36 review for Insanity: A Love Story: A Memoir of Madness and Mania

1. 

   5 out of 5

   Nina – Apr 08, 2012

   Have you ever wondered if you were losing your mind? Many of us use that phrase almost jokingly, never paying much attention to what it really feels like to lose touch with reality, to spend time in a mental hospital. Melissa Miles McCarter shares her journey in raw, gut-wrenching honesty. She describes a childhood of shyness and extreme sensitivity, high school and college years of abrupt mood swings, delusions, and seeking validation and self-worth through romantic relationships. She details h Have you ever wondered if you were losing your mind? Many of us use that phrase almost jokingly, never paying much attention to what it really feels like to lose touch with reality, to spend time in a mental hospital. Melissa Miles McCarter shares her journey in raw, gut-wrenching honesty. She describes a childhood of shyness and extreme sensitivity, high school and college years of abrupt mood swings, delusions, and seeking validation and self-worth through romantic relationships. She details her psychotic break at the age of 22, and the resulting stay in a mental hospital, with language that shimmers. Her descriptions and imagery are lush. She uses present tense when describing events leading up to, and including, her hospitalization, which makes her story immediate. McCarter does not bash the mental health system, although she does wonder why the many psychiatrists she saw before her first hospitalization relied on writing prescriptions rather than using therapeutic techniques to uncover her mental illness. She shows great insight and self-knowledge as she tells us that being stabilized on the appropriate medications was like “learning to walk again after years in a body cast.” She had to learn a new way of living, a way that isn’t controlled by her moods. She acknowledges that her creativity was perhaps spurred by her mania, and she has to come to terms with maintaining a creative life while maintaining predictability. She calls herself “a work in progress.” She also openly claims “the creativity, the uniqueness, the certain way of processing the world made possible” by being bipolar. She shows that it is possible to live and thrive with this diagnosis, despite a major setback in 2003 when her infant daughter died of SIDS. McCarter offers a rare gift by opening her life, her world, her reality. This act took a great deal of courage, especially in light of her many statements about the shame and stigma of mental illness. Thank, you, Melissa, for using your talent as a writer, and offering the gift of you to us.

2. 

   5 out of 5

   David Jester – Nov 30, 2012

   It seems I have a lot of life experiences in common with the author, so I hoped this book would be a true reflection of those experiences; it did not disappoint. Living with bipolar disorder, the author takes us on a journey through a turbulent life which has led to a stay in a psychiatric hospital. The book begins with a brief explanation of her life before her time in the hospital. A life characterized by changing moments of clarity and confusion. A life riddled with a number of delusions, incl It seems I have a lot of life experiences in common with the author, so I hoped this book would be a true reflection of those experiences; it did not disappoint. Living with bipolar disorder, the author takes us on a journey through a turbulent life which has led to a stay in a psychiatric hospital. The book begins with a brief explanation of her life before her time in the hospital. A life characterized by changing moments of clarity and confusion. A life riddled with a number of delusions, including one that takes her to the psychiatric hospital, as she follows her parents there on the belief that she is being taken to an actual hospital to cure her of an impending “fatal heart attack”. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the fellow patients in the hospital. The angry, the sedated and the downright dark individuals who inhabit the building, rounded off with the story of one man who believes he is a CIA assassin and sporadically leaves the hospital to commit his headhunting crimes. Life has not been kind to Melissa and has thrown a number of setbacks her way, but she shines through and lays it out in beautiful prose for everyone to see. It’s not an easy thing to do and yet I’m glad she did. This is a really good book and a great insight into dealing with mental illness.

3. 

   5 out of 5

   Janice Warren –

4. 

   4 out of 5

   Nicole Kline –

5. 

   5 out of 5

   Judy Huff –

6. 

   5 out of 5

   Joanna –

7. 

   5 out of 5

   Pat Wright –

8. 

   5 out of 5

   Melissa McCarter – May 09, 2015

9. 

   4 out of 5

   Coley Myers –

10. 

    5 out of 5

    yvonne minth –

11. 

    5 out of 5

    Jesika –

12. 

    5 out of 5

    Natalie –

13. 

    5 out of 5

    Melissa McCarter – Jan 18, 2012

14. 

    4 out of 5

    Daisy –

15. 

    5 out of 5

    Sandi* –

16. 

    4 out of 5

    Chelsey –

17. 

    4 out of 5

    Nikaya –

18. 

    4 out of 5

    Kasane Teto –

19. 

    5 out of 5

    Kristina Miller –

20. 

    4 out of 5

    Laura F –

21. 

    4 out of 5

    New Atlantis –

22. 

    4 out of 5

    Amanda Onks –

23. 

    4 out of 5

    Aashish Vidam –

24. 

    5 out of 5

    Erica –

25. 

    5 out of 5

    Nancy –

26. 

    4 out of 5

    John Wimmer –

27. 

    5 out of 5

    Susanne George –

28. 

    4 out of 5

    Adele –

29. 

    5 out of 5

    Carmen –

30. 

    5 out of 5

    Felicia –

31. 

    4 out of 5

    Aylin –

32. 

    4 out of 5

    AMRC –

33. 

    5 out of 5

    Ceci –

34. 

    4 out of 5

    Ally Cheney –

35. 

    4 out of 5

    Brooke –

36. 

    4 out of 5

    Angela C. –