Compare And Contrast The Skeleton Cupboard

The Skeleton Cupboard is a novel that is written by Tanya Byron, who is a clinical psychologist, and is a fictional/ truthful account of her journey in becoming a clinical psychologist. This journey is told through the stories of the people she met on clinical placements, both patients and staff. However as she tells us in the introduction and again in the epilogue, the people she describes are fictional, but inspired by the real people that she came into contact with. An idea that she touches on throughout the book is the division between abnormal and normal and is there really a division. The first instance on which this is touched on is a debate between whether someone suffering from mental illness should be referred to as a patient or a client. Tanya describes that

However as she says, “in mental health things are just not as clear-cut” as they are for visible health problems and so treatment becomes difficult. Thus she cannot guarantee that every person she has worked with has got “better”. This idea is also shown in the endings of Wintergirls and Silver linings playbook. Both books end with the character improving but neither involve a ‘happy ending’ as such, which is a more honest representation of mental illness than in other texts. People don’t like mental illness because it frightens us and therefore we have little time to engage with it. Tanya talks about how in society we discard those who scare us, because they challenge us. She also explains how important it is to not discard them because they “do not show their vulnerability in a way we can accept”. But then this of course comes down to the acceptance of people as people and not labelling them as “abnormal” or “mad”, and the lack of understanding society has for those who are labelled as