Life Inside: A Memoir

Life Inside: A Memoir
by Mindy Lewis

Life Inside: A Memoir
List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $7.85
You Save: $6.15 (44%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Mindy Lewis
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-11-04
ISBN: 0743411501
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Washington Square Press

Book Reviews of Life Inside: A Memoir

Book Review: Well Written
Summary: 5 Stars

It was the 60's. Political and social upheaval uprooted even the most grounded of families. Mindy Lewis had just transferred to a prestigious art school but due to her difficulty and impaired ability to cope with her parents' separation, she skips class, experiments with drugs, and tries to substitute the love she felt was absent at home with flirtation with other boys. Her mother could no longer tolerate this behavior and had her court remanded to New York State Psychiatric Institute.

In the 60's, prior to deinstitutionalization, State hospitals were at their highest populations. The length of stay 40 years ago is not the same as it is today. Now in private hospitals insurance closely monitors expenses, aiming for quick stabilization and medication management, but in the 60's if you were placed in a state hospital involuntarily you gave them a continuous source of income without the worry of insurance companies. If you didn't show great improvements, they had every reason to throw out the key.

During her stay at NYSPI she was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, as schizophrenia was a very common diagnosis. She was a guinea pig for the latest neuroleptics and the latest resident psychiatrists. Inside she lashes out and becomes defiant, manages to escalate to promiscuity with the other male patients, and made suicide gestures because she is faced with the choice of complying with the rules and she might eventually go home to the mother who is suffocating her or stay inside but maintain some semblance of freedom until she is 18.

Mindy Lewis writes the way we process, as if our internal dialogue was being documented on paper. She shares what it's like to become institutionalized, then to recover. Life Inside chronicles Mindy Lewis' friendships and tragedies and the consequences of 28 months in a state hospital.

Summary of Life Inside: A Memoir

The patient is an ascetically pretty 15½-year-old white female. She is intelligent, fearful, extremely anxious, and depressed. Her rage is poorly controlled and inappropriately expressed.

Diagnostic Impression: Program for social recovery in a supportive and structured environment appears favorable.

Life Inside

In 1967, three months before her sixteenth birthday, Mindy Lewis was sent to a state psychiatric hospital by court order. She had been skipping school, smoking pot, and listening to too much Dylan. Her mother, at a loss for what else to do, decided that Mindy remain in state custody until she turned eighteen and became a legal, law-abiding, "healthy" adult.

Life Inside is Mindy's story about her coming-of-age during those tumultuous years. In honest, unflinching prose, she paints a richly textured portrait of her stay on a psychiatric ward -- the close bonds and rivalries among adolescent patients, the politics and routines of institutional life, the extensive use of medication, and the prevalence of life-altering misdiagnoses. But this memoir also takes readers on a journey of recovery as Lewis describes her emergence into adulthood and her struggle to transcend the stigma of institutionalization. Bracingly told, and often terrifying in its truths, Life Inside is a life-affirming memoir that informs as it inspires.

Authors Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalled ImageBloomsbury Recalled
by Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.37
Price in other shops: $29.00
William Tyndale: A Biography ImageWilliam Tyndale: A Biography
by David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America ImageNeither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America
by Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops: $45.00
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics) ImageStorm of Steel (Penguin Classics)
by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops: $16.00
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life ImageSurprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
by C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.22
Price in other shops: $18.00
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library) ImageRoughing It (The Penguin American Library)
by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.66
Price in other shops: $16.00
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98 ImageLife Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98
by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.60
Price in other shops: $15.00
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) ImageShakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops: $13.99
The Professor and the Madman CD ImageThe Professor and the Madman CD
by Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.47
Price in other shops: $14.95
Alexander Hamilton: A Life ImageAlexander Hamilton: A Life
by Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.91
Price in other shops: $32.50
Similar Books and other products
Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill ImageMad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill
by Robert Whitaker
Basic Books; Published: 2010-05-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.92
Price in other shops: $17.50
Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals ImageAsylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals
by Christopher Payne
The MIT Press; Published: 2009-09-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $25.65
Price in other shops: $45.00
Danvers State: Memoirs Of A Nurse In The Asylum ImageDanvers State: Memoirs Of A Nurse In The Asylum
by Barbara Stilwell
AuthorHouse; Published: 2004-11-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.07
Price in other shops: $12.95
Ten Days in a Mad-house ImageTen Days in a Mad-house
by Nellie Bly
CreateSpace; Published: 2009-12-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.95
My Lobotomy ImageMy Lobotomy
by Howard Dully, Charles Fleming
Broadway; Published: 2008-08-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness ImageThe Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness
by Lori Schiller, Amanda Bennett
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 1996-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops: $13.99
The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic ImageThe Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
by Darby Penney, Peter Stastny
Bellevue Literary Press; Published: 2009-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.76
Price in other shops: $14.95
Nobody's Child ImageNobody's Child
by Marie Balter, Richard Katz
Da Capo Press; Published: 1992-06-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.59
Price in other shops: $16.50
Ten Days in a Mad-House ImageTen Days in a Mad-House
by Nellie Bly
CreateSpace; Published: 2011-07-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.26
Price in other shops: $6.94
Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital ImageGracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital
by Alex Beam
PublicAffairs; Published: 2003-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.69
Price in other shops: $15.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories