About the Book

An unflinching, rare account of living with severe mental illness that is also a bold commentary on how we misunderstand this often debilitating disease.

The Complications is an intimate portrait of what it’s like to live with schizoaffective disorder of the bipolar type as well as a biting, revelatory critique of America’s mental health culture. Emmett Rensin has written and edited articles for major national media outlets, and taught writing and literature at prestigious schools. But he has also lost jobs and friends, been hospitalized and institutionalized, and cycled through a daunting combination of medications. With scorching honesty, he reflects on his messy, fragile attempt to live his life, his periods of grace, and his near misses with disaster and death.

Going beyond the usual peans against “stigma” and for “understanding”, Rensin confronts the dysfunction in current mental health narratives, contrasting what he calls mental illness “high culture”—in which we affirm the prevalence of anxiety and encourage regular therapy, insisting that the “mentally ill” aren’t dangerous or even weird—with even progressive society’s inability to contend with people with more severe forms of mental illness: those people we pass on the street talking to themselves, those caught in a loop between hospitals and prisons, or even those who we cannot tolerate in our own schools, offices, and lives, including himself. 

With raw honesty, Rensin invites us into every aspect of his life, from what it’s like see four different psychiatrists in one year and the nature of psychotic breaks to a harrowing diary that logs exactly what happens when he stops taking his medication and the unexpected kinship he discovers with an incarcerated spree killer with schizophrenia. Going beyond pure memoir, he reflects on the uncertain “science” of diagnosis, the nature of art about and by the insane, political activism, and the history of madness, from the asylum to the academy. 

A compelling, often devastating, blend of memoir, cultural commentary, and history, The Complications elevates the conversation around mental illness and challenges us to reexamine what we think we know about what is to go insane.

Critical Praise

"In this raw debut memoir, essayist Rensin interweaves an account of his struggles with schizoaffective bipolar disorder with a cutting examination of American attitudes toward mental health. While the unremitting darkness can be tough to stomach, it’s a rousing rebuke to more placid treatments of similar subject matter." — Publishers Weekly

“An absorbing debut memoir. Rensin’s historical overview of psychiatry, examination of the vagaries of diagnosis and therapy, and stark depiction of his own visceral experiences offer unique insight into the meaning of madness.” — Kirkus

“[Rensin's] book is caustic and incisive, never more so than when his readers, curled up neurotypically on our couches, are in his sights: ‘You want to know what madness feels like. Why do you believe that I could tell you?’” — Harper's Magazine

“It is an incredible thing to watch Emmett Rensin dismantle the incoherent, platitudinous beliefs well meaning Americans hold around the subject of what they will call, with delicate distance, 'mental illness.' The Complications is so brilliant, fresh, and resistant to cliché it eventually led me back to that most familiar idea: the thin line between madness and genius.” — Kerry Howley, author of Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

"Remarkably eloquent and deeply felt, The Complications is an irrepressibly beautiful debut that rounds the wounded psyche of the self and society with a deftness so visceral and yet also so subtle it will remind that art is still one of the greatest salves."   — John D'Agata, author of The Making of the American Essay and About a Mountain

“Someone gives you a road map and says, 'Go.' But what if it's a trick map? What if it leads you to crash your car on purpose and to see the nurses helping you as actually intent on killing you with knives? What happens when you find out the map maker is you and always will be you? If you are Emmett Rensin, you write the brilliant and terrifying The Complications. Rensin is walking Didion territory here, with sentences, and fates, as quietly lacerating. And while he himself doesn't put much stock in the madness/genius theory, both are evident here.” — Nancy Rommelmann, author of To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9780063057227
• ISBN 10: 0063057220
• Imprint: HarperOne
• On Sale: 04/23/2024
• Trimsize: 6.000 in (w) x 9.000 in (h) x 0.000 in (d)
• Pages: 352
• List Price: $29.99
• BISAC1 : PSYCHOLOGY / Mental Health
• BISAC2 : SELF-HELP / Mood Disorders / Bipolar Disorder
• BISAC3 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs