Status Updates From All in Your Head: Illness a...

This is an odd book wherein which I’m compelled to rate some chapters as low as 2 ☆ and others 4/5 ☆. I’ll do an overall average to come up with a final assessment. Nonfiction reads slower than fiction and life got in the way of an expedient review from me. I anticipate maybe one or two more “reading sessions” until completion. (I think I’ll want to read a “palate cleanser” next.)

Chapter 3… very repetitive.

I didn’t realize I had so much in common with the author! (I’m also a native Nutmegger saddled with an adjacent mood disorder who could be arguably categorized as a “bleeding heart lefty.”) This appears to be a provocative history delving into the anti-psychiatry movement, which literally goes back centuries. deBoer’s dialogue about the influence of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was intriguing.

"Truth-seeking shouldn't be hostage to performative alignment, and there are all manner of ugly consequences related to this refusal to be brave in calling nonsense nonsense. But [...] nobody wants to be the one who has an army of lunatic adolescents on TikTok calling for their job." lmfaooooo. This book has been kinda weak so far but every once in awhile there's that deBoer no-bullshit

"[Anti-psychiatry] turns suffering into spectacle, turns real damaged people and their real damaged lives into a chin-stroking slogan, and then it walks away."

repetitive so far but interesting

"As is so often true in American life, a deeply influential intellectual and cultural movement seems offended by the notion that it may have been effective."

"With very few exceptions, every problem I describe in this book is a problem that developed because basically good people cared sincerely for the mentally ill and tried to do the right thing."

Accidental revelation on why I think I jive with deBoer's writing even when I don't agree with his conclusions. This "the good intentions led us somewhere weird" perspective is something I greatly agree with on many topics.

Found out about this via a revisit to his Gentrification of Disability essay, which is triple platinum in my house. Fuck yes. One rating is a 5 star and the other is a 1 star. Pot stirringgggggggg

Reviewing for Library Journal.