5. Poppy Shakespeare - Clare Allan
This entertaining and satirical book is based in a day time psychiatric hospital. 'N' is a long term patient who befriends the titular Poppy - a new addition to the hospital who insists she isn't mad and does not belong there. She cannot afford lawyer's fees for an appeal, so N teaches her how to work the system to get legal aid and 'MAD money' (benefits). Soon Poppy is fully enmeshed in the psychiatric merry go round. Author Clare Allan was a day patient in a psychiatric hospital for ten years so she knows her stuff. The craziness of Poppy and N's fellow patients is accurate. Mental patients as nutty (or even nuttier) as those in the book really do exist. I thought that the whole MAD money thing was a spot on satire of Disability benefits which are very fiddly and tiered according to how disabled you are. It is worth noting that after learning disabilities and dementia, people with psychosis are the third most common recipients of benefits. The treatment by Clare Allan of psychiatric medication is likewise very true and very funny. The book is a kind of British female One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Poppy's eventual demise against the system she fought so valiantly against paralleling that of Randle McMurphy.