Brief Book Reviews: February 2025

BRIEF BOOK REVIEWS

Popular Books Relevant to Mental Health

One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival

Donald Antrim; W.W. Norton & Company, 2021

144 pages; $15.95 (paperback)

Reviewed by Edmund S. Higgins, MD

In 2006, after years of struggling with depression and anxiety, and having considered suicide for several months, Donald Antrim spent 5 hours on his fire escape in Brookland, intermittently hanging from the ladder, wishing he was dead, but not wanting to jump. Eventually, located by his panicked friends, he was whisked off to the hospital.

Thus begins the author’s first-person account of his struggle with a severe depression—ultimately diagnosed as psychotic depression. Antrim, however, prefers to call his illness suicide—a long building condition with its origins in trauma, isolation, violence, neglect, and loss. This insightful, and at times, painful story gives a memorable example of the need in severe cases, for many weeks of hospitalization.

The story is an enlightening case-study for those of us who no longer work on the wards. Antrim describes the challenges and successes of in-patient psychiatry: the difficulty in finding effective treatments, and the danger of serious relapses with suicidal obsessions. In particular, Antrim gives a first-hand account of the distorted thinking of psychosis and struggling to find a reason to live 1 more day.

I’m Glad My Mom Died

Jennette McCurdy; Simon & Schuster, 2022

320 pages; $14.50 (hardcover)

Reviewed by Edmund S. Higgins, MD

When her mother was comatose in the ICU, Jennette McCurdy and her brothers gathered around the bed, trying to provide some good news which they hoped would jolt her awake. One said he was getting married, another said he was moving back to California. Jennette whispered, “Mommy, I am . . . so skinny right now. I’m finally down to 89 pounds.” With this introduction, the author takes us back to her childhood, when she was raised by a mother who had no boundaries and lived her dreams through her daughter. Unable to separate from her mother and wanting to remain a child, Jennette embraced devilish guidance from her mother in the deceptive art of caloric restriction.

This brilliantly written, tightly edited story of struggling to make her mother happy culminates in a destructive eating disorder. McCurdy is funny and humble, while at the same time telling of a life filled with sadness and pain. It is a story of despicable parental manipulation and devastating emotional trauma, which in McCurdy’s telling has the arc of a captivating story.

McCurdy can make seasoned clinicians laugh out loud and also weep for the author’s lost childhood. For those of us who do not treat patients with eating disorders, McCurdy presents an example of the almost insurmountable obstacles patients throw out to impede recovery. She helps us understand the incomprehensible attachment an abusive parent maintains with some children, and the scars that are difficult to heal.

Dr Higgins is an affiliate associate professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina.