First Person Accounts of Mental Illness and Recovery. Edited by Craig Winston LeCroy & Jane Holschuh. Wiley. 2012. £33.99 (pb). 516pp. ISBN: 9780470444528

I can still remember the first time I heard a patient talk about what it felt like to be ill. I was 19 and in my second year of pre-clinical training. It was educational and humbling, informative in ways that he would probably not have imagined possible (I knew really very little about healthcare or, in fact, illness). Hearing his experience of his relationship with his doctor brought, for a moment, the reality of what my chosen career might entail sharply into focus; something clicked.

Years later, I am still surprised at how few first-person accounts are used in postgraduate medical education. One might argue that they are unnecessary given that trainee psychiatrists encounter such stories aplenty in their day-to-day clinical work. Or that popular culture bombards us with just these sorts of first-person accounts of mental illness, or that postgraduate training has enough to incorporate as it is. That, however, would miss the mark, and this book is a salient reminder of the importance of first-person narratives within psychiatric training.

The first-person narrative stands in a very different relation to the clinician than either patient history or ‘pop-memoir’. It is an entity quite apart from a patient’s history or chronological collection of symptoms and invites us to learn uniquely as neither responsible clinician nor proxy-narrator. It acts to deepen our understanding of the experience of having a mental illness, appreciate what recovery might mean and the multiplicity of means through which it may be achieved. There is no doubt that first-person narratives are also a strong argument against stigma. Much of this is exemplified by the recovery model, which is now well-established as a central philosophy within mental healthcare delivery.

First Person Accounts of Mental Illness and Recovery is a collection of 60 such narratives, arranged around the DSM-IV and covering mental disorders from schizophrenia to dissociative and sleep disorders. The accounts are wonderfully heterogeneous and widely applicable, although, on occasion, feel rather too American for the British market. Many accounts stand out but worth mentioning are: the psychiatrist who developed schizophrenia, the love letter to whisky from a recovering alcoholic and Tolstoy’s beautiful 1887 account of his own depressive illness. This is a book which provides new perspectives on common experience.