(51 reviews) Author: ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDFFalling into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross's thoughtful investigation of the gripping patient encounters that have challenged and deepened her practice. The majority of the patients Montross treats in Falling into the Fire are seen in the locked inpatient wards of a psychiatric hospital; all are in moments of profound crisis. We meet a young woman who habitually commits self-injury, having ingested light bulbs, a box of nails, and a steak knife, among other objects. Her repeated visits to the hospital incite the frustration of the staff, leading Montross to examine how emotion can interfere with proper care. A recent college graduate, dressed in a tunic and declaring that love emanates from everything around him, is brought to the ER by his concerned girlfriend. Is it ecstasy or psychosis? What legal ability do doctors have to hospitalize - and sometimes medicate - a patient against his will? A new mother is admitted with incessant visions of harming her child. Is she psychotic and a danger or does she suffer from obsessive thoughts? Her course of treatment - and her child's future - depends upon whether she receives the correct diagnosis.
Each case study presents its own line of inquiry, leading Montross to seek relevant psychiatric knowledge from diverse sources. A doctor of uncommon curiosity and compassion, Montross discovers lessons in medieval dancing plagues, in leading forensic and neurological research, and in moments from her own life. Beautifully written, deeply felt, Falling into the Fire brings us inside the doctor's mind, illuminating the grave human costs of mental illness as well as the challenges of diagnosis and treatment. At once rigorous and meditative, Falling into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry, allowing the reader to witness the humanity of the practice and the enduring mysteries of the mind.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 8 hours and 56 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Audible, Inc.
- Audible.com Release Date: August 1, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00E9O1T4E
Download Falling into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis PDF
Again, the opportunity to read for the Amazon Vine has presented me with an amazingly rewarding experience. Dr. Montross' book is an extraordinary excursion not only into some of the more bizarre expressions of - as her subtitle says - the mind in crisis, but also into the convoluted world of medical ethics. She even delves, with sensitivity and poignancy, into deep questions of the overlap between mental illness and spirituality, and problems of mortality.
Although some of the case studies Montross gives might seem to go beyond the plausible, I'll admit that I was absolutely convinced of their veracity in the very first chapter, titled "The Woman Who Needed a Zipper". As it happens, during my high school teaching years, one of our "motivational speakers" was a radiology technician who enthralled my students with X-rays showing a patient having exactly the same syndrome, who had swallowed an incredible array of objects - safety pins, nuts and bolts, blades of various sorts, and so on. Likewise, the author's poignant description of the tragic cases of mothers who had murdered their own children, as well as those who had NOT done so but feared their own impulses, reminded me of some of my own personal struggles with parenting. It is both sobering and reassuring to know that one is not alone in having had near homicidal (as well as suicidal) thoughts in moments of extreme stress.
Probably for me the most impressive insight that Christine Montross shared is the perception that in many circumstances where one is dealing with the extreme mental and emotional trauma, the true calling that both professionals and others often have is simply to "abide". She attributes this terminology to her colleague Dr.
I really enjoyed this book. The author, a hospital psychiatrist, tells a mix of stories about her experiences with patients. There are a number of stories throughout, such as about a women who eats objects (such as steak knives, forks, broken glass) when she is stressed, a women who thinks she might kill her son, and a man who believes his perfectly normal face is so scarred that he obsessively schedules surgeries. With these, and the other cases mentioned, the author discusses the patients lives and her attempts to work with them, as well as general background -- what the disorder might be, theories on its causes or cures, other related cases. For example, the discussion of BIDD (where people want to get amputations) is particularly interesting.
Besides being interesting and emotionally gripping -- because the reader gets caught up in the tragedy of the patients' lives -- the book also discusses and has the reader experience the short falls of the medical system. For example, the woman who swallows knives goes through very expensive treatment every time she comes in to the emergency room (which is often) yet is denied out patient care. As a result, she'll never have the support or counseling needed to get better, and a single hospital visit costs far more than a year of preventative treatment.
With the various cases you see the struggle the author goes through as a doctor -- we know very little, relatively speaking, about how the mind works so she has to rely on intuition to know whether a patient is faking it to get opiates, is bipolar or psychotic or obsessive -- yet at the same time she has to make regular decisions on treatment and whether the patient is a danger to themselves or others. The way the author deals with this ambiguity is particularly moving.
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