Falling Into the Fire Quotes

“Standing on the edge with my patients — abiding with them — means that I must harbor a true awareness that I, too, could lose my child through the play of circumstance over which I have no control. I could lose my home, my financial security, my safety. I could lose my mind. Any of us could.”
― Christine Montross, Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis

“Visions and voices and fear and despair cannot be captured by CT scan or measured in the amplitude of EKG waves. Try as we might, we simply cannot predict which of our patients will kill themselves, which will murder their children, and which will leave the hospital healed, never to return.”
― Christine Montross, Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis

“Thus far we have been able to protect [our children] from the deep and enduring traumas that scar the minds and selves of so many of the patients I see. How — how?—can I make it always so?”
― Christine Montross, Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis