Autobiographical accounts of illnesses and disorders have enjoyed huge popularity in the past decade. There has been a glut of publications of every sort; on every conceivable condition, from the points of view by every conceivable person concerned with the disorder. There have been numerous reasons advanced for why a person would share in print, experiences that have caused them considerable distress. Cait Irwin in Monochrome Days candidly admits to using it as personal therapy whereas Mathilde Monaque is at some pains to stress her altruistic credentials in ensuring the redemption of her readers. The differences do not end there.
Irwin's tone is measured and her prose lucid. She does not need to take refuge in hyperbole or a sensationalistic need to ‘shock’ her audience into awareness and acceptance. Her account is reinforced throughout by sound evidence base from a psychiatrist done in a very naturalistic fashion within the text. The use of a journalist to investigate and report on male depression is intriguing but understated.
There are valuable pen pictures of the internal landscapes of depression as befits an artist and author. She describes a particularly moving account of her own and her mother's thoughts prior to her first appointment with a psychiatrist. It is a salutary lesson for any mental health professional on how many unspoken hopes and fears hinge on that first contact.
There are useful lists of further reading, frequently asked questions and bibliography presented in a very non-intrusive fashion. At no point is there a feeling of sterile facts blandly laid out in the manner of regulation health promotion fact sheets.
The only minor irritant was the grey sidebars of information about males with depression that interrupt the text. Even in acknowledging the need for the material, I found their content distracting me from the thrust of the main material and wished it had been done differently.
Very different were both the style and content of Monaque's account of her ‘fight’ against depression. Even accounting for an average adolescent's self-absorption it is difficult to escape the feeling that this book is a self-indulgent rant. Her tone alternates between being condescending and contemptuous. The egocentric account leaves the reader with very little information on depression but with a great deal of extraneous information on what it is like to be Mathilde Monaque. The pathos of the account is purely unconscious: that of a young person surrounded by a prickly hedge of defences and rationalisation, afraid to connect with her audience. The discovery of her being a ‘gifted’ adolescent goes some way towards explaining her alienation but does not explain the anger that runs through her narrative. The subtext of an eating disorder further muddies the waters.
It is difficult to assess how this book would be read by its presumed adolescent audience but I would have some misgivings in recommending it, given the little value it places on the treatment process. The best of this book is the very sincere afterword by her psychologist which gives a succinct account of adolescent depression and is a reflection of a relationship of trust between a troubled adolescent and a concerned adult which is probably the cornerstone of all successful therapy.
I could not have been asked to review two books on the same topic that approached the subject matter more differently – one I would readily use for psychoeducation but the other is what I suspect an adolescent would actually read and empathise with.
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