Unhinged

June 16, 2014
Berry recounts years spent combatting mental illness, her own as well as her family’s, in this uneven memoir. While Berry demonstrates her awareness of how difficult it is to diagnose mental illness and the present state of care in the U.S. for those afflicted, her personal stories of her own family’s struggle lack empathy. Her palpable resentment of both her mother’s and her brother’s manipulative natures undermines her goal of shedding light on the destructive—and involuntary—nature of living with mental illness. The family drama is enthralling, yet very little of it imparts compassion or understanding. It also becomes clear that Berry regularly falls in with people who treat her poorly: the men she dates, the friends she keeps, and the psychiatrists she sees are vicious and cruel, to the point of caricature. Unfortunately, she rarely reflects on her own actual thoughts or circumstances, save for seeing them as a generalized “black hole” of frustration. Berry’s account of dealing with mental illness doesn’t answer much about the experience of psychotic breaks, but it does reveal the cruel ways people treat one another.