Ward D

by Freida McFadden

“He’s not ‘a schizophrenic.’ We don’t refer to patients that way. Miguel is a human being, and he’s more than his psychiatric diagnosis. He is not a schizophrenic—he’s a man who has schizophrenia. Do you understand that?”

The patients locked in this unit are human beings just like everyone else. A mental health diagnosis is not a death sentence. All the patients in this unit are just trying to get better.

After all, if you meet someone who is truly mentally ill, that’s the only way to know that you’re sane.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone approximately my age reading that book before, and I’m not sure how to feel that the first person I’ve seen reading it is in a psychiatric ward.

A girl needs her mother.

But I always made time to read. Whenever I pick up a book, it’s like an escape. For an hour or two, I get to be part of the book world instead of my own much more boring world.

After all, I would have to be insane to do something like that.