Katy Sara Culling - Writer

By Katy Sara Culling

• Paperback: 492 pages
• Publisher: Chipmunkapublishing (August 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847477313
• ISBN-13: 978-1847477316

For £15 (plus postage) Order copies from online book stores or libraries (note the ISBN numbers for orders) if you prefer (where you will not have to pay postage). 

Currently available to order on my publisher's website (price incl. postage) HERE.
Also available from Amazon - your local Amazon such as Amazon.co.uk HERE or from Amazon.com HERE. Also available from Tescos.com HERE. Also available from (free postage) WHSmiths HERE Also available online from Barnes and Noble HERE

Key Themes: mood disorders (especially bipolar disorder), eating disorders, attempted suicide, self-harm, surviving, recovery

Ebook available for £5 here.
Pages in Ebook: 294

THE WIRELESS KINDLE DOWNLOAD ($6) IS FOUND HERE.

Description

This book includes a true story about reaching the very edge, the very depths and heights of bipolar illness, and anorexia, but almost always with a sense of humour. Much like a car crash, people cannot help but look when they spy on these sort of black events. It is a new perspective on manic depression as in Prof K.R. Jamison’s autobiography about her illness in An Unquiet Mind, but mixed explosively with S. Kaysen’s immersion into madness in Girl, Interrupted; except this book feels like it’s been written whilst on crack-cocaine and directed by Quentin Tarantino on a blood-thirsty day. This book may be dark but its underlying message is one of hope. Sometimes you have to see the depths of Hades before you can really appreciate life and health.

Being a manic depressive from just 5, then adding in anorexia, bulimia, self-harm and hundreds of suicide attempts, “typical” student substance misuse on the heavy end of “normal,” culminating in a long hospitalisation when I was an Oxford doctoral student in clinical medicine. I ended up totally “mad,” in a long-term psychotic mixed episode (being both manic and depressed concurrently, and suffering from delusions and hallucinations) and several actual deaths that I was revived from.

This had a massive impact on the lives of my friends and family who have been dragged through 25 years of serious illness whilst feeling helpless and scared. I also experienced a lot of unhelpful medical treatment and misdiagnoses – all detailed here, which should teach those in the profession what not to do. This book will also answer the questions of friends and family, and give some pointers of ways to help and not help. I lost many friends as I withdrew into my illness, but I made many friends with people similarly ill. Some have died, some have recovered, and some remain ill. All agree that such a complete and honest book like mine is needed.

This is my autobiographical tale, a girl who came from nowhere “up North” to study medicine at Oxford University and spent the majority of her life quite literally mad, but never stopped laughing about it. This suits a wide audience for personal and professional reasons. I want to reach sufferers, carers, and professionals. I am proof that anything can be overcome, what should not be survived can be, and that nothing is more important in these diseases than hope.