Get Me Out of Here

My Recovery from BPD -  Review

Review by J. Paul Shirley. on December 2001.

A reader

Get Me Out of Here (formerly "The Diamond Core") is an impressively realistic portrait of Borderline Personality Disorder from the point of view of the patient. It provides vivid descriptions of the often painful, sometimes frightening, occasionally lonely, and even terrifying journey from serious mental illness to gaining health via the route of psychotherapy.

With less ribald humor or dramatic psychological violence than the classic "One Few Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this story nevertheless is gripping for its relentless eye to detail about psychiatric illness and the institution of mental health treatment, both the tensely gripping aspects and the ironically comical ones.

It neither shies away from, nor sugarcoats, difficult topics. It tells the whole story of illness and recovery with ruthless, unblinking honesty, but without falling into the tempting writers' traps of either romanticizing mental illness, sensationalizing treatment, or unnecessarily demonizing mental health practitioners or the mental health community at large.

Most of all, this is a book of one woman's courage, commitment, and resourceful determination. It shows clearly how those personal strengths in combination with the right kind of true professional skill, caring, and expertise, can help the sufferer overcome the odds stacked against them by this heartless and devastating form of mental illness known as BPD.

In my professional opinion, the prognosis of this book is excellent. I would enthusiastically recommend it to mental health practitioners, and I would also endorse it for use in helping patients and clients. I also recommend it to anyone with an interest in mental health, and, being an avid reader myself, I would  recommend it even to anyone who simply enjoys a good story.

There is very little, if anything, that can be said that is good about mental illness. Yet occasionally there is a story such as this one that so compellingly empowers the reader to transcend realistic doubts and genuine cynicism about our collective helplessness in the face of mental illness that one can almost be glad that the author had the illness. By overcoming its grip, she is like any other pioneer who shows the rest of us the way it can be done. It is, in short, simply excellent.

J. Paul Shirley, MSW
12-31-2001