Customer Reviews

Mount Misery

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Roy Basch, MD, is back! For any doctor or medical student, who at one time or another read "The House of God" and learned the LAWS by heart (most of them probably even use them on a regular basis!), this is a long awaited sequel. Having decided to leave internal medicine behind and to become a psychiatrist, Basch lives through his first year as a resident at a prestigious mental institution called Mount Misery, only to find out that the name is more than just metaphorical. He discovers, that it is sometimes hard to tell the patients from their therapists, and that normal can be a question of health insurance. It is an exciting, very funny, and sometimes even frightening novel about modern psychiatry. In "House of God" the reader wondered how much of the story was satirical and just how much was true. And if you're a physician, you will know that everything in it is real. Having read "Mount Misery", you will beg your therapist to tell you that it is all just a joke. But then again, maybe you are a shrink yourself and know better... A definite must for patients and doctors.

As a consumer who has, with difficulty, extricated herself from a mental health maze much like the one in "Mount Misery" I can vouch that as overblown as some of these characters and situations, there is a LOT of truth there, too, and it would be unwise for any would-be shrink who picked up this book to ignore it.

Samuel Shem is an equal opportunity offender. Freudians, drug docs, behavioralists, insurance companies, you name it, it's taken aim at here. As the young protagonist attempts to negotiate the various psychiatric schools and their devotees, there are suicides and unsavory sex scandals and more. Not being a doctor myself, I preferred this book to the "House of God."

My favorite part concerned the over-prescription of Prozac and other antidepressants of its class. I have been prescribed it by docs who don't know me from Adam and whose ignorance doesn't trouble them in the least. Shem may be over-exaggerating some dangers, but when it comes to many of the situations portrayed in the book, he's dead on (no pun).

As someone who has had a career in the medical field since the age of 15 to 40++, and then went into Psychiatry, this book and my recollections of it both help and haunt me presently.
This book seems to have somehow predicted the present state of Psychiatry. One dominated by "catch-22's", lose-lose paradigms, and Kafka-like life situations. Most, if not all of the situations, in the book, however unbelieveable, DO/CAN/WILL occur- which is so congruent with everything else going on these days.
Special interests, politicians, criminals, drug-addicts, and drug companies dominate the landscape. Many people treated in the community were not "mentally ill" until they learned to do alcohol/drugs, scam the system, and intimidate the unwaring, fearful, or ignorant providers to get what they want,be it drugs and/or benefits. Many criminals learn this system and can scam their way out of jail, even for murder! These people are generally successful!
Unfortunately, the book, being "fictional", and not an expose, does not address the shear horror of "modern psychiatry", but on the other hand what does? Thanks to the constant fear of death, litigation, or worse...the few Psychiatrists who are smart enough to recognize reality...are also the most afraid to talk or confront the APA-drug/academic industry-political alliance.
In conclusion, this book is a heroic effort to expose more people to the horrors of "Psychiatry". On a brighter note, there are rare individual who are good Psychiatrists...but they are as rare as an honest attorney or auto-mechanic.
P.S.- WARNING- Don't read this book if you don't want your "reality" altered. If you do---denial works well!

In sharp contrast to this books older and more famous brother "The house of God" this one is much less hilarious and much more thought provoking and disturbing. Dr Baschs catastrophic and nearly fatal first year of residency in a prestigious psychiatric institute is depicted in all its gloomy details. The characters in this book are quite extreme each in its own positive or negative way and shems witty and clever description of them (even for the better ones) is merciless. a word of warning - don't get to attached to any of the characters, Shem has a tendency to eliminate some of them in various stages of the book. I am a medical student, and I first read this book In my first year after reading the "House of God" - it was mildly amusing. However, I reread it this year (my fifth) after doing my rotation in a psychiatric hospital and this book is right on target. It made me think very hard about the patients, the doctors and all that's in between. A must book for everyone who is interested in medicine, psychiatry or just plain human nature.

This book is much deeper than House of God. It does not focus as much on the physical aspects of the Medical training like the former, it is more focused on Dr. Basch's personal changes and growth. The characters are all very interesting, and it is more entertaining for a non-medical related person than House of God in my opinion.

Though overall House of God was better, this book makes you think more.

... This novel is not nearly as funny as the first book and raises very few questions other than the trite "Who would want to be a Resident?" question answered much better in Shem's first book.

This book also concentrates almost solely on esoteric abnormal psychology and is hard to relate to. I'm a family practice physician who did quite a few psych rotations in school and residency and I still don't quite relate to this book and its content.

However, Shem still is the master of describing medical malcontents masquerading as compassionate physicians. And the book was worth reading for that reason even though it wasn't as entertaining as House of God.

~ ~ * * * * * ~ ~
~ ~ As an MD who spent lots of time in 3rd and 4th year doing clerkships studying Psychiatry, at about the time this novel takes place, I have to admit it is an entertaining and frighteningly accurate illustration of the confusion that reigned in most Psychiatry training programs in the 70's and 80's.

~ ~Readers of "House of God" will enjoy this semi-autobiographical story. It is continuation of the story of the young doctor who spent a disillusioning year in a medical Internship in a prominent Boston training hospital, took a year off, and decided to leave the physical Medicine for Psychiatry.

~ ~Friends who have worked "M. Hospital" the prominent mental hospital (outside Boston), that Mount Misery is clearly modeled after, tell me that the characters in the book are also very thinly disguised versions of real life prominent Doctors in the training program.

~ ~It's not necessary to have much medical knowledge to enjoy the cutting humor of the book. The story will probably be more entertaining, the more knowledge you have of the field of Psychology. Be prepared though, this book isn't one you want to read to give you confidence in your Psychiatrist!

Yikes, I just can't believe anyone liked this book. First, I absolutely loved the House of God! It was an excellent book, and I really couldn't wait to run out and read the sequel. Unfortunately, Mount Misery is absolutely nothing like the HOG. It was actually a struggle to get through the book, and I had to suffer just to finish it. I know this will be hard to believe if you just finished HOG, but MM is really nothing like it! It is slow, dark, and lacks all the humor/morbid satire and huge issues HOG dealt with. Shem should have never wrote this book, it really disappoints as some of the other reviewers pointed out. Just plain don't waste your time on this one, instead reread HOG! I'm sure you won't believe me, but you will see if you try to read this one.

Beware all ye who enter here! On the surface, this is a chronicle of Dr. Roy Basch's first year of psychiatric residency. DIG DEEPER FOLKS. Exposed, for all the world to see, is the soft seamy underbelly of psychiatry and medicine in general. The first chilling fact is that most medical researchers make horrible clinicians. It's publish or perish, participate in a study, try untested drugs on your patients, because that's where the money is. Yes, there are researchers who make excellent practitioners. I was lucky enough to publish with one, but they are the exception. The second chiller is that the Attendings(the head docs)don't always know best. They teach their theories and their experience (remember Dr. Freud and Dr. Spock) but they're not always right. Then Fats reminds us, don't forget our friends (the medical insurance companies) who decide how sick or suicidal or crazy we are. They then pay according to their theory of how long it will take us to get well or how long they want to pay---whichever comes first.The final point Dr. Roy makes, though, is the most important. Psychiatry should be all about being human and connecting to another human being needing help. Wrong again folks. It's about pushing pills, talking as little as posssible and putting people in little boxes to fit the DSM diagnosis. By the time the docs get to us, all the human has been drummed out of them. I wish I could say I enjoyed this as much as "The House of God". Unfortunately, Shem takes too long to tell the story, but it's still worth the read.

This book is painful to read. First of all, it is HIGHLY unrealistic. Analysts who have suicidal adolescent inpatients and never say a word except for to spit out some Freudian theory?!?! All the patients on a ward on 6 medications, all walking around like zombies, and the attendings just observing them from through the glass window and never seeing them ?!?! This book is as much about psychiatry as E.T. is about interstellar space communication. Secondly, from a literary standpoint, Shem is just so formulaic; everyone is a gross cariacature. Let's see, this is how he writes a book: focus on each attending, making him/her a one-sided, one-dimensional extreme character, take that character's fault/ideology and multiply it by a thousand, and have Basch (the main character) first be highly influenced by that character, have a revelation, then tell that character .... Oh, and be sure to throw in some big-busted nurses to have sex with. Finally, this book does a great disservice to the field of mental health. Fine - Shem does not have any obligation to make the world a better place, and I guess he has the right as a writer to perpetuate stereotypes. Psychiatry and psychiatric patients have enough stigma already, which ultimately causes worse quality of much needed care. To those unfamiliar with the mental health field, THIS BOOK IS NOT AT ALL TRUE OR REALISTIC. Don't waste your time; go watch the Sopranos instead.