Review By Harsimran Kaur
Rating: 4/5
Mind is complex, so are our thoughts!
What we think and how we react is not a debatable proposition. It’s just who we are; imperceptibly made by our experiences, perceptions and prejudices. Sometimes life can be a soft wave brushing politely against our ineluctable desires and ambitions, and quite often the folds of torrid waves can create a tsunami of dishevelled knots. And to our chagrin, the mind begins to weave an incendiary issue of what is morally acceptable, and probably start living in denial.
There are numerous books on depression, anxiety, OCD and other mental illnesses; the more we read about them, the more our outlook changes towards this debilitating illness. “Losing our Minds” is a comprehensive effort to bring forth to solve the complex riddle of how mental illnesses take shape, and in what propensity a behaviour is flagged to be losing our mind.
If I suffer from mental illness; I am not mad!!
I can still have opinions and be judgemental. I just have a chemical dislodging in the brain predisposing me to behave in a manner that may seem depressed, delusional, disoriented or decimated. But, with support and medication, I can have the ability to come out of the woods fine. We all have said this to ourselves at one point of time, and those who go without the needed compassion are bound to bulge into the black holes of life.
A plausible thing to remember is that people with mental illnesses are not an aberration to the sanctimonious rules of living but are characterized by their own inhibitions and reflections. The book “Losing our Minds” answers it all. It gives us a realistic view of how mental illness takes guard and how the rise has been contemporaneous to the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, words like “stress” and “anxiety” are used interchangeably without understanding if it’s really all this we are suffering from.
It may just be a passing emotion! Or are we losing the authenticity in the midst of making these terms as a peripatetic traveller disrupting its diagnosis? The answers are grim and shady.
Our cognizance to mental illnesses is no longer a rigged shoe tempting to come out of the closet. But, we still lack the knowledge of the vulnerability and susceptibility to illnesses such as GAD, OCD, Depression, Social Anxiety Disorder, anorexia, schizophrenia etc. The book extensively talks about the invincible attacks of genetic intervention, psychological deviation, unapologetic prevalence of social media and past triggers. It traverses through these paradigms to cut through the paradoxical behaviour of the human mind.
TAKE AWAY
The author “Lucy Foulkes”, being an anxiety patient herself, displays compassion and sensitivity in her writing. Her efforts to provide mental illnesses a sheltering carapace from the shibboleths and sententious out-cry is reflective of her understanding of the mind living in agony and seclusion.