The beautiful tale of a misunderstood girl.

books:


	• Life Inside: A Memoir Mindy Lewis Washington Square Press, 2003 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

relatable

This book isnt necesarily about going in order or believable or not, as much as the way she felt. maybe some things dont seem to be in order because the years she was hospitalized and into her 20s it seemed like things were swirling around in her head. i know some parts might not seem so believable to those who dont have anxiety or any of these issues, but for someone living it, it was such a breath of fresh air to be able to relate to this book. it isnt about whether other ppl have it worse and shes worthy of pity, but that because of everything going on in her head, she couldnt help but feel sorry for herself for a long time. i have no idea how someone who cant relate to this book would see it, but for those of us whose lives havent moved in a straight line because our feelings take us off track, this book was great. i am 22 and obv wasnt around in the 60s but i loved this book. also you might feel sorry for her during it but maybe instead of a pity party its to admire how far she came, all by herself. beautifully written. the hospital part was rather long but i guess it mustve seemed even longer to her.

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Worthwhile, but at times laborious

I think there is a place in literature for a story like Ms. Lewis tells. I thank goodness that for all the mysteries that surround mental illness still, we have come very far from where we were in the '60s.

Ms. Lewis does not really address the 'why' - why she was hospitalized in the first place. To hear her tell it, she was just a little rambunctious (and so were all her hospitalized peers). I have to believe that it was much worse than she lets on. Even so, I have a bit of a hard time feeling bad for her when she is hospitalized, because as badly as she wanted out, she refused to toe the line and do what it took to be released. She was constantly causing trouble and getting herself restricted, and she wasn't a stupid, innocent girl by any stretch of the imagination, and undoubtedly this obstinate behavior caused her very lengthy stay.

Ms. Lewis critiques her adult behavior with a fine-toothed comb, and speculates how her adult choices are affected by her hospitalization, and by her upbringing.

I really felt for her mother, who had the weight of the world on her single-parent shoulders. Ms. Lewis characterizes her as extremely dysfunctional, and blames most of her problems on her.

Certainly she was not schizophrenic as she was diagnosed in the hospital, but from her many lengthy descriptions, I saw evidence of possible bi-polar disorder. Unfortunately it seems like she never explored an alternative diagnosis that might have been treated successfully.

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I Relate

For some reason I am very curious about the care of the metally ill in the 1960's. If Mindy was sent away in the 1970's up unitl today she would have been in a group home and not treated so much as a mental patient. I can relate to how she felt the need to hide her illness from others. I love the line "...sitting on an egg waiting for it to hacth" and how it relates to my life and dealing with my illness. It does bounce back and forth alot but if you concentrate enough it all fits. I didn't like the beginning of the book because it seemed too slow but it moves along afterwards.

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Woe Is Me

Mindy Lewis was hospitalized in a teaching hospital for mentally ill adolescents and young adults, from the time she was 15 3/4 until she was a little past 18. This "memoir" describes her family situation, her friends and the staff in the hospital, and her nutty behavior at times (drinks silicone grout on the spur of the moment). Ms. Lewis blames everyone but herself for being put in the hospital. Prior to being admitted, she refused to go to school, took drugs, was promiscuous, and her mother could not control her. Her parents were divorced. Her mom worked and wanted a clean house. Her stepfather walked around in his undershorts. All of this is pretty "normal", she finds out, for teens in the 60's. Once Ms. Lewis is finally released, she goes through years and years of anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behavior, refusing to take any prescribed drugs for these sometimes debilitating conditions. Years later, she seems to have finished going through her phases. She tries to call a few psychiatrists on the carpet about wasting two years of her life in the hospital. But they don't seem to have too much remorse.

Ms. Lewis has a way with prose, but the book is extremely disorganized and confusing. She goes back and forth without letting the reader know that's what she's doing (in the end she justifies this by saying it was necessary for the book to "flow"). Her best friend Marjee, somehow goes from age 13 to 17 (but most of the time she's age 13), while Ms Lewis goes from almost 16 to 18 in the same exact time period. She also somehow manages to graduate from high school by only taking an English class - and that only when she feels like it. I also don't buy the case notes of the staff as being genuine. Another difficult story to believe was when she was in her twenties and had taken two jobs which started the same day, thinking she would considerately decide which one she wanted, on the morning she was to begin. She has an anxiety attack in the subway, and when she gets off the police immediately cuff her, saying they have received "several calls" about her (this would be in the 1970's). The cops take her to Bellevue, but she talks her way out of that. And where did she get the photo of her topless self on the cover? Did staff or another patient take it?

I'm sorry this happened to Ms. Lewis, but I guess I've just read about adolescents who've had it a lot worse. I've even known people who been through much worse. So Ms. Lewis's constant whining and feeling sorry for herself doesn't grab me and make me go "Wow - this is amazing, what this woman has gone through." It probably would have helped the book if she had included some of her much talked-about artwork, as well as photographs of her family.

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The beautiful tale of a misunderstood girl.

Life Inside has become one of my favorite books.

The story of Mindy Lewis, an almost typical teenager of the late sixties in a culture that much of society didn't know how to deal with. (Many "normal" teenagers found themselves in psych wards then as they do now.) Experimenting with drugs and boys and throwing much caution to the wind forced her mother to make a difficult decision in sending her to P.I.

The details used to paint a bleak picture of her two and a half years inside were painful and beautiful at the same time. Mindy is joined by a cast of other teenagers like herself, trapped in a world that they can only escape within themselves. She and the other youths are all in the same boat, "Am I sane or insane?"

The memoir doesn't end there on the inside but also life outside. Mindy's self-doubt about her mother and her family and a lot of reflections on what landed her at a psych hospital in the first place. The luncheon that she has with her mother where they finally have an open dialouge about her mother's decision to send her there is heartwenching. We know Mindy's side. Upon hearing her mother's side you really sympathise and wonder what else could she have done?

A loving package of memoir, storytelling, and period piece.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

The patient is an ascetically pretty 15½-year-old white female. She is intelligent, fearful, extremely anxious, and depressed.

Her rage is poorly controlled and inappropriately expressed.

Diagnostic Impression: Program for social recovery in a supportive and structured environment appears favorable.

Life Inside

In 1967, three months before her sixteenth birthday, Mindy Lewis was sent to a state psychiatric hospital by court order. She had been skipping school, smoking pot, and listening to too much Dylan. Her mother, at a loss for what else to do, decided that Mindy remain in state custody until she turned eighteen and became a legal, law-abiding, "healthy" adult.

Life Inside is Mindy's story about her coming-of-age during those tumultuous years. In honest, unflinching prose, she paints a richly textured portrait of her stay on a psychiatric ward -- the close bonds and rivalries among adolescent patients, the politics and routines of institutional life, the extensive use of medication, and the prevalence of life-altering misdiagnoses. But this memoir also takes readers on a journey of recovery as Lewis describes her emergence into adulthood and her struggle to transcend the stigma of institutionalization. Bracingly told, and often terrifying in its truths, Life Inside is a life-affirming memoir that informs as it inspires.

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