Virtual Event: Sarah Fay

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes acclaimed writer and editor SARAH FAY for a discussion of her book Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses. She will be joined in conversation by LESLIE JAMISON, author of The Empathy Exams and The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath.

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While payment is not required, we are suggesting a $5 contribution to support this author series, our staff, and the future of Harvard Book Store—a locally owned, independently run Cambridge institution. In addition, by pre-ordering a copy of Pathological on harvard.com, you support indie bookselling and the writing community during this difficult time.

About Pathological

Over the course of twenty-five years, doctors diagnosed Sarah Fay with six different conditions--anorexia, major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and bipolar disorder. Pathological is the gripping story of the factors that led to those diagnoses, and the impact each had on her life. But it is also a rigorously researched investigation into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)--psychiatry's "bible," the manual from which all mental illness diagnoses come. Yet as Sarah found out, this revered standard is fiction.

Fay contemplates what it means to live with mental illness and what it has meant for her life, and for many others in similar circumstances. So many people have been misdiagnosed and over-diagnosed with multiple (sometimes competing) conditions, causing massive confusion, immense anguish, and unnecessary suffering. As Fay learned, with knowledge comes the ability to understand what invented terms like "clinical depression" or "anxiety disorder" or "bipolar disorder" or any other DSM diagnosis really means.

In telling her story, Sarah uses a surprising literary device, a fresh and entertaining survey of the rules and history of punctuation, to illuminate how, like pathology, punctuation orders and categorizes, and tries to make sense of what's otherwise disordered.

Praise for Pathological

“In this brilliant and excruciating memoir, through careful reporting and exquisite analysis, Fay takes on the myriad ways in which women's minds, not simply our bodies, have become a marketplace for trendy and dangerous ideas about mental health. This book is a triumph of the spirit and the flesh for a woman who since the age of twelve has been fighting, against all odds, not only to survive, but to live.” —Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Amity & Prosperity

"We urgently need to think about our mental and emotional pain and distress in a more loving, nuanced, and intelligent way. Pathological will be a major contribution towards achieving that - a crucial and necessary book.” —Johann Hari, New York Times bestselling author of Lost Connections: Why You're Depressed and How to Find Hope

"An utterly unique memoir written with rare immediacy about the consequences of the language of psychiatric diagnosis. In Pathological, Fay beautifully describes navigating the uncertainty of six mental health misdiagnoses and brilliantly unpacks the dangers of labeling with a mental illness in the face of the complexities of our mental and emotional lives. Brave, heartbreaking, and inspiring, Pathological is a necessary book." —Jenn Percy, Journalist and writer at the New York Times Magazine