A rare work of narrative non-fiction that illuminates a world most of us try not to see: the daily lives of the severely mentally ill, who are medicated, marginalized, locked away and shunned.Susan Doherty’s groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past ten … again. For the past ten years, some of the people who cycle in and out of the severely ill wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal, have found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the ward, and then follows her friends out into the world as they struggle to get through their days.
With their full cooperation, she brings us their stories, which challenge the ways we think about people with mental illness on every page. The spine of the book is the life of Caroline Evans (not her real name), a woman in her early sixties whom Susan has known since she was a bright and sunny school girl. Caroline had formed a close friendship with Susan and shared stories from her life; through her, we experience what living with schizophrenia over time is really like. She has been through it all, including the way the justice system treats the severely mentally ill: at one point, she believed that she could save her roommate from the devil by pouring boiling water into her ear…
Susan interleaves Caroline’s story with vignettes about her other friends, human stories that reveal their hopes, their circumstances, their personalities, their humanity. She’s found that if she can hang in through the first ten to fifteen minutes of every coffee date with someone in the grip of psychosis, then true communication results. Their “madness” is not otherworldly: instead it tells us something about how they’re surviving their lives and what they’ve been through. The Ghost Garden is not only touching, but carries a cargo of compassion and empathy.
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“The Ghost Garden: Inside the Lives of Schizophrenia’s Feared and Forgotten” by Susan Doherty is an eye-opening examination of the mental health system, specifically when it comes to those suffering from schizophrenia and other life-altering mental illnesses. Susan is a writer, and not in any way a psychologist, but she has spent many hours volunteering with the most severe sufferers of mental illness, schizophrenia in particular, and decided to take an up close and personal look at the effect of such a mental illness on the sufferers, and their families.
Using case studies from patients she has spoken to, Susan outlines the various and differing struggles each family and patient has. It is disturbingly obvious that those who the system fails most are those with no family support, low income, and a complicated mental health disorder, such as schizophrenia, whose symptoms seem to ebb and flow, regardless of medication. The clients and families Susan details in this book are receiving support in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and its surrounding areas. As a large, urban city, with an extensive hospital system and several mental health hospitals, there is obviously a large population of patients suffering from mental illnesses, residing independently (often on the streets), in the hospital system, and within group homes. What hit home to me is my own realization that smaller cities, rural towns and those other locales farther away from support, will have fewer cases, but the failures of the mental health system would be even more grievous.
I really enjoyed Susan’s personal approach, not only in her writing but also with the patients. In her writing, she showed the utmost respect for the individuals, with a lot of person-first language. It was obvious that Susan cared deeply for these individuals, far beyond what you would expect from an investigative writer. Susan also highlights the failings of the mental health system, but manages to give much-deserved props to the healthcare workers in these systems, knowing that those workers have large hearts and a desire to help, but the system itself is tremendously broken.
“The Ghost Garden” shows how varied the symptoms of schizophrenia can be, and how sufferers can often be shunned and stigmatized, even by those in their own families. Not only does “Garden” help a reader experience the terrible tragedy of long-term mental illness, but it also encourages an attitude of humanity and kindness. There is no thick, medical language in Doherty’s novel, and the chapters are short and engaging, as she tells the tales of patients using their own (and their families) words. An eye-opening examination of mental illness, and the impact it has on loved ones, “Ghost Garden” is an important and relevant read.
A luminous, fierce and loving portrait of our brothers and sisters who suffer in ways that can appear bewildering and frightening; that can deplete the compassion even of those who love them most — ways in which the abiding human need for connection is obscured by personal chaos. The Ghost Garden in itself is a signal and compelling act of connection, leavened with humour, clear-eyed yet packed with hope.