#2 The Woman Who Ate Cutlery

 Christine Montross, author of this opinion article, is a psychiatrist. She presents a case about a patient called M, who has been harming herself for some time and needs medical and psychiatric assistance constantly. M has been hospitalized 72 times and is only 33 years old. Montross comments it is not uncommon to have patients being hospitalized at least twice their age, she recently had a 65 year old patient who was been hospitalized almost 250 times. Her article describes the tormented life of this needy young american but also presents a critic to the american public health care, she speaks for all the people who are not able to afford private treatment seeing doctors regularly and therefore, not being able to get well. M says she does these things in her right mind, knowing it is not necessarily good for her, but it is a way of coping with stress, and she feels better after it. She has nowhere to turn for care or a better treatment, her case together with 32 million americans says Montross, is dramatic. The psychiatrist states M was not psychotic, she was aware of what she did to herself, yet, she kept on doing it. M needs regular treatment to stop harming herself- her symptoms persists because she doesn't get the necessary medical attention to be cured, so she gets hospitalized over and over again. Montross presents a strong critic when she says "Our failure to provide a critical, basic level of outpatient psychiatric care to the mentally ill creates a volatile cycle in which uninsured or underinsured patients avail themselves of treatment only when they are in crisis."  She could get better, Montross argues, because they (psychiatrists) know regular psychiatric care works. But M does not have a relationship with a provider, she has a relationship with an institution, so she can't call her therapist for help whenever she feels like she is about to have a breakdown, and for her to be treated by the institution, she'd have to be in imminent danger. she says: "In order to guarantee that they will be evaluated in the emergency room and then admitted for further psychiatric treatment, patients must convincingly communicate their dangerousness or distress." 

The article is very well written, well argumented and touching. There is a good vocabulary choice, since it is simple and direct. The information is easy to understand and very convincing, it got my attention right away, especially because it is related to psychiatry, which interests me. But she did not write about how M's case turned out after the treatment.






http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/opinion/sunday/the-woman-who-ate-cutlery.html?hp&_r=0