Non-Fiction Friday: Welcome to My Country

Author: Lauren Slater Title: Welcome to My Country: A Therapist's Memoir of Madness Publisher: Anchor Date Published: 07/14/1997

Read Dates: 05/06/2026- 05/08/2026
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

This was my non-fiction pick for May.

Welcome to My Country is a nonfiction book by therapist Lauren Slater where she mostly describes experiences early in her career interacting with patients. She alternates between stories of her work on an inpatient unit with schizophrenic patients, and stories of clients she met with fulfilling her hours at an outpatient clinic, working with personality disorders, depression, addiction, self harm, and eating disorders.

Although the title implies it is a memoir, there was very little about Slater’s own experiences with mental illness (mostly saved for the final chapter). The majority of the book was about her patients and I’ll admit the way she talked about them and thought about them made me uncomfortable. The book was published in 1997 and presumably these experiences happened in the late 80s/early 90s but it made me hope none of the professionals I received treatment from over the last 30 years talked about me the way she talked about her patients!

Lauren Slater, a brilliant writer who is a young therapist, takes us on a mesmerizing personal and professional journey in this remarkable memoir about her work with mental and emotional illness. The territory of the mind and of madness can seem a foreign, even frightening place—until you read Welcome to My Country.

Writing in a powerful and original voice, Lauren Slater closes the distance between "us" and "them," transporting us into the country of Lenny, Moxi, Oscar, and Marie. She lets us watch as she interacts with and strives to understand patients suffering from mental and emotional distress—the schizophrenic, the depressed, the suicidal. As the young psychologist responds to, reflects on, and re-creates her interactions with the inner realities of the dispossessed, she moves us to a deeper understanding of the complexities of the human mind and spirit. And then, in a stunning final chapter, the psychologist confronts herself, when she is asked to treat a young woman, bulimic and suicidal, who is on the same ward where Slater herself was once such a patient.

Like An Unquiet Mind, Listening to Prozac and Girl, Interrupted, Welcome to My Country is a beautifully written, captivating, and revealing book, an unusual personal and professional memoir that brings us closer to understanding ourselves, one another, and the human condition.