Lauren Slater, a brilliant writer who is a young therapist, takes us on a mesmerizing personal and professional
journey in this remarkable memoir about her work with mental and emotional illness. The territory of the mind and
of madness can seem a foreign, even frightening place-until you read Welcome to My Country.
Writing in a powerful and original voice, Lauren Slater closes the distance between "us" and "them,"
transporting us into the country of Lenny, Moxi, Oscar, and Marie. She lets us watch as she interacts with and
strives to understand patients suffering from mental and emotional distress-the schizophrenic, the depressed, the
suicidal. As the young psychologist responds to, reflects on, and re-creates her interactions with the inner realities
of the dispossessed, she moves us to a deeper understanding of the complexities of the human mind and spirit. And
then, in a stunning final chapter, the psychologist confronts herself, when she is asked to treat a young woman,
bulimic and suicidal, who is on the same ward where Slater herself was once such a patient.
Like An Unquiet Mind, Listening to Prozac and Girl, Interrupted, Welcome to My Country
is a beautifully written, captivating, and revealing book, an unusual personal and professional memoir that brings
us closer to understanding ourselves, one another, and the human condition.