Seventeen Voices: Life and Wisdom from Inside ‘Mental Illness’

Marianne Broug, Wakefield Press

Seventeen Voice s begins with the dedication: “For the countless human beings around the world who day by day endure tremendous suffering and whose suffering is only compounded by myths, misconceptions, stigmas and stereotypes.”

I found this a very interesting dedication because it echoed my experience in working in the disability field and as someone who has post-traumatic stress disorder.

I discovered that society appears to divide people with disabilities into two groups: those with acceptable disabilities and those with unacceptable disabilities. Mental illness was definitely in the “unacceptable” group.

So the author’s aim that her readers should learn from the “real experts”, those who experienced mental illness, is truly admirable.

The Seventeen Voices are interviews of 17 people living with mental illnesses, including phobias, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, dissociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

The interviews are brutally honest and therefore fascinating and extremely disturbing. An overwhelming number of the interviewees talked about all types of abuse in their past, living in absolute terror and treatments that they felt were inappropriate for their situation.

The support they wanted above everything else was to be listened to.

So, if only for that reason, please buy and read this book. What you will learn will help you immeasurably as you move in a world where one in five Australians experience a mental illness at some stage in their life.

Katy Gerner