Esmé Weijun Wang describes how it is to live with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, through various vignettes where she recalls her lived experience: from the struggle of getting a diagnosis which then doesn't completely cover the symptoms, to finding ways to cope with the most unsettling delusions. 

I found it a great way to learn more about the collected schizophrenic disorders. Wang's writing style is to the point, easy to understand, insightfully personal and at times quite funny. 

I primarily read this book to mark trigger warnings for my partner so they could proceed with this book in an informed way. Of those triggers, there were lots. Going into the book, certain experiences TW

involuntary hospitalization

can't be left out, but it would have been better to have them collected in their own chapter, so the people who don't want to read about them can avoid them.  I appreciate the fact that the author did do this for a topic that was very triggering for me to read, and which I had to skip altogether a fe pages in. That chapter is called "John Doe, Psychosis" and goes into TW

rape and pedophilia

in a graphic way. 

Advice for people looking to read this book but who know it might be triggering: 
TW

If you are looking to read this book, but know the topic of involuntary hospitalization might be triggering, have a friend read through it first and mark the personal accounts before you do so. Throughout the whole book, Wang provides short, but personal and graphic recallings of her own involuntary hospitalizations.

If I have the time and energy I'll experiment with providing a list of trigger warnings for this book, with page numbers, but it's honestly generally not a safe read. I believe it to be in the authors right to write about these topics, of course, but I think it could've been handled more carefully. There is no use of trigger warnings in the book. I would think a core part of the audience interested in this book is suffering with similar experiences this book details, so it's sad that the book didn't make an effort to be a safe read for that audience.

At times I found the stories in the vignettes boring when I didn't see the connection to the overarching theme of the chapter (yet). When I did though, I found this style of writing fresh and engaging, leaving a certain effort to the audience to link the stories together. I think this book is a succes as a memoir, but lacks in (what I am more interested in) scientific explanation. I know schizophrenia is not a well understood disorder, but I left this read with about as much scientific understanding as I went into it. On the other hand, Wang's personal approach was engaging and informative in its own right. 

In conclusion: a good (albeit unsafe) read on one persons experience with schizoaffective disorder. 

A beautiful, self-reflective, self-aware book about how hard it is to exist when mentally ill, but about how easy it is, too. Very insightful and honest, two qualities I like in a book. Asks many thought-provoking questions, to the mentally ill and non-mentally ill  alike, to the schizo-affectives/typal/phrenic (and adjacents) and the nonpsychotic alike. 

The font is nice and angular, on the print copy I read. I like that, too. 

This is a tough one to try and rate. I thoroughly enjoyed this book but did recoil at the pseudoscience and mysticism in last 20% or so. I was raised in a family that attempted to treat my childhood and adolescent illness with a wide range of expensive pseudoscientific remedies, and while I don't deny that Wang seems to gain grounding and comfort from the experience, I struggle to ascribe good faith motives to the practitioners treating her chronic health issues with similar costly means. I take issue with the author on many a point, but still found her perspective fascinating and her writing compelling. 

the author has a very impersonal style of writing, alluding to her background in academia (which she likes to make note of, often) that makes it difficult to emotionally engaged with though highly informative. her first-hand account of schizophrenia and the way it is treated by the healthcare system was thought provoking and again, informative.

what i will say is that it jumps around from topic to topic with little coherency. the ultimate endpoint of the book, is more akin to a memoir, perhaps a journal, than essays. and because of this failure of the marketed and titled premise it begins to feel increasingly trite as it goes on. i think this quality would’ve likely stayed even if reworked into a memoir format, but it might have been somewhat mitigated. in a memoir if you don’t want to have deep reflection on your privileged life and attitude (she loves to remind readers that she went to yale, generally in every entry) that is one thing, but in a collection of essays? it seems odd and out of place how little this was explored or addressed, only simply, and i must stress, repeatedly, stated with no clear purpose.

I loved Esmé Weijun Wang’s book of essays, The Collected Schizophrenias.  Well-researched yet compact, this book follows Wang’s mental health journey through misdiagnoses, forced hospitalizations, and hallucinations to eventually land upon a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.  Each chapter follows a few different storylines, a nonlinear examination of Wang’s experiences paired with eloquent cultural commentary and sometimes a bit of data regurgitation to provide context.  This book humanizes the schizophrenias in ways that society, and even mental health practitioners, have repeatedly denied.  Also including the author’s experiences with delayed-onset PTSD and late stage Lyme disease (which is also bafflingly controversial in the medical community)—as well as her loving long-term relationship with her husband—The Collected Schizophrenias is an ultimately hopeful book which grants autonomy and power to those who know its namesake.

Book TW: mental illness, discussions on various aspects of psychosis, chronic illness, discussion of suicide/self-harm/harm to others, discussion of rape/abuse/CP, involuntary hospitalisation and restraint

Given my own internal rules about rating anthologies/poetry collections/etc. I probably shouldn’t be giving this a star rating. However, I wanted to give you a visual depiction of how much I loved this book so you would read the review and hopefully /the book/. 
I think it’s important for everyone to read about the experiences of people who have gone through life differently than them, but it’s /imperative/ for those who are entering/in service and helping professions. As someone in training to work in the mental health field, I cannot limit myself to descriptions of mental illnesses in textbooks or a list of symptoms in the DSM if I hope to be a fully rounded clinician. It is so important to read first-hand accounts, to remind ourselves of the humanity and complexity of mental health and illness. The way Wang weaves her essays is not only beautiful in a purely literary sense, but it is beautiful because it is so human, so connective. She draws you into her world and shows you, as much as is possible, what it is like to exist in tandem with schizoaffective disorder, part of the collected schizophrenias. This is not, however, an entirely bleak book. There is hope throughput and Wang weaves humor and snark even into the hardest of moments. That being said, there are times where the book is hard to read or made me cry for her suffering. Regardless of what I felt at any given part of the book, it was continually emotional and impactful. While I would recommend this book to anyone, I think it is absolutely a must read for anyone in healthcare or public service. Build your understanding and empathy; read this book. Digest it slowly. Ponder it. Underline, annotate, and dogear if that’s your thing, just don’t ignore its value. Esmé Weijun Wang has laid her soul and her sufferings in this series of essays and it’s the least we can do to give her words the collective space they deserve in our minds (and bookshelves).

The Collected Schizophrenias is a collection of 13 essays largely about the author's experience with Schizoaffective disorder. Before this book, my main exposure to Schizoaffective disorder comes from Lauren from the youtube channel Living Well with Schizophrenia; I really appreciated broadening my information sources, especially because I think there are a few things on which Lauren and Esme would not agree!

I will start off by saying that if you are like me and don't believe in any sort of magic and think that many alternative medicine practices are exploitive, you will probably like the first 11 chapters and be slightly confused by the last two. That's fine, it is a memoir, and we are bound to disagree with some thoughts others have. But I will talk about my thoughts on the last two chapters later.

Overall I really enjoyed Wang's writing style; she is clear and sharp and has clearly mastered relaying her experiences to others in a deft and engaging manner. She dives deep into both her own life experiences and a very understandable scientific and historical understanding of schizophrenia and its adjacent diseases.

I was particularly invested in the parts of the book that explored the ways in which mental health care infrastructure fails those; it is presumably there to be helping. Wang presents opposing views on lots of mental healthcare topics and uses her own experiences to show how some of the current infrastructure either helped or hurt her personally.

I also really enjoyed reading about her own musings on the way in which she related to those who share her diagnosis and those who don't and how that has changed over her life. I tend to really like narratives that explore your own relationship to communities you are a part of, and Wang does a fascinating job of doing this.

Something that did not sit well with me was the way in which Wang wrote about Late Stage Lyme Disease. She does mention that the disease is controversial, though I do not think she does anywhere near as thorough a job explaining this as she does other topics in her book. Wang does not hold the same beliefs about Late Stage Lyme as the majority of the scientific community does, which is fine science is always evolving and can be wrong, but I do not think she delves at all into why it is controversial. And she completely does not mention that the lab that gave her this diagnosis is VERY controversial, it borders on having the reputation of diagnosing anyone who will pay with Lyme if they want. I am also using the word controversial because that is what she says, but I am not sure that it is controversial? I 100% believe that Wang is ill and should be taken seriously in that illness.

I also want to note that the ostracization of people who are given diagnoses that fall outside of science is probably not very smart of the medical community. If people feel they cannot trust you, then you cannot help them or collect data that could allow you to learn. But I still don't think Wang was quite as comprehensive in the exploration of this topic as she was with the rest of the book. I also didn't love the way she talked about medicine and alternative treatments; she does not at all delve into any way in which alternative treatments can be harmful. Obviously, this is her book, and she does not have to do that, but it was something that I personally did not like. I just would have liked at least a nod to the fact that just because she is open to both paths does not mean that there isn't harm in alternative treatments because they do often encourage people not to seek medical intervention.

I also did not love the final essay. I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea that I’m supposed to believe that you have supernatural powers based on testing yourself for supernatural powers is frankly wild. And there is nothing wrong inherently with believing that tying a talisman cord around you helps you not experience symptoms you don't want (that you are maybe tying to the supernatural and maybe tying to schizoaffective disorder). Still, I would have liked a mention that it could work for her because it is a grounding technique and not inherently because it is supernatural. But I am a person who very much does not embrace any sort of magical thinking. I think magic of any sort if it were real, would be very obvious.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about mental illness, the healthcare infrastructure surrounding mental illness, the impact it has on patients, and to those who just love well-written memoir!

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