Voluntary MadnessMy Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin

Harrowing investigative journalism that becomes intimate self-discovery
Writer Norah Vincent is known for taking risks. For her first book, Self-Made Man, she lived in drag as a male for one and a half years. As a result, she suffered a breakdown that landed her in a psych ward — enough to scare most writers off undercover journalism for good. Not so for Vincent. She found in that institution inspiration for her latest book, Voluntary Madness, in which she once again goes incognito, this time as a psychiatric patient.

Voluntary Madness starts as investigative journalism — albeit with no pretense of objectivity — and slowly transforms into a profoundly intimate commentary on mental illness. Vincent begins by checking herself into a public hospital, ready to expose what she sees as a failed system of pharmaceutical drug pushers. As the book advances, and as Vincent checks herself into progressively better "bins," she begins to let down her journalistic guard. She turns inward, confronting her own harrowing childhood trauma, as well as the destructive behaviors and thought patterns it has created. All the while, she exposes how our conception of mental illness as precisely that — illness — creates dysfunctional mental health care systems. Tavia Gilbert narrates with the cool detachment of a psychiatrist, making listeners want to curl up for a good session on the couch.