The last post on his LiveJournal is one word: “Goodbye.”
How and Jacques Peters got there takes up the balance of this poignant and powerful book as it follows Peters' life and his mental health crisis during his years at Wales High School. It strives to shed “light on issues of access and stigma.”
It delivers. Big time.
The Foreword is written by the author’s father. It is very moving. In the Preface, in fact, readers are told to be prepared for “joy, hope, grief, and even panic-stricken horror as this story unfolds.” Indeed, Wales High School: First Diagnosis is a “front row view” of high school in the early 200s during the rise of the “millennial generation.”
The author describes himself as neither athletic nor a “brainiac.” Thus, he doesn’t really fit into any of the usual high school social circles. He joins the debate team and volunteers in the Alzheimer’s unit of a local nursing home. He also charts the progression of social isolation and other frustrations and “hitting the ground floor of depression" during this time. Also the downward spiral to a “full-blown crisis” that ensues.
Jacques’s parents get him to a psychiatric hospital. He finds it a “foreign” and “hostile” place. He’s confused and frustrated with the numbing effects of medication, et. al. Also discussed is his “potential for both greatness… and self-destruction” as well as his “unresolved anger, bitterness, and feelings of rejection.” He applies to colleges from the psych ward and starts planning for the future. The gloom starts to lift after he graduates from Wales High School.
Told in the first person, this is a heartfelt and piercing story about one young man’s battle with not only mental health, but also with the local high school, social isolation, the education system, and the medical and mental health communities. The prose is intense and penetrating as it chronicles deficiencies and difficulties encountered in all of the above as well as how difficult it can be for both a patient and the patient’s family to find adequate treatment and help.
This is not a light read, nor is it an easy one. It is searingly transparent. Authentic. And disturbing. It is also eye-opening. One of the stated reasons for writing the memoir is to help readers “better understand how the mental health system works so that, should they find themselves with a diagnosis, they are more prepared to find help when they need it.”
It succeeds. In spades.
My Rating: 3.5
