Behind the gates of Gomorrah
Subtitle: a year with the criminally insane
By: Stephen B. Seager, MD
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
ISBN-13: 9781476774497
Subjects: Career in forensic psychiatry; Napa State Hospital (Calif.); Forensic psychiatry; Psychiatric hospitals; Mentally ill offenders
Description: Seager was no stranger to locked psych wards when he accepted a job at California's Gorman State hospital, known locally as "Gomorrah," but nothing could have prepared him for what he encountered when he stepped through its gates. Unit C, where Seager was assigned, was reserved for the mass murderers, serial killers, and the real-life Hannibal Lecters of the world. This account of his rookie year blends memoir with a narrative science, explaining both the aberrant mind and his own determination to remain in a job with a perilously steep learning curve.