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Straitjackets and Lunch Money: A 10-year-old in a Psychosomatic Ward Paperback – September 5, 2023

by Katya Cengel (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 25 ratings
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Katya Cengel became patient number 090 71 51 at the Roth Psychosomatic Unit at Children's Hospital at Stanford in 1986. She was 10 years old. Overwhelmed by feelings of abandonment, worthlessness and anger at having to care for her depressed father, she wanted out. She found it the only way she knows how – by starving herself.

Thirty years later Katya, now a journalist, discovers her young age was not the only thing that made her hospital stay unusual. The idea of psychosomatic units themselves, where patients have dual medical and psychological diagnoses, was a revolutionary one, since largely fallen out of favor. Katya documents this, tracking down the doctors, psychologists and counselors who once cared for her.

What happened to her as a child is told in the voice of the troubled 10-year-old girl she once was. The two narratives unfold simultaneously. The result is a gut-wrenching account of childhood mental illness told from the inside interspersed with updates from experts in the field.

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  1. Print length
    340 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Woodhall Press
  4. Publication date
    September 5, 2023
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1954907680
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1954907683
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The memoir masterfully renders a personal story that casts a light on a neglected area of public health. Cengel successfully uses her journalistic skills to revisit this part of her life: "Now I can ask the questions I couldn't as a child." A harrowing but engrossing examination of pediatric care for readers interested in psychology and health." - Kirkus Reviews

"This memoir intertwines Cengel's 10-year-old voice with expert insights, offering a harrowing glimpse into childhood mental struggles and the evolution of psychiatric care." - Alta Journal

"Incredibly affecting" - San Francisco Chronicle

Straitjackets and Lunch Money is a marvel - a bracing acount of the author's childhood mental illness written with such lucid honesty, such palpable empathy, that the reader becomes immediately invested in the fortunes of each sick or lost child we meet. It is a wise and merciless book, humble and deeply brave. I can't imagine what it cost Cengel to write this book, but I'm profoundly glad that she wrote it. - Ted Scheinman, senior editor of Smithsonian Magazine and author of Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan

Beautifully written, Straitjackets is a searing page-turner and wake-up call - Joan Steinau Lester, PEN-award winning author of Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White

About the Author

Katya Cengel is the author of Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) and Foreword INDIES winner From Chernobyl with Love and two other non-fiction books including Exiled featured in a California State Library curated collection. Katya reports from around the world for New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire and Smithsonian among others.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Woodhall Press (September 5, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 340 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1954907680
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1954907683
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 25 ratings

About the author

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Katya Cengel

Katya Cengel

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Katya Cengel is the author of four non-fiction books, including most recently Straitjackets and Lunch Money, which the San Francisco Chronicle called “incredibly affecting” and Kirkus Reviews called “harrowing but engrossing”. Cengel’s earlier titles cover everything from minor league baseball in Bluegrass Baseball to falling in love at Chernobyl in From Chernobyl with Love. She has received an Eric Hoffer Academic Press award, an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY), and a Foreword INDIES.

As a journalist Cengel has written for New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine and Atavist Magazine among others. Her writing has taken her to Utah to search for Bigfoot (she didn’t find him) and to Mongolia to write about female street artists. Cengel has been awarded grants from the International Reporting Project, the International Women’s Media Foundation and the International Center for Journalists. Her stories have received a Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award and a Society for Features Journalism Excellence-in-Features Award.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
25 global ratings
A haunting memoir of a child committed to a psychosomatic ward
5 Stars
A haunting memoir of a child committed to a psychosomatic ward
I was so happy to receive my copy of Straight Jackets and Lunch Money, after meeting Katya at a conference. Her memoir offers a glimpse into a system few know about and a first-hand account of what it’s like to struggle with an eating disorder and a complicated family dynamic as a child. I couldn’t put it down. I’m so glad Katya survived to tell this story.
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Top reviews from the United States

Bill Herod
5.0 out of 5 stars Playing at Therapy
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2023
Verified Purchase
Katya Cengel is an accomplished freelance journalist, researcher, and writer who has sharpened her skills doing deep-dives into complicated topics. In “Straitjackets and Lunch Money,” Ms. Cengel focuses on a particularly complex and sensitive subject: the diagnosis and treatment of children suffering from trauma, especially those whose symptoms are expressed through eating disorders and related depression. In her research, Ms. Cengel interviewed a number of patients, families, and caretakers including nurses, counselors, therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.

This fascinating book is made especially insightful as Ms. Cengel interviewed the “experts” who “cared” for one ten-year-old girl who was institutionalized for four months thirty years ago. What did they now think about her treatment all those years ago? More to the point, what was that child thinking as she was restrained – sometimes in a straitjacket - and fed through a tube forced into her nose and down into her stomach which she then jerked out over and over again?

While the caretakers had mixed feelings about their work with these young, vulnerable patients – and some of declined to be interviewed for the book - the central character dominates the book with her own first-hand account of what the ten-year-old was thinking and feeling. Ms. Cengel was herself that patient.

While she recognized that some of those around her were trying to “help” her, she also realized that they really didn’t know what they were doing. While play therapy is certainly a valid treatment technique, what is described here is playing at therapy. Even the professional mental health workers were just experimenting (i.e. “playing”) with her and the other patients as they tried one approach after another. Indeed, one caretaker confided that sometimes patients were referred to as “toys.”

One of the sources in the book is a kind and gentle woman who also survived various forms of trauma as a child herself. As an adult, she now works with troubled youngsters and acknowledges the challenges even the well-meaning face: “As you become more knowledgeable about the roots of trauma, the effects of trauma … you also realize you’re going to do the very best you can, and it may not be enough.”

Ms. Cengel survived and thrived following her own horrific experience all those years ago, though the physical and psychological damage certainly took its toll. She has developed a special appreciation for the reality of post-traumatic stress and closely monitors her physical and emotional health. Not all victims have been so lucky.
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LauraJane
5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable read, palatable, realistic & poignant..
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2024
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Writer’s voice is so pleasant and fun to read.., Occasional tongue-in-cheek personality to the real life depicted. Insightful, informative while inspirational. Supports the “you never know” virtue… regarding the people around us all at any given moment. Well done. 👏👏👏👏
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calbrit
5.0 out of 5 stars And now for something completely different.....
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2023
Verified Purchase
Really loved this book, stayed up till 1.30 am to finish.

The author was anorexic as a ten-year old, not for the usual female skinny appearance obsession, or sexual molestation, but because she skipped school lunches to financially help out her depressed, narcissistic, unemployed, recently divorced father. She became addicted to the dulling effects of starvation on her mind. This sort of thing is now included in the medical term "Trauma Bonding'" where you become attached to the source of your misery and are dragged into their version of reality. "Stockholm Syndrome" is an example.

Anorexics and alcoholics have a lifelong problem, but anybody can have fun drinking to excess and become an alcoholic, the unfun part is later. To become anorexic you need to make an effort. Katya Cengel did. The other anorexics in the special section of the hospital all tried to be uncooperative in their treatment. She was the champion. The events as a ten-year-old are told in her child's voice. One gets an insight into childthink, plus there are details of the history of child psychology and the effects of starvation, like making concentration camps more easily manageable. I won't be a spoiler about all the strange new things you learn, but there are lots of them. The author’s dry humor illuminates the memoir.

One lesson from the book is the disasters of "Joint Custody" in divorce where the kids alternate staying with one or the other parent for equal time, which is convenient for parents but bad for kids. In California it is nearly impossible to escape. Katya escapes it, at enormous cost. Another is the stigma of mental illness being felt by outsiders as somewhat the fault of the victim, compared to say, cancer. Certainly in the author's case she tried to stay sick so long in the hospital partly to escape her father's clutches.

She makes all this misery into a fascinating "adventure". Easily five stars.
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Mariam S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible story!
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2023
Verified Purchase
I’m usually a fiction reader but Katya’s story attaches you to her and the characters in the same way fiction does. The book breaks down incredibly hard situations and topics in a very readable way. It gave me so much insight into the thought process of anorexics and the trauma faced by many children or really anyone incarcerated or institutionalized. I’ll be thinking about this book a long time after putting it down…
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sara
5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping memoir with lessons for every reader
Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2023
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I can't imagine the stamina it took for this author to sit with what happened to her as a young child with a broken family who spent four months on a psychiatric/psychosomatic hospital unit. It's a story told in two voices -- the scared, heartbreaking voice of that child, and the strong survivor voice of who that child became. I teach memoir writing and will use this book to show my students ways of dealing with unpleasant memories; how to write about difficult family members; when and how to use pseudonyms; why researching our own lives can shine light on truths we never knew; and how to make peace with some topics that can never be resolved.
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Robert McNally
5.0 out of 5 stars A searing account of a childhood silenced
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2023
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This brilliant, wrenching book combines author Cengel's memoir of her time as a 10-year-old in a pediatric psychosomatic unit with her journalistic interviews of the professionals and para-professionals who "treated" her. Expertly paced and unsparing, this hard-to-read yet necessary account will lead you to listen more closely for the stifled voices of children detained, fostered, and hospitalized. Only by hearing their calls for help can the pain of the world be lessened.
One person found this helpful
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