unchaperoned to steal fruit punch to let ferment into alcohol.
He talks about patients there that once had normal lives with 2.3 kids, a wife, wore a suit and tie to work at professional jobs. You get drawn in to their stories and you feel their pain and emotional turmoil. Don't get me wrong though, their is plenty of funny little tit bits in this unique and pleasurable book. Highly recommended.
November 22, 2014
I like it! First, for me, it answered questions that satisfied much more than what I had heard while growing up. As a kid, I only heard that Napa was where "crazy people" were sent to live; though never connected patients with criminality however. Perhaps the criminally insane weren't sent there at that time.
I liked that the author included information concerning notorious murders that occurred in this country over recent years. Because of Seager's inclusion of the notorious murders which tied in with the story line, I want to use it as a reference book.
The writing style, like conversation in a natural flow, made me feel as though he was telling me alone what happens there.
I liked that the author included information concerning notorious murders that occurred in this country over recent years. Because of Seager's inclusion of the notorious murders which tied in with the story line, I want to use it as a reference book.
The writing style, like conversation in a natural flow, made me feel as though he was telling me alone what happens there.
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April 23, 2022Fascinating, Thought-provoking, and at times, funny. Super page-turner!
This wastotally engrossing. I HIGHLY recommend this book. I loved his writing style and story telling. Very relatable if you've ever dealt with mental illness, worked in a prison or jail, or even a nursing home for the mentally ill. I appreciated his final message as well. It was nice to see a good self published author move over to Gallery and Simon & Schuster. BRAVO! I'm looking forward to more from Stephen Seager.
This wastotally engrossing. I HIGHLY recommend this book. I loved his writing style and story telling. Very relatable if you've ever dealt with mental illness, worked in a prison or jail, or even a nursing home for the mentally ill. I appreciated his final message as well. It was nice to see a good self published author move over to Gallery and Simon & Schuster. BRAVO! I'm looking forward to more from Stephen Seager.
August 7, 2015
This book certainly made me understand that being found not guilty by reason of insanity is perhaps much worse than being found guilty, if you have to go to a hospital such as the one described here. The only thing even worse seems like it would be actually working at one, where you can pretty much be killed by inmates who have impunity, without anything happening to the killers. Almost beyond belief.
October 13, 2014
What an insight in the criminally insane and how they are housed! Also, because of their legal and human rights how they can still continue to break the law....hurt others in many ways. Well written book but leaves one with as many questions as it answers. Thank you Dr. Seager for trying to enlighten us.
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