"Sharply personal and impeccably detailed, (Pathological) is bound to raise questions in the minds of readers diagnosed with any number of disorders about the validity of trying to cram individual experience into what Fay contends are essentially imaginary categories. A provocative and original examination of the flaws in mental health treatment." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "[A] fiery manifesto of a memoir." -- New York Times Book Review "Pathological is the best book I've read in many years. Masterfully written, distinctively researched, and deeply humane, it joins our finest literature on medicine and psychiatry and the eternal riddle we call our minds. Fay's artful work is pleasingly unclassifiable: call it medical memoir; mental health thriller; comic punctuation primer; DSM and Big Pharma smackdown. I'll just call it genius. It's also contrarian, controversial, and beautifully, validly angry.
If you or anyone you love has spent time in the mental health industrial complex (or, cauldron)--buy this book now and read it." -- ANTHONY SWOFFORD, International and New York Times bestselling author of Jarhead "In this brilliant and excruciating memoir, through careful reporting and exquisite analysis, Fay takes on the myriad ways in which women's minds, not simply our bodies, have become a marketplace for trendy and dangerous ideas about mental health. This book is a triumph of the spirit and the flesh for a woman who since the age of twelve has been fighting, against all odds, not only to survive, but to live." -- ELIZA GRISWOLD, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Amity & Prosperity "Fay is a deeply compelling person and a fantastic writer.We were wowed by her talent for bolstering personal stories with takeaways backed up with careful research. Pathological will make you passionate about improving the way we handle mental health." -- APPLE BOOKS "We urgently need to think about our mental and emotional pain and distress in a more loving, nuanced, and intelligent way. Pathological will be a major contribution towards achieving that - a crucial and necessary book.
" -- JOHANN HARI, New York Times bestselling author of Lost Connections: Why You're Depressed and How to Find Hope "An utterly unique memoir written with rare immediacy about the consequences of the language of psychiatric diagnosis. In Pathological, Fay beautifully describes navigating the uncertainty of six mental health misdiagnoses and brilliantly unpacks the dangers of labeling with a mental illness in the face of the complexities of our mental and emotional lives. Brave, heartbreaking, and inspiring, Pathological is a necessary book." -- JENN PERCY, Journalist and writer at the New York Times Magazine and recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing "Sarah Fay has written one of the most compelling memoirs I have read in ages. Pathological is a must-read for anyone who has been through the roller coaster that is the mental illness industry in America. Fay creates a work of art that entertains as much as it informs; if this were a movie, it would be the sort of documentary that contains every mode from romantic comedy to art-house film to thriller in one. The prose is so electric, incisive, witty, irreverent, devastating, sparkling! Whether she is riffing on the mechanics of English grammar, confronting the DSM in full-on unapologetic manifesto-mode, or winding us through the ups and downs of a very fully-lived life, Sarah Fay has created a masterpiece that is a true original on every level." -- POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR, author of Sick: A Memoir.