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This book is an account of what mental illness looks like from the inside. But it is also a map of my evolution as a scientist and a person. It is the story of an incredible journey, one from which I could not have imagined I would ever return. It is a story that I never thought I would be able to tell, of how I went from being a scientist studying mental disorders to being a mental patient myself—and how, remarkably, I came back.
This book is an account of what mental illness looks like from the inside. But it is also a map of my evolution as a scientist and a person. It is the story of an incredible journey, one from which I could not have imagined I would ever return. It is a story that I never thought I would be able to tell, of how I went from being a scientist studying mental disorders to being a mental patient myself—and how, remarkably, I came back.
The above quote nicely summarizes the essence of this book and why you should read it. Barbara Lipska has been working at NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) for 30 years. She heads up the Brain Bank, which contains a thousand brains of the mentally ill. These brains are used by scientists to study mental illness, to better understand it and to further our search for a cure.
Dr. Lipska’s area of expertise is the relationship between the brain and schizophrenia. Until the 1990s, schizophrenia was thought to result from being raised by a schizophrenogenic mother (lacking warmth or attachment). Now we know there are brain abnormalities associated with this mental illness. Dr. Lipska was involved with studying altered rat brains with resulting behavioral changes akin to schizophrenia. But several years ago she found herself suffering from similar symptoms. The almost bizarre irony of her situation is not lost on Dr. Lipska — she titles her first chapter, “The Rat’s Revenge.”
It must have been extremely difficult and practically terrifying to have studied the relationship between the brain and mental illness only to find yourself as practically a real-life experiment. We can only imagine what it was like but Lipska succeeds at conveying her anxiety, concerns and frustrations over what she is experiencing in this unfathomable situation.
Although I'm an expert in the brain, I'm repelled by what's going on inside my own.
From my long experience studying schizophrenia, I know that brain problems lead to poor judgment and an inability to recognize one's own mental deficits. But at this moment, all my years of professional expertise aren't helping me see things as they really are: I'm losing my mind—and my life.
In fact, she seems truly tormented at times and for good reason:
The world around me seems more and more peculiar, and my confusion often morphs into anger.
...all of my least likable characteristics...are growing more exaggerated as the days go by. I'm becoming the worst version of myself...
The addition of her expert hindsight adds to the perceived emotional turmoil and allows the reader to experience it along with her.
My emotional overreactions—anger, suspicion, impatience—suggest that my frontal lobe is undergoing catastrophic changes. But these warning signs are lost on me. As an expert on mental illness, I, more than most people, should be able to see that I'm acting strangely. But I can't. Although I don't know it yet, my six tumors and the swelling around them are shutting down the frontal cortex, the part of the brain that allows for self-reflection. Paradoxically, I need my frontal cortex in order to understand that mine has gone missing.
Barbara Lipska is a very courageous woman who suffered through two bouts of cancer. This story deals with her second time, which involved metastatic melanoma in her brain. The book details her diagnoses and treatments of multiple brain tumors, the effects of which reverberate through her family and interactions with others. The miraculous part of her story is that she lived to tell it.
I studied the brain for decades and conducted research in mental illness, but my brush with madness gave me firsthand experience of what it’s actually like to lose your mind and then recover it.
There are a few reviewers I’ve come across who question whether Barbara Lipska really did in fact “lose her mind.” Let’s take a look at NAMI’s (National Alliance on Mental Illness) definition: “A mental illness is a condition that affects a person's thinking, feeling or mood. Such conditions may affect someone’s ability to relate to others and function each day.” The book specifically details the changes in her thinking, feeling AND mood. We see her suddenly forgetting where she lives, becoming paranoid about close family members’ perceived betrayal and we witness her extreme irritability. Certainly this definition fits with what her life had become.
In addition to an accounting of Dr. Lipska’s personal experience, the reader gets a bonus in terms of detailed learning about the brain, what can go wrong and exciting new immunological treatments to fix it.
Despite conducting research on mental illness for over thirty years, I believe it is my own suffering that truly taught me how the brain works—and how profoundly frightening it is when our minds fail. I personally experienced how scary it is to live in a world that makes no sense, where there is no logic because the past is quickly forgotten and the future can't be planned or foreseen.
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