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March Book Club: Hospital (S4E2)
80 Plays19 days ago
A daring literary account of a young woman’s experience of psychosis by Bengali-Australian writer Sanya Rushdi.
This March, our book club discussion features Hospital, which explores the experience of psychosis and subsequent hospitalisation, drawn from the author's real-life experience. We unpack the limitations of the medical model approach towards treatment of mental health issues, shared decision-making, and the importance of empowerment and identity in recovery.
- Book club info, detailed show notes, and other links: linktree.com/novel_feelings
- Get a 10% discount through Amplify Bookstore with the code NOVELFEELINGS10: http://amplifybookstore.com/products/novel-feelings-book-club
Additional content notes for this episode: involuntary hospitalisation, stigma of psychosis, harmful psychiatric treatments, coerced medication prescribing
Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri Land, which is home to both of us in Naarm/Melbourne. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
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Transcript
Introduction and Book Club Partnership
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Novel Feelings, where two psychologists take a deep dive into your favorite novels. I'm Priscilla. And I'm Elise. And today we're bringing you a review of Hospital by Samuel Rushdie.
00:00:14
Speaker
As a reminder, this is our second episode for season four of our book club. Go back to our January episode where we cover tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And there are further discussions in our Facebook groups, including our discussion prompts.
00:00:29
Speaker
Thank you to our book club partners, Amplify Bookstore. If you haven't heard of Amplify, they are a bookstore dedicated to books by authors who are Black, Indigenous and or people of colour with the aim to diversify your bookshelf. You can purchase all of our book club picks in a convenient bundle or purchase them individually.
00:00:44
Speaker
They are offering a 10% off to our listeners with the code NOVELFEELINGS10. So go and check
Hosts' Personal Updates
00:00:49
Speaker
them out. Check out our show notes for all links and disclaimers and keep up to date on our social media at novel underscore feelings everywhere.
00:00:57
Speaker
All right. So before we dive into our book club, Priscilla, how would you rate your week on a five point scale? Well, I would say it's three out of five back to work.
00:01:07
Speaker
Is that a scale? Three out of five days of being back to work. um I had of a honeymoon plus a holiday. So I had a very extended time.
00:01:20
Speaker
I was actually ready to go back to work, which is a good sign that I had enough of a break. That's good. You didn't just decide to disappear into the wilderness of Malaysia and never be seen again.
00:01:32
Speaker
i know. I mean, i guess that's a good sign about the work that I do that I actually do want to come back. What were some of the highlights from your time away? Well, I have a newborn nephew. So my sister gave birth to her first baby. So that was very exciting exciting.
00:01:48
Speaker
we got to be there for the tail end of her pregnancy and the birth and i got to be with the baby for about a week which is nice because i'm obvious i'm in australia they're in indonesia and so to be there on big milestones like that is is nice absolutely and we also have some news in that in terms of big life things that's happened you're moving around the corner from me which is very exciting We are going to be neighbors. So that's fun.
00:02:20
Speaker
and I'll just be, you know, annoying you at all times of day. So can't wait. five Yeah. five or so ah But yes, packing. think we started yesterday and I have like three bags of things that I need to donate.
00:02:33
Speaker
All right. What about you? How would you write your week on a five point scale? Probably like a 2.5. It's just been really busy with work, which is very exciting for like podcast listeners to hear too hear about. But yeah, I've just got, I kind of came back from work in January and I only had a small amount of time off and then it was pretty much all systems go immediately.
00:02:57
Speaker
say i haven't You some people kind of come into January and it's like, oh, you know, just ease back into work. People are still on holiday. You know, what and what's my job? What am I even doing? Whereas I'm just like, go.
00:03:08
Speaker
why like Yeah, we've got a couple of big research projects coming up, which are very intensive. It's all going okay. I just have to be very careful with my time management at the moment and not say yes to too many things.
00:03:21
Speaker
Excitingly, though, I do have my own honeymoon coming up. By the time this episode comes out, I will be about to go awake. Yeah, that's exciting. You're going for your honeymoon, but you're chasing a particular experience, right?
00:03:33
Speaker
Yes. To clarify, we are hoping to see the Northern Lights in Scandinavia. We're spending most of the time in Iceland on a specific Northern Lights hunting tour.
00:03:44
Speaker
It is very exciting. And by the time this episode comes out, we'll be very ready to go and packed and yeah, completely planned.
Introduction to 'Hospital' by Sonia Rushdie
00:03:52
Speaker
Whereas we still have a few last minute things to do, but it's something to look forward to anyway. Yes, absolutely. Very exciting. And we would have very different honeymoon. I was sweating every day and you'd be freezing. I'm going to be so cold. I had to buy so so many thermals recently.
00:04:07
Speaker
um Yes. I'm not going to be wearing like cute beach side attire I'm going to be wearing like layers are over layers and a puffer jacket and beanie over the top of everything I think but it's going to be worth it it will be all right shall we dive into the episode all right so we'll start by introducing the author so Sonia Rushdie was born in Bangladesh and studied the Biological Sciences and Psychology at Monash University, the University of Sydney and Deakin Uni.
00:04:36
Speaker
Her first novel, Hospital, was shortlisted for the 2024 Stellar Prize and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. All right, let us tell you a little bit about the book. In Melbourne, a one-time research student with interest in philosophy and psychology is diagnosed with her third episode of psychosis.
00:04:54
Speaker
As she is moved from her family home to a community house and then to hospital, she questions the diagnosis of her sanity or insanity as determined and defined by a medical model which seems less than convincing to her.
00:05:09
Speaker
She tells her story in a calm, rational voice with an acute sense of detail and an objective air as she wonders when the next psychotic episode will materialize or if it hasn't arrived already.
00:05:22
Speaker
In terms of why we chose this book, I suppose good representation of psychosis is pretty rare in fiction. Listen to our violence and mental health tropes episode that we released a couple of years ago to hear a bit more about the problematic history of representation of psychosis and schizophrenia in the media.
00:05:45
Speaker
It's also even rarer to read about lived experience of psychosis from a person of color. So when this book started making some headlines and being shortlisted or longlisted for awards, it was quite, yeah, it sort of struck my interest for that reason.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, same. And I thought it was interesting as well that Hospital is technically fiction, but it is based on the real events drawn from the author's life. The book is originally written in Bengali by the author and then translated into English by award-winning translator Arunava Shinha.
00:06:22
Speaker
And the book was listed for two major Australian literature awards. So fun fact for internationalism is Both of the awards that this was listed for are actually named after the same person. So Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, aka the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.
00:06:41
Speaker
um So there there is a difference between the two. The Miles Franklin Award honours novels that depict Australian life, whereas the Stella Prize recognises fiction and nonfiction written by Australian women. But yeah, it says something is that something about a literary scene that our two largest awards are named after the same person. Yeah. It's interesting.
00:06:59
Speaker
I didn't know that until last year. So that... I thought it was just, you know, they just named it Stella for the Australian slang for women. Is that a slang for women?
00:07:10
Speaker
it's Okay. Maybe here's Sheila. Oh, Sheila. Yes. Sorry. So close enough. The Sheila Prize. I feel like the Sheila Prize would represent a different type of literary award. don't know what he's saying. That's true.
00:07:29
Speaker
Anyway, so in terms of what we're covering today, so some of the discussion topics will, of course, include psychosis, schizophrenia, medication, hospitalisation, informed consent around psychiatric care and the medical model.
00:07:42
Speaker
um And we'll be talking a bit about the intersectionality of mental health, mental health systems and culture as well.
Sanya's Story and Mental Health Themes
00:07:48
Speaker
All right, let's dive into part one, which is our non-spoiler discussions. Let's introduce our protagonist slash author, Sanya.
00:07:58
Speaker
it's and It's going to be a little bit hard to talk about this at times because this, as you fly out the start, this isn't fiction, but it is based on true events. It's described as being auto fiction, which blends autobiography and fiction.
00:08:11
Speaker
So the character's name, Sanya, and she is a Bangladeshi woman living in Melbourne with her family, ah former PhD student in psychology in her late thirty s um at the time of the events of the novel, but she's not exactly the same as the author. So we we can't sort of assume that the exact events that happened to Sanya, the character, are what happened to Sanya, the author.
00:08:33
Speaker
But Sanya, the author, has spoken about writing this book, you know, quite ah heavily inspired by her lived experience in hopes to reduce stigma and isolation towards people like her who have lived experience of psychosis.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, which is a great goal and hopefully it is um achieving that. Sonia, the character in the book, experiences her third episode of psychosis, particularly delusions and paranoia.
00:09:01
Speaker
And the book opens right at the beginning of this episode. And while there are references to her life outside of the psychosis and that references to her history as well with her mental health,
00:09:15
Speaker
There's not much context. We don't know much about her life prior to this current experiences of her psychosis. And it's both intriguing, but also confusing, I feel. I was definitely confused at times, um even just the place setting of it all. Like, where is she? Who are the people that she that are around her?
00:09:37
Speaker
You can tell as the novel unfolds, like she's living with her family and she's not currently studying, but she was in the past and things like that. But it's a bit disorienting. i guess and ah do assume that at least part of that is intentional by the author to give the reader ah sense of perhaps not exactly the experience of psychosis but the idea of not being completely set in a clear time and space but yeah as a reader it is um and yeah i did have to read over different paragraphs multiple times to try to understand
00:10:08
Speaker
who's this character did i miss the introduction what's happening yeah so the novel just kind of dives in immediately on her day-to-day life as the first symptoms of psychosis but this particular episode is starting to become apparent yeah let me tell you this is not beach side rate because i took this book on my honeymoon thinking i will have lots of time and the brain power to read a sir's book um requires a lot yeah despite is only being one hundred and eighteen pages it is not
00:10:40
Speaker
in my experience a very quick read now no and it requires focus and attention sona the character is an unreliable narrator because of the psychosis which comes with the lack of insight so there are gaps in her description of events and relationships aren't very clear in terms of their nature ah time sort of passes and inconsistent i guess intervals um we do get a sense that the family her family is extremely worried about her
00:11:11
Speaker
even though because we are getting her perspective she believes nothing is wrong and i guess it's that difficult thing of life because the book uses that first person point of view we are fully in sana the character's head and so what she gives us tells the reader that nothing is wrong except for those interactions with her family yeah there are i suppose a few a few clues or a few instances where readers will pick up on some things being not quite right so for example she's
00:11:43
Speaker
yeah know scrolling through facebook and being at some of the content she sees on facebook is directly targeting or is like a message ah her but we don't i suppose see a clear like bullet points depiction of what psychosis looks like at least from and like an outsider diagnostic and statistical manual point of view we don't we don't sort of see particularly impacted she seems you know maybe a little bit anxious and a little bit caught up in her own thinking but she's not sort of
00:12:15
Speaker
experiencing a very clear episode of depression for example read incongruence that's happening some authors in their depictions of mental health issues and mental illness take more of a tick box or a check box approach to depicting mental ill health so it's like you know what are all the symptoms how do they impact people and so on this is certainly not what's happening here so it's up to the reader sort of read between the lines in terms of maybe what her family has witnessed but we don't see from sonnyia's first- person perspective on the page
00:12:48
Speaker
yeah the fact that it's not that tick box exercise is what's valuable about this book it is a lived experience and sometimes that lived experience just not it's not that easily defined i suppose that people do have to pay really close attention to that
Systemic Challenges in Psychiatric Care
00:13:04
Speaker
person experience to know what's going on absolutely so at the start of the novel we see that sanya is experiencing symptoms of psychosis in her family know something isn't right and eventually this does lead us to and episode of
00:13:19
Speaker
psychiatric care so first of all this starts with home visits from the cat team to the crisis assessment and treatment teams um and then leads to a stay in a community house which i guess is kind of like a halfway house it's not ah she's not necessarily a patient in the same sense she would be if she was going to hospital she has a bit more freedom there but this doesn't work out well for her sunday doesn't feel safe in the community house and again it's it's kind of unclear to what degree this might be due to feelings of of paranoia or maybe projecting some fears onto
00:13:53
Speaker
the other residents there and whatgrade is to an unwelcoming environment and sort of lack of communication and a lack of fully informed consent going on but in any case she doesn't spend a lot of time and that community house before eventually being admitted as an in impatienttient in a psychiatric war of the hospital the hospital is sort of described as an artificial environment and soia loses her sense of time while she's admit and as a consequence the reader will again lose a sense of time too i had
00:14:24
Speaker
really no idea as i was reading the hospital scene how long she actually was there yeah or you know the days seem to blu into each other and it it feels very disorienting in a way that iss both as as we talked about before in like probably true to her experience but also so difficult to follow i guess sometimes what's interesting i suppose is that her treatment in hospital seems to rely entirely on medication and there's not a lot of
00:14:55
Speaker
holistic ah treatment or psychological therapy but just we we'll talk about that in more details later but as an example she's prescribed lithium which is a mood stabilizer commonly used for people um experiencing bipolar disorder ah but feels like this was forced upon her due to feeling angry um and you know the emotional experience of anger which was mistaken for mood instability but sona feels she can't refuse to take it because she'll just be given or for
00:15:25
Speaker
to take different types of medication or as she describes it other kinds of poison so she's kind of stuck in this situation where she can't be she can't sort of exercise her free will and her capacity to say no um because she's seen as having no insight into her own experiences therefore the people in charge are just going to override her requests or misconstrue her experiences yeah and think she points out a sign at one point that says working working collaboratively to provide individualized care that promotes wellness and recovery
00:16:01
Speaker
which she feels does not apply to her experience which yeah it's a hard setting i'm sure psychiatric ward obviously there's a lack of communication in this novel from the medical team treatment team but also maybe not so great communication from her about her needs and her desires too and i'm not blaming sona the character for that either but as we'll talk about in a moment there's certainly impact of language and
00:16:32
Speaker
you know a lack of connection that's happening between her and her treatment team but yeah the consequence of this is that actually she struggles to to make meaning or to feel empowered or have a sense of tendity while she's in the hospital um there's a quote where she says ah you know even this attempt to hold onto a sense of self is threatened by the fact that quote no such thing as the self is allowed to thrive in this hospital you're not allowed to bring your computer you cannot use the internet or find books or articles of your choice you cannot find yourself in others
00:17:04
Speaker
either so she's completely at the whims of the the environment and the people in charge and really struggles with that as the book goes on it's it's hard because i have sympathy for both sides of this in that her her struggles with the system is completely are completely valided and it's not you a the psychiatric ward is not ah perfect place and you know at best ahfi that wraparound care and at worst it can be traumaizing to the patient
00:17:37
Speaker
i also have sympathy for the medical team who is trying their best to look after people who are at ah very acute um stage of their mental illness um and some might like that insight and ability to proper um fully communicate what's happening to then so you know half that collaborative care it's yeah it's a complicated situation plus in their settings um for one psychiatric teams are working in a system that's imperfect
00:18:09
Speaker
and they're often working with people for a very short period of time and during that period of time they're focused is required to be just getting them through that episodeta psychosis before ah able to go back into the community and feel that they're they're safe and will be well enough to look after to themselves or to you know access care in the community so hospital is not often about more holistic hair which is why there's often so much of a focus on medication or finding the right medication and stabilising someone before they are able to to go out into
00:18:43
Speaker
real life again there's also a shortage of beds so that means people can't stay for a longer period of time it's you know there's differences between public and private in terms of the availability there yeah they're working in an imperfect system a system that prioritises medication as well and if they're not giving medication they can be seen to be not doing their jobs properly and there can be real consequences for them their employment their careers if they're not doing what is considered to be best practice so there are systematic issues there two but that being said i've worked quite a lot with people it' psychosis and schizophrenia who
00:19:16
Speaker
been constantly dismissed and had so many issues with ah you know hospitals and the teams of people providing care at that time and being horribly treated by different medical professionals in their time and i you know i don't want to invalidate their experiences either but yeah there's a lack of um shared and supportive decision- making that's really really common for people with psychosis and schizophrenia even if they are experiencing periods of wellness and not sort of in that acute phase of psychosis
00:19:47
Speaker
and psychosis isn't something that is typically going be impacting someone's insight every single day it's more episodic in nature but still having their feelings dismissed even if they are going through a period of wellness so it's super complicated unfortunately yeah yeah path the system system yeah
00:20:09
Speaker
okay let's but how language is really important to sona the character maybe also the ah no i think the author yeah um there is this quote um the mental world of a healthy adult is immersed in language it is the source of their thoughts and feelings they pour these thoughts and feelings into it and that is what can create confusion in their mental world language alone can unsnarl it medication cannot so
00:20:40
Speaker
as we've talked about before assanyia is perceived to have low insight her attempts to communicate and advocate for herself are often ignored or minimised and as we said before as well there's not really any depiction of talking therapy despite sania expressing an interest of using language to make sense of her mental illness and actually telling her doctors that she wants conversations over medications treating doctor does say at one point that counselling can be arranged simultaneously with medication
00:21:12
Speaker
but sana want conversations connection through language not traditional psychological therapies are not what she perceives psychological therapy is to be i think at one point she says something like lines of i'm not interested in like cognitive behavioral therapy she just wants to connect with someone properly and for her that would be ah pathway to healing but there's not and opportunity for that but i don't think she or say and joins any type of talking therapy to the course of the novel um or at least not that i was able to sort
Narrative Style and Translation Challenges
00:21:43
Speaker
of
00:21:43
Speaker
disentangle from the the confusion of her time in a hospital state yeah no because i was looking for any like group you know um that sort of activity and there wasn't any of that so whether that wasn't available to her whether she didn't take up those opportunities we just we don't know feel like um there's a lot of points in this book where i felt a bit dumb um ah i don't understand what's happening or i don't understand ah monolos because sometimes she philoso um she monologues in this like academic language about
00:22:17
Speaker
development and um language andnna my but again blame honeyoon brain but just did not understand what was going on well i i was the same and i was not on my honey i was also struggling there's most of the novel is written in such a way where it's quite minimal on description and a language is quite straightforward brief dialogue and disperse with any sort of minimal description of what happens next and then
00:22:48
Speaker
there's maybe a handful of times throughout the novel where it just turns into this like and mini philosophical essays um over a couple of pages and some of that is depictd as being through her conversations with another person like speaking to a doctor in the consultation or i think sometimes it's just her internal meant to be like her internal dialogue and it's such a shift in tone and i was i just didn't find it very accessible um and this is someone who's like written the thesis about stigma and lived experience and
00:23:20
Speaker
you know the importance of well that's stuff to put her belly non academic like but yeah there was something about like i don't know if the average reader is going to read that and take away the messages from it because it's not very accessible hopefully they get the gist but like i was i'm struggling and i'd like to think i'm reasonably intelligent person is informed about this space you are a doctor aise you've completed a ph ds
00:23:51
Speaker
i' right i'm writing academic language every day and yeah i know i don't always do so well with research translation that i just felt like the setting the the messaging of this might have been a bit loss yeah maybe smarter people but don' we shouldn't dismiss our own intelligence no it's intelligent enough but it's just that feeling of like um ah you know um it raises the question of who's the target audience with this book yeah that's a good point yeah it's noteworthy that this book
00:24:23
Speaker
was originally written in bengay and then translate it into english i'm sure the author made a choice to write in her first language for a reason but i'm sure the ah the translator's done a wonderful job but but when you are writing in a second language or translating from one language to another sometimes it might not not always get to the heart of what is originally trying to be said so it's also possible something got not necessarily lost in translation but maybe just not communicated in the same manha it was originally intended yeah
00:24:53
Speaker
to use the language of the eu it just hits different maybe but there's this quote from westerly mag that says translation is often overlooked not just in the literary world but more generally in the arts this a tragedy as the work translators do is critical their job is not simply that off-lingguistic conversion but of retaining the power and delicacy of the original text sinha's approach to the his graph as he told liminol magazine is to add nothing take nothing away
00:25:26
Speaker
anyway i think we're towards the end of our non-spoiler section say we should probably talk about our overall reviews of the i really wanted to like this book for all the reasons that we chose it because it feels like an important perspective you know it's such it's a translated work of fiction based on real life events it's ah lived experience of psychosis from a person of color which is as we talked about before quite rare i really struggled with this book
00:25:59
Speaker
um i felt really lost for a lot of it because of the lack of context and i guess moments of loss of insight and while it is in line with the nature of psychosis it's it does get in the way of me connecting emotionally but the book i was quite intrigued by the descriptions of sanya's interactions with the i'm assuming the public mental health system from the cat team to the community house to the hospital i still don't know a lot about community houses and their role in
00:26:34
Speaker
and and health trademen so that was ah good insight to get but i would have liked more exploration of her specific experience with the system from i guess a cultural perspective we do get glimpses of it but not not a lot i do still hope that it gets in the hands of more people if only to ro discussions around something as thick much highersis psychosis and schizophrenia so i'm glad that it was give them that platform by
00:27:06
Speaker
i was going to say all the awards but both of the awards yeah and might have been nominated for more as well those are just two of the major ones but with click are withy that's true so i suppose my if i have to give it a star rating it's two point five out of five which i feel like i have to clarify because i see what you mean about ah people think three stars is bad because i i watch this real of this book review are talking about all these books that she found floss with and then she gave them threestars and i'm like hang on
00:27:39
Speaker
for me three stars is above average two point five is i think we need a room break because of yeah
00:27:48
Speaker
five is it's it's oh it's okay maybe this is homework coming from for us i think we need to get on the same page when it comes to our ratings we've been doing this for four years now and every time i feel like we have to clarify that we rate on slightly different scales than maybe we need at least just for the purpose of the podcast yes and our yeah and it to pin it on our instagram this is what just two yeah because you give it two point five and you're like it's a it's it's pretty good and i'm like if i gave a two point five i'm like terrible bad five is like
00:28:19
Speaker
exactly in the middle so like it's it's fine yeah point five as being like a fifty percent which is like barely a apart if you're looking at like grading a paper so i think that's the problem i approach it more like grading a paper than i do yeah like an yeah anyway yeah and maybe maybe i should be giving like a pay or a state or and h d be have like a and anyway we should have a either rubric or we should just have like what's the word like a summary you know because for me five stars is like
00:28:50
Speaker
perfect and for fantastic three is great no wait not heard no phrase good two is okay yes so me too fail why worst thing that's ever this time all right like that's ah that's in this slide maybe we'll figure this out one day yeah all right so you've given the two point five for me i went i also went in with quite high hopes i was expecting this to be really wonderful based on the hype and the the nominations and the reviews that i've read
00:29:22
Speaker
but i think there's just something about the writing style and case of the story i felt like it lacked something it lefted a bit of emotional depth and i really struggled to connect even though you know this is like an area of work for me literally like an area that i'm really passionate about the writing is quite ba there's not a lot of like flowery language and maybe that's what contributes to it not that we need flowery language to communicate but the translator described the writing um as superbly spare without giving in to any excesses of language or expression at any point
00:29:57
Speaker
and yet it is rich in terms of what it conveys forcing the attentive reader to pause and think often i had to pause and think a lot but i didn't necessarily think that was it good thing its sort of impacted on my immersion within the story and although the story raises awareness of important themes that we reflect that we' touched on and having read a few first-person lived experience stories of psychosis and hospitalisation now i have just i've read other stories which i've personally found more powerful but i do think that there's merit to this story
00:30:29
Speaker
um i still think that it's going to really inform audiences and maybe reach some circles of people that aren't so ah engaged or informed about some of the topics that are covered in this story particularly the medical model and some of the reality of life in a psychiatric hospital so i do think that just by the nature of the story and that lived experienced storytelling it's going to make a difference for some readers and again with the the cultural lens too i think that's going to be really beneficial so
Spoiler Section: Patient Relationships
00:31:00
Speaker
even though i don't get this book because for me um and my personal reading case i think based on the merit of the story self i'm going to get a three out of five that sounds fair shall you dive into the spoilers let's do it me that doing very hard to distinguished non-s spoilers and spoilers and such a tiny book yeah know it's more just like a slightly so some stuff that happens more in the second half of the novel and to do well with the arc of the narrative rather than actual spoilers
00:31:31
Speaker
we also wanted to talk a bit about sunia's relationships with the other patients that are in the psychiatric ward and the friendships that are form yeah so sana the character i guess the author as well depicts friendships form in the ward as being very powerful and beneficial much more so than the relationship she forms with any clerk staff actually i'm struggling to remember if she goes into any details about ah critical stuff like we do have the meetings with
00:32:02
Speaker
the doctors but she doesn't describe like multiple therapy sessions or anything like that yeah pretty much no rapport describes with any clinical staff and i suppose maybe they're just left out of the book for that reason is that they weren't important to her recovery in any way yeah possibly it is difficult to tell though at times whether sonia's relationships with other patients on the war are being portrayed accurately
00:32:34
Speaker
like she seems to fall into really intense relationships really quickly and believes that they are relationships rather than maybe one-sided almost like an infatuation at times thank you i was going to say obsession didn't think that sounded very nice
00:32:54
Speaker
yeah so we get hints from other characters that it is an infatuation and um the the characters she is infatuated with do not reciprocate those feelings she keeps getting told to stop following boys so
00:33:10
Speaker
and infantilizing as well to say like you stop falling boys around like shes so an adult woman yeah i know and again this is an instance where i'm not sure how much of it is sania like how much of it is sonia forming a legitimate relationship with another character versus this yeah and the staff maybe be just dismissing that versus son you the character maybe having not a lot of insight into whether the friendship or the relationship is actually reciprocal ah not so i was trying to play detective at times
00:33:44
Speaker
but regardless someia the character does find you know it does perceive that to be real connection there and that's one of the a few few highlights of her experience in the hospital is connecting with other patients though i don't know if the hospital staff would necessarily see it that way yeah interestingly though i think ah friendship feel at least to me as a reader the friendships that form feels more real then ah romantic relationships
00:34:15
Speaker
so i think there are two separate ah men that she fell in love with during the course of the story there was something strange about them to me like they they didn't feel like an actual relationship whereas i feel like the friendships felt like an actual relationship it's also hard to tell because again the writing styles quite ga so we don't get a lot of description oh the men that she's interested in and so it's hard to tell from a reader's perspective you know are these men giving
00:34:47
Speaker
you know verbal or bodily cues about their interest in sonia or not it just kind of jumps from there's a new patient on the psychiatric ward samia thinks that they attractive and now there's suddenly in some sort of relationship together so yeah again we're just not given a lot of context as a reader to make these accurate judgments but maybe we're not meant to i don't know again this is where i struggle with this book is what what is just what is the level of emotional connection that
00:35:20
Speaker
the author is aiming for here in any case i really just did not have many to many connections to any of the relationships that are formed whether it's the <unk> relationships on the friendship they're also transient yeah and yeah that's goingnna that's going to happen due to the nature of her stay in the psychiatric ward as well as in the community house setting you patients come and go some have long stays some have short stays um yeah it feels like any character in the story
00:35:51
Speaker
but she forms a relationship with is a background character rather than ah feature it character ah just very briefly and given very minimal description yeah absolutely ah feel like sona is like the only real character and the book towards the end of the book there's another like important male character i think from like g but don't think we were ever told where he's from but maybe is not is not in australia but he just also just appears we with the ex-husband
00:36:23
Speaker
is that the ex-husband ex-huband like that's so terrible that yeah i didn't even realize the thing i texted you then i was like is this person ah might be misremembering and i to be honest i'm probably not going to double check this before the episode guys live but i think yeah the there's a point near the end of the book where sanya's on the phone to a male character who i believe was her ex-husband but was only very briefly introduced at the start of the novel and i'd almost forgotten about his existence until
00:36:55
Speaker
they're on the phone in this of talking about her recovery that was not again ah in that moment treated like an established character that we as the readers should know about but but we do we' both forgotten we both had that same experience of forgetting who that yeah and again is this that thing that like this book demands your full attention and you should not be scanning the pages because you should be reading it word for word and that just is not what i did
00:37:26
Speaker
and that therefore maybe it's my fault for not paying attention i think i was paying attention but as i've talked about before um you know when something is just mentioned once you might be paying attention but you have to add this extra layer of intentional interpretation on top of that but i don't know if a reader can be expected to hold characters in their mind who were only mentioned extremely briefly at one time point and then come back without more introduction um
00:37:57
Speaker
memory is fallible even this is just short pull we're not going to remember but throw away reference to a character unless there was actual like emphasis on that character which i don't think there was no anyway that think that just highlights the transient nature of most of the relationships in this book even when they're not relationships in the psychiatric ward similarly i would have loved some more information about her family too yeah we don't get much about them not all even though they're very important
Recovery Models and Sanya's Future
00:38:29
Speaker
and
00:38:29
Speaker
ah you know in this this caregiving role kind of integral to her seeking or you know being required to to get treatment at times too but ah yeah there's a lot of there's often a lot of tension between carers and people have lived experience especially in scenarios where somebody might have ah lack of insight as well because it's on another person to make ah judgment call and you know there might be some scenarios where there's like advanced care planning that happens and
00:39:02
Speaker
ah person is able to put plans in advance about what they want to happen should they experience ala or should they experience another episode of psychosis but that doesn't always happen and that can cause a lot of conflicts or you know long-term trauma in some cases but we just don't know much about their relationship we just again have to read between the lines about what's happening there yeah speaking of care though i suppose let's chat about the recovery model of complex mental illness which i think is
00:39:36
Speaker
more your area than mine yeah i ah keep this too nerdy but basically there is a framework that i was thinking about when i was reading this novel which is called chime um and chime stands for connectedness hope identity meaning and empowerment and the recovery model here it talks about how recovery isn't necessarily about the absence of illness in the same way we might think about ah physical health recovery so if you recover from
00:40:08
Speaker
ah cold you are considered to be back to your baseline level of functioning and all as well and you no longer have symptoms of that cold but for complex mental health issues we talk more about living well even if you are experiencing long-term mental health challenges or um psychosocial disability which is ability as a consequence of experiencing either symptoms or the diagnosis itself say the kind of social model of disability is relevant there as well
00:40:39
Speaker
but you know in the in the chime framework it talks about these five different topics as being really critical towards an individual's recovery so you know having a supportive community and developing it's real relationships having a positive outlook for the future and renovations to you know to change or to keep yourself well or to do what works for you having a positive sense of self overcoming the barriers of stigmaoid discriminationmin finding meaning in life and experiences and having a sense of control and personal respect personal responsibility
00:41:12
Speaker
so the reasons one of the reasons why this came to mind festival because sonia's experienced of psychosis is described as episodic it's something that has happened in the past currently happening during the novel and may very well happen again in the future it's a long term condition for sona is an author i got the impression that she is trying to make meaning or trying to make sense of her own experiences through this novel and through the medium of auto fiction and for sonia is a character we see her grappling
00:41:43
Speaker
with a lot of these different ideas as the novel progresses so for example she is reasonably well connected or describes herself as being quite connected and having good relationships or forming meaningful relationships during recovery and with her family her so ongoing care but she's only beginning to have a sense of empowerment over her own experiences and the hospital setting is a place where she is unable to experience empowerment or identity or five much meaning in the experience and so on so
00:42:14
Speaker
for sona as a character the hospital itself and this medical model of care is completely against her own individual perception of recovery and so it might be essential for her to you know to cope with or to stay safe during an episode of psychosis but it's not conducive to a longer term recovery and the character needs more and think something different than that but some people have a similar experience ah hospital might be a positive
00:42:45
Speaker
experience and might you know there might have more connection and meaning in going through that but for many people it's not the case so that hospitalization might be a necessary evil at times but it's not going to help with long-term recovery so yeah i just thought that was interesting to think about no yeah absolutely and i suppose i mean the book is called hospital so you're not stay more like beyond our hospital admission and what sort of hair trademan she gets afterwards so we don't see a lot of
00:43:18
Speaker
there's so much more to recovery than just the hospital as you were saying it's i guess it's important for us to know that there's more two mental health treatment even you know at that complex end than just medication and hospital and i suppose in some way that's what sonya the character wants we just don't see that happening yeah absolutely and so'll be curious for what happens for sontan near the karra dan and sonnya the author after the experiences with the events within the book as well and what recovery does look like for her long term and what does
Next Book Announcement and Closing Remarks
00:43:51
Speaker
help her
00:43:51
Speaker
stay well or live her best life despite the ongoing experiences of schizophrenia and samadi author i do hope this has been an empowering experience for her to write about or these experiences or to you know integrate her experiences within this novel now that we have finished our review we'll briefly talk about what to expect in our detailed show notes and the next book that we're covering
00:44:18
Speaker
in our details share notes on novelfieldings dot com there will be mental health resources relating to schizophrenia inpatient treatment and advocacy and we will also include some book club discussion questions which we will also post to our facebook group in terms of the next book that's coming up in may we will be reading get a life chlaia brown by talia heettt and really excited for this one like it's the real five shift where i know through this one such a vi shift um so chloe brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal a plan and a list
00:44:52
Speaker
after almost but not quite dying she's come up with six directives to help her get a life including do something bad but it's not easy being bad what chloe needs is a teacher and she knows just the man for the job braford red morgan is a handy man with tattoos and motorcycle and he's also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day but when she enlists read in her mission to rebel she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her we've both read this one before um yeah i excited to read it
00:45:23
Speaker
again absolutely yes i'm want more of a more of a roomm calm romance five then this kind of thing but that is so to talk about in terms of psychological things absolutely i would argue excellent representations of trauma and this one yeah go into that inmate absolutely anyway i think that wraps us up for today so thank you for taking part and listening along to our book club of so if you like us please leave us a review on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcasts
00:45:58
Speaker
find us online on instagram youtube and the story graph through novel underscore feelings or search novel feelings community on facebook if we have entertained you or taught you something today consider buying us a coffee to show your thanks all proceeds go towards making the show stronger and more sustainable you can find all the links in our show notes thank you so much and we'll see you in may for book club episode three thanks everyone andy see ya
00:46:27
Speaker
ah podcast was recorded on warang land which is home to both of us in nam melbourne we also acknowledge the role of storytelling in first nations communities always was always will be aboriginal land