Madness

Dr Sean Baumann, who has spent 25 years as a psychiatrist at Valkenberg Hospital in Cape Town, lifts the veil on 'madness', arguing for a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of mental illness.
In this book, Baumann tells the stories of his patients and draws on his experiences working in the South African public health sector. Based on personal encounters and interviews with persons dealing with various forms of psychoses, this book uncovers what it really means to suffer from, amongst others, schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder.

We meet a man whose shoes can transport him to the moon, an elderly, aristocratic couple, and a young man who, one day, goes into labour without warning. But there are also the first hand accounts of people plagued by unknown enemies.