Background
Montross grew up in Indianapolis before moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan to attend the University of Michigan.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NBOTXJ6/?tag=2022091-20
(Falling Into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross’...)
Falling Into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross’s thoughtful investigation of the gripping patient encounters that have challenged and deepened her practice. The majority of the patients Montross treats in Falling Into the Fire are seen in the locked inpatient wards of a psychiatric hospital; all are in moments of profound crisis. We meet a young woman who habitually commits self-injury, having ingested light bulbs, a box of nails, and a steak knife, among other objects. Her repeated visits to the hospital incite the frustration of the staff, leading Montross to examine how emotion can interfere with proper care. A recent college graduate, dressed in a tunic and declaring that love emanates from everything around him, is brought to the ER by his concerned girlfriend. Is it ecstasy or psychosis? What legal ability do doctors have to hospitalize—and sometimes medicate—a patient against his will? A new mother is admitted with incessant visions of harming her child. Is she psychotic and a danger or does she suffer from obsessive thoughts? Her course of treatment—and her child’s future—depends upon whether she receives the correct diagnosis. Each case study presents its own line of inquiry, leading Montross to seek relevant psychiatric knowledge from diverse sources. A doctor of uncommon curiosity and compassion, Montross discovers lessons in medieval dancing plagues, in leading forensic and neurological research, and in moments from her own life. Beautifully written, deeply felt, Falling Into the Fire brings us inside the doctor’s mind, illuminating the grave human costs of mental illness as well as the challenges of diagnosis and treatment. Throughout, Montross confronts the larger question of psychiatry: What is to be done when a patient’s experiences cannot be accounted for, or helped, by what contemporary medicine knows about the brain? When all else fails, Montross finds, what remains is the capacity to abide, to sit with the desperate in their darkest moments. At once rigorous and meditative, Falling Into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry, allowing the reader to witness the humanity of the practice and the enduring mysteries of the mind
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143125710/?tag=2022091-20
Montross grew up in Indianapolis before moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan to attend the University of Michigan.
There, she studied French literature and environmental science as an undergraduate and went on to receive a Master of Arts in poetry from the same university in 1998.
First a published poet and a high school teacher, she later took up medical studies, and became an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University"s Alpert Medical School. She is the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship. Montross" experiences there as a teacher at a charter school for at-risk students led to her interest in psychiatry.
After a year doing pre-medical coursework at Bryn Mawr College, she entered the Brown University School of Medicine in September 2001.
While a medical student, she also pursued independent study under Carole Maso of Brown"s literary arts program She received her Doctor of Medicine degree in 2006 and her Master of Medical Science degree in 2007, and completed her residency in 2010.
She went on to be appointed to her current position of assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior.
(Falling Into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross’...)
