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Girl Interrupted Summary

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In the book “Girl Interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen, the author talks about her experience in a psychiatric facility and the strong relationship with the patients who she considered as one of her closest friends. Kaysen tells her story about the people and briefly illustrate their disorder within a given episode. She described Polly, a patient whose appearance was not pleasant to see based on her self-inflicted burns on her face. Lisa was another patient where she tried to plan an escape from the institution and would always scorn about the hospital authorities. Georgina was Kaysen’s roommate; she struggles to maintain a relationship with her violent and unstable boyfriend. A newly patient named Daisy had an obsession with chicken and laxatives but once she got out of the ward she committed suicide. Kaysen was one …show more content…

Throughout this book, Kaysen has talked about mental disorders within other patients and one example of this would be Janet. Janet was Polly’s roommate who is an anorexic and was scheduled for force-feeding. Then there was Daisy who was passionate about laxatives and chicken, which is linked to bulimia nervosa. According to David H Barlow, V. Mark Durand in “Abnormal Psychology: An Integrative Approach” they said, “In bulimia nervosa, out-of-control eating episodes, or binges, are followed by self-induced vomiting, excessive use of laxatives, or other attempts to purge (get rid of) the food.”(pg.269) This shows how bulimia nervosa is a cruel case where an individual is capable of using any technique of purging after consuming an excessive amount of food. In this case Daisy has an eating disorder involving chicken and the consumption of laxatives that impacts her physically in her diet and mentally thinking that she is perfect although she is not in good

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