Her doctor pressures her to admit herself into the hospital, yet she cannot give informed consent because she does not understand her rights. In Chapter 10, Kaysen revisits the doctor’s appointment that led to her admission to McLean. While at first Kaysen feels “lighter” after these events, she eventually begins to experience severe depression again. She shares that she wanted a “partial suicide” to only kill the part of her that wanted to die. Kaysen ruminates on the planning that she feels precedes suicide and recalls her own suicidal thoughts and actions.

Although Daisy shows signs of being severely troubled, such as only eating chicken and collecting the carcasses in her room, she is released from McLean and later dies by suicide. Lisa thinks that Daisy is sexually abused by her father, who visits her several times a week. In Chapter 8, Kaysen describes Daisy, a fellow patient at McLean who would admit herself regularly for short stays. Lisa orchestrates an elaborate prank in which she hoards toilet paper and drapes it over everything in the living room, which lifts Kaysen’s spirits. This treatment of Lisa upsets Kaysen, who likes Lisa’s humor and admires her independent and assertive nature. Lisa runs away, only to be harshly returned to the ward and stripped of her long fingernails and beaded belt and put in seclusion.

Chapter 5 introduces Lisa, another patient who has an influential presence on the ward.

Polly has a cheerful and kind disposition, and staff and other patients are shocked when she suffers extreme distress about her injuries. Chapter 4 describes a fellow patient at McLean named Polly who tried to commit suicide by lighting herself on fire. They include the person being possessed, requiring medications, surgery, leeches, or electric shocks, or merely being a victim of society’s biases. The survey includes multiple-choice answers that present historical perceptions or treatments of the mentally ill. Breaking from a conventional narrative, Chapter 3 is a survey that seeks information about a hypothetical person.

She recalls her brief appointment with her doctor, during which he forcefully persuades her to admit herself to McLean Hospital for mental treatment. In the first chapters of Girl, Interrupted Kaysen posits that people can experience “parallel universes”, or mental states, some of which are judged as disordered and requiring treatment.

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen