Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies, and Suicide

A deeply personal account of the difficulties faced by people suffering from mental illness, Schroeder recounts, in sometimes painful detail, the multiple problems she has faced since childhood. Beginning with “twitches and tics” later diagnosed as Tourette’s syndrome, she endures an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship, struggles with clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and an on-again, off-again, cheating girlfriend. Driven to attempt suicide three separate times, Schroeder’s final try lands her in a locked hospital ward with other severely mentally ill patients and a medical system that appears to her to “enforce inhumanity rather than treat insanity.” After being discharged and going through several therapists in hopes of managing her depression—as well as finding affordable medication—she vents about all the people she believes have failed her over the years: her parents, for assuming her behavior was simply the result of a “bad attitude”; her first girlfriend, for manipulating her into attending law school to improve her own image and having a child against her wishes; her second girlfriend, for dividing her loyalties and time between herself and another woman. Having found a therapist who would take her on with all of her complicated problems, she finally turned her life around through six years of hard work. Schroeder’s brutally honest memoir reveals the extraordinary effort required to take control of one’s mental and emotional health. (Sept.)