Content Warning: Negative descriptions of OCD
If I had to give this book a rating out of 5, it would get a 0. Ignoring all of the issues regarding the representation of mental health and therapy, the writing and the love story are bad. None of the characters appear to have any personality or interests outside of their mental illnesses. Yes, when your mental illness is at its worst it can feel like it consumes you, but I still have other personality traits and interests outside of it. I could still talk about anything other than my mental illness, which is something that the characters in this novel seemed incapable of doing.
To me, when you write about a character with a mental illness, you want to empower the reader. If they struggle with the same illness they will feel seen and reassured that they are not alone, and empowered to go to counselling and get whatever help is necessary so that they can live with their mental illness. As someone who struggles with OCD, this book made me feel ashamed, like I was a freak or abnormal, and made me want to run as far away from therapy as possible.
The way that Haydu writes Bea’s perspective of the other people in the therapy session makes anyone who struggles with that type of OCD feel ashamed and upset. I understand that she wanted to present Bea as the tough mean girl stereotype, but she should have found a way to do that without insulting the others based on their mental illness and the way it presents. For example, this is the first time that Bea meets the other members of group therapy:
“I end up in a room with a girl who has only patches of hair left on her scalp and three other twitchy-eyed, hand-wringing teenagers. I’d like to think I stand out as too normal here.” (page 28)
The girl she criticises, Jenny, has trichotillomania, a mental illness that causes you to compulsively pull out your hair. Even after learning this about Jenny, Bea continues to criticise and describe her purely by this, as if her trichotillomania is Jenny’s defining feature. Rudy, who has dermatillomania, is also frequently reduced to purely that and named “scab-faced Rudy”. (page 32)
Outside of the group therapy setting, those who go to therapy are called “freaks” (page 44) “crazy” (page 46), and Bea is constantly looking for reassurance that she is one of “the normal ones in that group” (page 74). Anyone with a mental illness reading this book will feel incredibly isolated and ‘other’ because of the way that Haydu refers to them. Beck is the only one whose OCD isn’t used to describe him, but that’s because he is instead described as the love interest. For example, when summing up the rest of the people at group therapy, Bea describes them as “Jenny: no hair; Rudy: picks his face; Fawn: tapping fingers; Beck: good kisser.” (page 29)
The representation of therapy and how it works is also bad. When there is a positive description of a therapy session, such as the session where they went for a hike, it is unrealistic and doesn’t give a good representation of the impact that therapy can have. I have done cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for OCD that presented itself in a very similar way to Beck. It took me three months of CBT to get anywhere near where he was after the one session. So the only time when the reader may think that therapy would be a good idea, Haydu presents it as, quite literally, a walk in the park. Beck goes from being unable to shake other peoples’ hands and asking for plastic wrapped cutlery in restaurants (page 108), to having sex in the middle of a field, within the space of roughly 3 weeks. In fact, we can narrow it down even further. At the start of his intense group therapy session, when the group goes for a hike, he is asked to touch a tree for five seconds. This is hard for him for two reasons, the first being that he struggles with dirt and germs, and the second being that the way he calms down is by doing things in sequences of eight. He has a panic attack, and names his anxiety at eight and a half out of ten. A page later, he refuses to eat because he wants to be able to wash his hands first. And then the next page, Beck and Bea stay behind after everyone else leaves and have sex in the field. The same field that Beck wanted to wash off his hands just ten minutes earlier. CBT doesn’t work like that. Yes, the sessions are hard and you may start to see gradual improvements, but Beck seems to go from high anxiety to nothing at all within one session, which will never happen.
The therapist herself, Dr. Pat is vilified throughout the book, and therapists are painted as people who can’t be trusted and are working against you, which is exactly the opposite of what they are doing. Bea says “Therapists are tricky. They’ll make connections out of anything.” (page 14). She previously said that she has “to be careful with Dr. Pat. One false move and she’ll put me on more Zoloft or make me come in more often.” When you go to therapy, your therapist’s goal is not to get you on more medication or to get you to make more appointments. All they want is to help you learn how to cope with your mental illness. Of course, you don’t always have to like your therapist. God knows there were times when I hated my therapist during CBT because he was suggesting that I did something that exposed me to my worst fears. But he wasn’t doing it to be mean or just because he could. He was doing it to help, which is exactly what Dr. Pat is doing for Bea, but that never seems to be acknowledged in the book.
This book is one of the worst representations of OCD I’ve seen. It makes those who have it feel ashamed and ostracized. Readers will feel like they don’t want to go out to seek help for their mental illnesses because therapy is presented in such a negative way.
- Vic