Photo by Will Vinet.
I just found a TIME interview with Elyn Saks, author of “The Center Cannot Hold,” and found it fascinating. It begins:
“My mind has been both my best friend and my worst enemy,” says Elyn Saks, the author of The Center Cannot Hold (Hyperion). It’s hard to argue with that. While Saks has soared to the top of academia — a graduate degree from Oxford, a law degree from Yale, and a tenured professorship at the University of Southern California — she has also been shackled and involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. Saks, 52, has schizophrenia, a chronic brain disorder that affects one in a hundred Americans. People with schizophrenia (which affect men and women equally) sometimes suffer from hallucinations, delusions, and imagined voices. Saks’ remarkable new book is a voice from a country rarely heard from, the land of psychosis. Like Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen and An Unquiet Mind by Kay Jamison, The Center Cannot Hold is the beautifully written saga of a young woman grappling with mental illness and ultimately triumphing. A movie may soon be appearing at a theater near you, given Hollywood’s intense interest in the book. TIME’s publishing reporter, Andrea Sachs, met with Saks (no relation) during the author’s recent book-tour stop in Manhattan.
Here are some other excerpts:
What is the biggest misconception that people have about schizophrenia?
There are lots of misconceptions about schizophrenia, [like that] patients are truly wild. In fact, of all the major mental illnesses, they’re the least violent. People can’t hold jobs, certainly not high-powered jobs…Can’t have close friends and family. Can’t live independently. A lot of those have some truth; they’re true of a certain portion of people with schizophrenia. But it seems to me that a lot more than is now the case could be leading far more gratifying [lives]. When you tell someone, ‘you’re not going to be able to work,’ or ‘scale down your expectations,’ then they do. And yet work gives most people so much of a sense of well-being, productivity. You’re taking away from someone a thing that could be an important tool in their recovery by having these kind of negative expectations.
What advice would you give to other people suffering from mental illness?
Seek good care and a clinician you can really trust. Choose your friends wisely, and also choose friends that you can trust. Try to learn your illness — what it looks like when it starts happening, so you can take steps before it really takes you over.
What has happened since you ‘came out’ as a schizophrenic?
Most people have been enormously supportive, and kind and encouraging, and some thankful. I’m getting a lot of emails from fellow consumers. People call us mental health consumers now — that’s the P.C. way to say it. ? ? ?
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