Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted

• Genre: Memoir
• Originally Published: 1993
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile level: 760L; grades 9-12; adult  
• Structure/Length: 34 chapters; approx. 192 pages; approx. 3 hours on audio
• Central Concern: The author recounts her experiences as a teen in the 1960s while she was a psychiatric patient at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. In this context, she examines society’s ambivalent definitions of mental health and illness, and the subjective nature of personality, behavior, and disorder.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Mental health concerns; self-harm; institutionalization; suicide

Susanna Kaysen, Author

• Bio: Born in 1948 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; after graduating from The Cambridge School at Weston, admitted herself to McLean Hospital at 18 upon her doctor’s urging; authored two well-received novels prior to this nonfiction work, her most popular
• Other Works: Asa, As I Knew Him (1987); Far Afield (1990); The Camera My Mother Gave Me (2001); Cambridge (2014)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• Perceptions of Mental Health
• Personality and Self-Image
• Gender and Sexism

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:

• Develop an understanding of the subjective nature of mental health diagnoses through close engagement with the author’s questioning of her own diagnosis as depicted throughout the memoir.
• Gain insight into the ways in which Perceptions of Mental Health and treatment in the US have changed over time through a comparison of the experiences described by the author with current treatment approaches.
• Analyze the ways in which personality and self-image can be perceived as disordered by modern medicine, which can influence a person’s Personality and Self-Image (Paired Resource with Chapters 31-34, "Borderline Personality Disorder," Exam Long Answer #2).
• Investigate how Gender and Sexism inform authority figures’ perceptions and treatments of mental health patients (Full Essay Assignment Prompt #2, Exam Long Answer #2).