Breakdown: A Personal Crisis and a Medical Dilemma - Softcover

Sutherland, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198523718 ISBN 13: 9780198523710

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Fifteen years ago, Stuart Sutherland, himself a psychologist, suffered a severe mental breakdown. In the first edition of this work, he recounted his experiences of this agonizing event with remarkable candour and perception. His illness lasted, with intermissions, for 10 years. In this updated edition, he describes its consequences, which were often bizarre. As a psychologist, the author was prompted by his illness to rethink the problems of the care and treatment of the mentally ill, and in the book he examines the benefits and pitfalls of the many methods of treatment. His controversial review will cause concern among many psychiatrists and psychotherapists, but he has undoubtedly succeeded in penetrating the ignorance and prejudice surrounding mental illness.

About this title

Review

'Incisive, unsentimental, whole unsparing, but full of humour and humanity (and often very funny), Breakdown remains one of the best accounts I know of a personal journey through manic depression. I think it will take its place among the modern classics of this literature.' Oliver Sacks

About the Author

Stuart Sutherland, born in 1928, was Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex where he founded the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. A prolific columnist and contributor to the Observer, the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph, and is best known for his iconoclastic book Irrationality, which was first published in 1992, and Breakdown, his candid and movingly personal account of his manic depression. He died of a heart attack in 1998.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0198523718
• ISBN 13: 9780198523710
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 314