Full name: The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

Authors: Darby Penney, Peter Stastny Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Psychology, Biographies, Historical fiction, Health Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads Amazon LibraryThing ISBNs: 9781934137147 1934137146

The Lives They Left Behind is a deeply moving testament to the human side of mental illness, and of the narrow margin which so often separates the sane from the mad.  It is a remarkable portrait, too, of the life of a psychiatric asylum--the sort of community in which, for better and for worse, hundreds of thousands of people lived out their lives. More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients' belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving-and devastating-group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care. Similar books: 9 Highland Road by Michael Winerip Gracefully Insane by Alex Beam The Lobotomist by Jack El-Hai The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker Is There No Place on Earth for Me? by Susan Sheehan Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly Bunk by Kevin Young No One Cares About Crazy People by Ron Powers Mad in America by Robert Whitaker Bedlam by Kenneth Paul Rosenberg Bygone Badass Broads by Mackenzi Lee Falling Into the Fire by Christine Montross Scandals of Classic Hollywood by Anne Helen Petersen Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans by Brian Kilmeade Victoria by Julia Baird Georgiana by Amanda Foreman Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown