User:Rashnibour

Writing Therapy, by Tim Atkinson

This novel, published in 2008, explores the therapeutic use of writing in the treatment of mental illness. The protagonist, who starts the book as Frances Nolan but whose name changes midway through the book to Sophie Western, suffers from depression. Truanting from school, she spends her days in the local library reading 'more books than is good for her' and ultimately believing she is a character. Events are thus dictated for her by an external author. Out-of-control, she becomes seriously mentally ill, is hospitalised and ultimately cured thanks to the intervention of a young trainee, who manages to persuade the girl that she is the author of her destiny.

The book is set in the 1980's at a time when routine treatment of the mentally ill took place in large, often Victorian, psychiatric hospitals or asylums. The anti-psychiatry movement of progressive mental-health professionals such as R.D.Laing was often set in direct opposition within such institutions to traditional chemical and surgical procedures such as ECT. This debate - which is by no means settled to this day - is personalised in the novel as a struggle between two individuals: Ted, the Charge-Nurse in the Adolescent Unit, and a student psychiatric nurse called Will.