'Strangers to Ourselves' by Rachel Aviv

Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rachel Aviv’s Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us is a rare gem: a non-fiction book I couldn’t put down. Aviv is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and the book reads like a really long New Yorker article. It is intelligent and well-researched yet accessible and compassionate. Tellingly, it is non-prescriptive: readers should not look for pat answers here. Aviv simply tells the stories of half a dozen individuals, mostly women and including herself, for whom modern psychiatry does not suffice and often hurts as much as it helps. Aviv puts special emphasis on the narratives that arise out of diagnoses, and what it means to have mental illness become a main element of one’s story. Highly recommended for anyone interested in mental health.

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