Psychiatrists were presumed to be more entitled to eccentricities than ordinary folks.

After the hospitalization you feel marked.

But you do live after the hospital.

... drugs were used indiscriminately in mental institutions because they made management of asylums much easier: care is often institutionally efficient while less individually concerned. It is difficult to separate behaviors that have a neurological basis from symptoms and side effects induced by medications used to treat these disorders.

In our drug dazes, the object of existence was simply to pass time.

The routines of the ward added to the general sense of monotony. Shifts came and went. Meals were delivered and taken away. Everything occurred according to schedules. Medications were passed out at regular intervals. When the medications were ready, patients queued up in obedient lines to receive little plastic cups filled with multi-hued pills.

The struggle is to retain some semblance of dignity.

It cannot be easy to be the parents of children who have been diagnosed as mentally ill.

It seemed imperative not to show any feelings. Every feeling had become suspect while in the hospital. After the release I kept emotions tightly controlled to avoid re-institutionalization.

Once the wheels began churning, I was into craziness over my head.