Was I Ever Normal...

Book excerpt: Was I Ever Normal… By: Becca Pava Was I Ever Normal invites us into the head of Cassie, a young girl growing up with childhood-onset schizoaffective disorder. She is desperately trying to cover up her psychosis by creating a web of lies so intricate that they only serve to further entangle her in her world of mental illness. Cassie has no idea how to respond to the chaos in her head and instead creates mass chaos for herself in her external life in the form of multiple, repetitive suicide attempts in response to command hallucinations, cutting, pulling out her hair in clumps, biting herself, starving herself for fear her food is poisoned and more. This leads to a revolving door of psychiatric hospital admissions. Was I Ever Normal demonstrates how the mental health system has failed so many children with severe psychiatric diagnoses. It introduces readers to the realities of the taboo world of childrens’ inpatient psychiatric treatment units and takes some of the stigma out of the for-so-long-forbidden world of psychiatric illnesses and treatments.