What to Read Next: New Memoirs of Mental Health

Issue #325, featuring "Sociopath" and "Devout"

Happy Friday, readers!

It finally feels like spring has actually arrived — at least here in Colorado. Our week was filled with warm temperatures, greenifying rain, and, of course, yard work. To kick off the season, I’ve read a few new memoirs that are centered on mental and spiritual health, all of which served to put me in someone else’s shoes for a couple hundred pages.

Let’s jump right in!

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Sociopath by Patric Gagne

Patric (short for Patricia) Gagne makes a good point early on in her buzzy new memoir: the vast majority of sociopathic depictions in pop culture are centered on murderers. There’s a conception of it being an all-or-nothing condition; if you’re a sociopath, you feel nothing at all, which leads to complete amorality.

Gagne is herself a diagnosed sociopath. She’s also happily married, a mother to two kids, and gainfully employed. She can, in fact, feel things. Anger, love, and sadness come naturally — she just has a harder time with social emotions like empathy, shame, guilt, etc. (She points out that sociopathy is likely much more of a spectrum than previously thought.)

Starting from her earliest emotional memories, the strongest points of the memoir are when Gagne details her earlier years and realizes that her brain is a bit different than most other folks’. As a teenager and young adult, she had to figure out what it meant to live in a world where most people operate from those social emotions. The first half of the book was uniquely fascinating.

The second half of Sociopath wasn’t quite as compelling. It somewhat oddly turned into a Hollywood memoir, where Gagne found herself in the music business and reveled in her bad behavior — lying, scheming, stealing, and breaking into homes. By the end, though, the story gets back on track. Gagne concludes with going back to school to study the condition, plus an uplifting final note about living “normally” as a sociopath.

Despite going a little off course, Sociopath was ultimately a worthwhile listen. Gagne is a great narrator and delivers the opposite of the flat affect you’d perhaps expect. The book does exactly what a memoir should do, which is to provide a glimpse into the life and thoughts of someone different than us.

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Devout by Anna Gazmarian

Like Patric Gagne, Anna Gazmarian uses her memoir to destigmatize a mental health condition that’s often viewed rather warily by popular culture. After experiencing a roller coaster of manic episodes followed by depressive spells, Gazmarian was diagnosed with bipolar disorder — on top of that, it was later discovered to be the treatment-resistant variety.

Rather than just dealing with the diagnosis itself, which would have been hard enough, Gazmarian also had to reckon with the response of her conservative faith community. Why couldn’t she just pray harder and find some joy? Why couldn’t she control her “sinful” behavior?

Gazmarian wrestles with those questions of faith and mental health and, inevitably, doubt. While she doesn’t abandon her faith by any means, the nature of her belief and the type of community she seeks out come to evolve quite a bit.

What I appreciate most about this book is how much compassion Gazmarian has for everyone in her life. She refrains from throwing anyone or any community under the bus, even when she’s been poorly treated and wildly misunderstood. Devout is far more a big-hearted journey of discovery than any kind of public revenge tour (which Sociopath sometimes felt like).

While faith plays a central role in the story, Devout is by no means an evangelistic tool. It’s just one woman’s powerful story of mental health, uncertainty, and, ultimately, love.

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Thanks so much for reading. I deeply appreciate your time and inbox space.

-Jeremy