Life Inside A Memoir

The patient is an ascetically pretty 15-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 InsideIn 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 Insideis 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 Insideis a life-affirming memoir that informs as it inspires.

Mindy Lewis, a graphic artist, painter, and writer, has published essays in Lilith magazine and in two anthologies, Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper and Voices from the Couch. She lives in New York City.