Tell Me I’m Here

Chapter: The search for a cure chapter four.

Issue: The cause of mental illness.

Initial statement: Throughout the novel there are many different views on the causes of mental illness, some believe it is the mothers fault for overprotecting her child while others believe it is a very unfortunate medical condition that people suffer from. In this part of the novel we meet Jacqui who has a centre in India called Athma Shakti. She works with the mentally ill and their families, and works in stages to try and make them better. At this centre they have very strict rules about how the mentally ill should bet treated and how they should behave. Jacqui believes that mental illness is caused by early childhood experiences, but these experiences are not only social experiences but also family and upbringing experiences, such as whether he was breast fed, how often, how Anne felt about this and when he went onto solids. She did not seem to take any interest in the fact that at birth he had a cerebral haemorrhage.

Quote/s:

o Ў§I would have thought that to be put into an incubator, with needles in your spine and tubes up your nose would have been significantly frightening to start of any life.ЎЁ (Anne Deveson pg 114)

o Ў§Jonathan was struggling under a mass of bodies...ЎЁ(pg 113)

o Ў§Throughout the day work included yoga, problem solving exercises, a group for those with poor motor-co ordination...(pg 115)

Deconstruct/Analysis:

„X Character construction: In the chapter Anne describes a lot of the characters very negatively. In JonathanЎ¦s case: She has moments in the novel where she absolutely hates him yet along the road to Athma Shakti she really feels sorry for him. At one stage