Iatrogenic disease: do medical labels make you sick?

The book cover quotes her:

The thing with psychosis is that when I’m sick I believe the delusional stuff to the same degree that you might know the sky is above and the earth below.

Madness is a real world for the many thousands of people who are right now living within it and dying within it.

It never apologises. Sometimes it is a well of dark water with no bottom, or a levitation device to the stars. It takes away the rational minds of ordinary people. It takes our hearts, knowing death so well. This world was once my pair of horns, my pair of wings. Now we regard each other with caution and, yes, healthy respect.

Both bruised but very much alive.

We are moving away from the notion that well-educated people know all they need to know to help sick people and towards a stage when we encourage patients to speak up for themselves. This yarn is a small attempt to bring people with psychological problems in from the cold. How better to finish than with another quote from Kate Richards’ own extraordinary experience: ‘This book is for everyone living in this world, for everyone touched by this world, and for everyone seeking to further his or her understanding of it, whether you think of madness as a biological illness of the brain or an understandable part of the continuum of the human condition. Either way we – the people who inhabit this world – are in every respect just like you. We want to live well.’