Download Straitjackets and Lunch Money: A 10-year-old in a Psychosomatic Ward

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Straitjackets
and Lunch Money A 10-year-old
in
a
Psychosomatic
Ward
Description
Bronze Medal winner
in the Independent Book
Publishers AwardsEric
Hoffer da Vinci Award FinalistKatya Cengel became
a patient at the Roth Psychosomatic Unit at
Children's Hospital at Stanford in 1986. She was
10 years old. Overwhelmed by feelings of
abandonment,
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worthlessness and anger at having to care for her
depressed father, she wanted out. She found it
the only way she knows how - by starving
herself.Thirty years later Katya, now a
journalist, discovers her young age was not the
only thing that made her hospital stay unusual.
The idea of psychosomatic units themselves, where
patients have dual medical and psychological
diagnoses, was a revolutionary one, since largely
fallen out of favor. Katya documents this,
tracking down the doctors, psychologists and
counselors who once cared for her.What happened
to her as a child is told in the voice of the
troubled 10-year-old girl she once was. The two
narratives unfold simultaneously. The result is a
gut-wrenching account of childhood mental illness
told from the inside interspersed with updates
from experts in the field.