Title: My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

Author: Mark Lukach

Publication Date: May 2, 2017

Number of Pages: 320

Format: Audiobook

Publisher: Harper Wave

Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Mental Illness

Synopsis:

A heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love.

Mark and Giulia’s life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.

Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended.

A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach’s is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife’s mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers’ faith in the power of love.

Personal Thoughts:

Rating:

I discovered this book while browsing through Libby’s selection of memoirs and borrowed it immediately because I wanted to take a break from listening to celebrity memoirs. This caught my attention because the synopsis was very interesting and I wanted to learn how real people deal with psychosis as I’ve only read it in fictional characters.

Reading this and listening to the audiobook made me feel a lot of emotions. It’s saddening how a happy couple and a wonderful person suffer from mental illness all of a sudden. In the book, Mark mentioned that Guilia used to be very confident and so sure of her life, but with one fell swoop, she suddenly turned into a person he doesn’t know and it hurts him to witness his beloved wife suffer like this.

My Lovely Wife at the Psych Ward made me realize how hard, frustrating, and painful it is to suffer from mental illness. It also made me realize that sometimes despite a person’s confidence, they can still go through some kind of insecurity or uncertainty. This book got me teary-eyed at times! I feel so much for this couple — this family. I listened to the audiobook of this which made me feel the emotions more.

Mental illness can never be treated on your own, once you feel that you’re not your usual self or if you think you’re more anxious, get help.