Summary of Susannah Cahalan's The Great Pretender

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Psychiatry, as a field, has made great strides in recent years. However, it still lags behind other medical fields in terms of innovation. While it recognizes that serious mental illnesses are legitimate brain disorders, it does not have any objective measures to diagnose them.

#2 The question of how to define mental illness is one that has risen above semantics. It shapes everything from how we medicate, treat, and insure patients to how we police and whom we choose to imprison.

#3 I had never known anything about madness other than what I had learned in school or through my family. I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and the doctors had seen a schizoaffective patient. They were wrong. But in nearly any other case, they would have been right.

#4 Psychiatry is a field that makes judgments about people, their personalities, beliefs, and morality. It is a mirror that is held up to the society in which it is practiced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822545700

IRB Media

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Insights on Susannah Cahalan's The Great Pretender

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Psychiatry, as a field, has made great strides in recent years. However, it still lags behind other medical fields in terms of innovation. While it recognizes that serious mental illnesses are legitimate brain disorders, it does not have any objective measures to diagnose them.

#2

The question of how to define mental illness is one that has risen above semantics. It shapes everything from how we medicate, treat, and insure patients to how we police and whom we choose to imprison.

#3

I had never known anything about madness other than what I had learned in school or through my family. I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and the doctors had seen a schizoaffective patient. They were wrong. But in nearly any other case, they would have been right.

#4

Psychiatry is a field that makes judgments about people, their personalities, beliefs, and morality. It is a mirror that is held up to the society in which it is practiced.

#5

I spent four years after my diagnosis collecting facts about my disease, about ages of onset, and about new advances in infusion treatments. I was determined to spread the word about my disease so that no others were left undiagnosed.

#6

I had thought I was done examining my own story after I published my memoir. But once you’ve come face-to-face with real madness, you can never turn your back again.

#7

I had to look backward to see the future. I had to examine the beliefs I had about the mind and brain, and figure out where the divide between brain illness and mental illness lie.

#8

The young woman, named Nellie Bly, was sent to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell Island to write a first-person narrative about the conditions there. She had to prove that she was insane in order to get inside the asylum.

#9

In the late 1800s, people who were diagnosed with hysteria were not actually sick, but they were still treated as if they were. This bred a widespread