Write your own review!
Eileen Wa.
Very Personal
This book was a very personal journey for me. In the 60's I had a clinical rotation in a mental institution and observed the scenes that Dr. Baird described. Also, at that time, had a family member going through the same journey. With the introduction of lithium, this family member benefited from the biomedical research that Dr.
Baird was interested in.
I can see that this would be a special interest book for those interested in mental illness. I admire Mimi Baird for her courage to want and tell her story, however disturbing it may be.
Maggie A., New Jersey
Eloquent and disturbing
This short, interesting book brings to light the experiences of a physician whose promising career was ruined by bipolar disorder back in the 1940s. Medications like Lithium were not available at that time, and it was common for manic phase patients to be hospitalized and brutally "treated" with methods like being tied to a bed wearing a straitjacket for long periods of time.
Dr. Perry Baird kept an eloquent journal of his experiences, writing even when he was hospitalized and experiencing symptoms. Most of the first part of the book consists of this journal.
In the second part of the book, Baird's daughter Mimi
…more describes how she found her father's long-lost writings, and she tells us about his early accomplishments and later struggles.
Baird's journal is eloquent and heartbreaking. He was a gifted physician who had professional insight into what was happening to him. Occasionally the journal deteriorates into odd jottings such as, "Two red chickens out in front. Danger, danger, danger," but most of it is clear and engaging. Perhaps the most remarkable section is Baird's account of his successful escape from a mental institution during a lull in his symptoms. (less)This book could have been great. But it came across as dispassionate and cold. It was a good look into how we as a society treated (both medically and personally) the mentally ill during most of the 20th century. It's descriptions of his treatments should have left me disturbed and angry, instead I was analyzing why the doctors felt this was the right choice. I should have felt sympathy for his daughter who spent years not seeing or knowing what was going on with her father. Instead I felt disappointed that she took the obscure answers her mother gave with out pressing harder. I did feel that I gained some
…more understanding of how our knowledge and treatment of the mentally ill has thankfully changed. (less)I was disappointed in this book, as it did not seem to live up to the subtitle, as far as medical genius. Except for the backstory by the protaganist's daughter, most of the book consisted of journal entries by the doctor in various phases of psychosis. His theories and research were barely mentioned. It was very sad as far as his hopeless medical situation and the stigma and dreadful treatment in that era, but the journal entries became somewhat tedious. It was easy to find compassion for him and his daughter who never really know him, but the book itself was not engaging to me.
Book clubs might find this interesting for discussions.
Ann B. (Kernville, CA)
Enlightening but monotone study of a father's bi-polarity
While this book offers a unique and enlightening look into what is now known as bi-polar disorder, I wanted it to be more compelling in terms of its narrative. The father's journal was fascinating and both parts of the book -- his and Ms Baird's -- featured solid writing. But there was little craft. It laid the story out in a straightforward manner and thereby suffered from a monotone. I wanted less explanation and more reflection in Ms Baird's section.
Kelli R. (Birmingham, AL)
Author's Quest to Know Her Father
I felt immediate empathy for Mimi Baird and her desire to know the physician father who "disappeared" from her life when she was 6 years old, and was dead 15 years later at the age of 55. Despite only having a few years with him, there is an indelible bond between father and daughter, a sense of loss that haunts Mimi throughout her life, and the writing and publication of this book was her "quest to know him." The book includes a fascinating and substantial manuscript written by her father in the 1940s which describes in excruciating detail his (mis)treatment as a manic depressive by a state mental institution.
…more Dr. Perry Baird's account swings from the voice of a brilliant Harvard-educated physician examining his own illness ("the brutalities one encounters in state and city psychopathic hospitals must be the by-product of the fear and superstition with which mentally ill patients are regarded") to the voice of a seriously delusional man in the throes of his manic-depression. The book as a whole, however, feels a bit piecemeal and incomplete. In the end, I was left wanting more even though I knew that Mimi Baird had given us everything she had - it just wasn't that much. (less)This book is a bald, brutal, deeply disturbing look at mental illness from the perspective of the ultimate insider – Harvard educated physician Perry Baird who suffered from bi-polar disorder and wrote about his experiences in mental institutions during the 1930's through the 1950's.
Mimi Baird was 6 years old when her father disappeared from her life in 1944 during a time when nobody spoke about mental illness. People were locked away and forgotten. Her mother refused to talk about it, divorced Baird while he was institutionalized, and remarried quickly. In 1994 – 35 years after her father's death – Mimi
…more discovered her father had written about his barbaric treatment at the hands of mid 20th Century mental health professional and had conducted his own research into the potential physiological causes of the mental illness.
The book is really two stories: Dr. Baird's spiral into the vortex of mental illness and Mimi Baird's search for the father she lost.
I found this book fascinating and heart rending. But I can't say I liked it. Reading the chapters that described how people in mental institutions were treated felt painful and nauseating as if a bandage stuck to a wound was being yanked off and pulling the scab with the bandage. (less)As the reader, I was never sure as to whether or not I should believe all of Dr. Baird's account of his hospitalizations in two mental institutions 1940's, which was somewhat disconcerting. I liked the book, I gave it a 3, but I was mostly interested in the daughter's search for her father, and what his absence had done to her. I admired her final determination to give him a voice and record his life as well as she could from his own record, correspondence, and medical records. She states that to finish the book was one thing she most wanted to do in life. I am glad I got to read her final product.
.gif)
