Straitjackets and Lunch Money

A 10-year-old in a Psychosomatic Ward

Katya Cengel

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English

Woodhall Press
30 September 2023

Biography: general; Memoirs; Sociology & anthropology; Psychology

Katya Cengel became patient number 090 71 51 at the Roth Psychosomatic Unit at Children's Hospital at Stanford in 1986. She was 10 years old. Overwhelmed by feelings of abandonment, worthlessness and anger at having to care for her depressed father, she wanted out. She found it the only way she knows how

by starving herself.

Thirty years later Katya, now a journalist, discovers her young age was not the only thing that made her hospital stay unusual. The idea of psychosomatic units themselves, where patients have dual medical and psychological diagnoses, was a revolutionary one, since largely fallen out of favor. Katya documents this, tracking down the doctors, psychologists and counselors who once cared for her.

What happened to her as a child is told in the voice of the troubled 10-year-old girl she once was. The two narratives unfold simultaneously. The result is a gut-wrenching account of childhood mental illness told from the inside interspersed with updates from experts in the field.

By: Katya Cengel
Imprint: Woodhall Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 228mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 439g
ISBN: 9781954907683
ISBN 10: 1954907680
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 30 September 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Katya Cengel is the author of Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) and Foreword INDIES winner From Chernobyl with Love and two other non-fiction books including Exiled featured in a California State Library curated collection. Katya reports from around the world for New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire and Smithsonian among others.

Reviews for Straitjackets and Lunch Money: A 10-year-old in a Psychosomatic Ward

"""Straitjackets and Lunch Money is a marvel--a bracing account of the author's childhood mental illness written with such lucid honesty, such palpable empathy, that the reader becomes immediately invested in the fortunes of each sick or lost child we meet. It is a wise and merciless book, humble and deeply brave. I can't imagine what it cost Cengel to write this book, but I'm profoundly glad that she wrote it."" --Ted Scheinman, senior editor of Smithsonian Magazine and author of Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan. ""Katya's early pain, showing up as anorexia, landed her in a med-psych ward at age ten: a speechless child tied down with cotton strips, force-fed through a tube. Fortunately she found her voice on paper and a calling to tell the stories of other silenced children. Beautifully written, Straitjackets and Lunch Money is a searing page-turner and wake-up call."" --Joan Steinau Lester, PEN-award winning author of Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White."