num_pages: 352
description:  A vibrant compelling memoir from a remarkable young woman that bravely reveals the real-life havoc wrought by depression and the urgent search for solutions. Illuminating completely engagingit's essential reading for all since we all know someone whose life family or friends are touched by the disease that directly afflicts a fifth of Canadians.In her early twenties while outwardly thriving in her dream job and enjoying warm familial support and a strong social network award-winning journalist Anna Mehler Paperny found herself trapped by feelings of failure and despair. Her first suicide attemptingesting a deadly mix of sleeping pills and antifreezelanded her in the ICU followed by weeks of enforced detention that ran the gamut of horrifying boring hilarious and absurd. This was Anna's entry into the labyrinthine psychiatric care system responsible for providing care to millions of Canadians.As she struggled to survive the psych ward and as an outpatientenduring the survivor's shame of facing concerned family friends and co-workers; finding (or not) the right therapist the right meds; staying healthy insured and employedAnna could not help but turn her demanding journalist's eye on her condition and on the system in which she found herself. She set off on a quest to know her enemy interviewing leading practitioners in the field across Canada and the USfrom psychiatrists to neurological experts brain-mapping pioneers to heroic family practitioners and others dabbling in novel hypotheses. She reveals in courageously frank detail her own experiences with the pharmacological pitfalls and side effects of long-term treatment and offers moving case studies of conversations with others opening wide a window into how we treat (and fail to treat) the disease that accounts for more years swallowed up by disability than any other in the world.
language: English
title: Hello, I Want to Die Please Fix Me
publisher: Random House Canada