Author Description

"Katya Cengal became patient number 090 71 51 at the Roth Psychosomatic Unit at Children's Hospital at Stanford in 1986. She was 10 years old. Katya's young age set her apart from the other--mostly teenage--children on the psychosomatic unit: anorexic girls became her babysitters, non-compliant diabetic boys were her big brothers. Instead of learning her multiplication talbes, Katya learned how to throw up. The bulimic teens taught her that. Visitors from other units showed her how to be ashamed. Hospital staff put her in a straitjacket--and on anti-psychotic medication. Her young age, the length of her stay, and her lack of diagnosis inspired a rare intimacy in staff and patients, allowing Katya to penetrate a hidden world more deeply than most. Thirty years later Katya, now a journalist, tracks down the doctors, psychologists and counselors who once cared for her. What happened to her as a child is told in the voice of the troubled 10-year-old girl she once was. The two narratives unfold simultaneously. The result is a gut-wrenching account of childhood mental illness told from the inside interspersed with updates from experts in the field"--Rear cover.