Ms. Slater's portrayal of life in the mental health system is fascinating and poingnant. As a counselor myself, I could relate to her struggles with the individual clients. Her candor and self-disclosure, not only about her therapeutic process but her own struggles with mental illness, makes this book not only a good clinical tool, but a great read. I recommend this book to anyone interested in pursuing a career in mental health, or to people who are currently in therapy who want to know what it's like on the other side of the couch.

The book was fasinating reading about the dynamics between a therapist (with problems )trying to help her patients with similar difficulties. This set-up distinguishes Welcome to My Country from other, author-centered-self indulgent books (like PROZAC NATION). I really felt like I could relate to this author. She was so successful in her career yet she simply had a few things missing in her life (I'll leave those to you to figure out). I have read many books about women with mental problems but this is one of my favorites. It is simpler than PROZAC NATION but I think just as effective in terms of remembering characters and plot several months after you finish the book. The characters are not superficial. Not everybody would like this book. Rather, it is for the reader who likes deep literature and is not afraid of reading about all kinds of emotional problams. Moreover, much of Lauren's life revolves around pychology, so one should not read this book unless they love that topic, or are in need of an emotional story. I highly recommend this to anyone in the mental health or helping professions.

Ihave to admit to a bias as I review this book. Lauren Slater was both my English student and, subsequently, my ³foster² daughter; in fact, her time living with my family in our seventeenth-century house comprises part of the moving last chapter of her book, a chapter in which she talks of healing, her own and that of a patient¹s. The majority of the book, which she terms ²creative non-fiction,² is her account of working with psychotic patients in a clinic in East Boston. Her descriptions of these patients, her ability to identify with them no matter how desperate their circumstances might seem, combined with her lyrical, metaphoric use of language makes this book compelling reading. The only question I asked myself as I read it was the extent to which I was reading ³fictionalized fact². If the last chapter is typical, I can personally vouch for the fact that Ms. Slater took almost no liberties, except to disguise names and some identifying details, suggesting that the rest of the book is largely true to life, albeit more beautifully expressed than one would expect the messy lives of the psychotic and neurotic persons who inhabit the pages to be. I recommend it!

As a fellow depressive, I agree with a lot of things Lauren Slater writes about depression, and especially with her feelings of loss of creativity whilst taking medication. I experienced the same thing. I've given the book three stars because I found her writing oddly flat; and even with Prozac as a reason for this, I still found it an uninspiring read- unlike Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, which was so well written I could hardly read more than 10 pages at a time without having to go and do something to cheer myself up. Still, some good points are made in this book, and I wouldn't _not_ recommend it.

I found Lauren Slater's PROZAC DIARY to be both level-headed and profoundly moving. Slater writes beautifully, in rich, lyrical and sometimes comic prose, and her language leads the reader inside essential questions about mental illness, chemical "cures", and--in the end--the nature of the self, not just Lauren Slater's own self, but all our selves, in illness and in health. This is a wonderful, moving, deeply intelligent book. I am grateful to her for writing it.

I am not surprised that someone would compare PROZAC NATION to PROZAC DIARY. They are both autobiographical books about women dealing with severe mental problems, problems that were helped by Prozac. When Prozac was prescribed for me, I decided to read every book with the word 'Prozac' in the title, starting with LISTENING TO PROZAC and PROZAC NATION.

I'm amazed that a previous reviewer praised PROZAC NATION over this book. I'd probably give NATION a 2 or 3 stars at best, I found the author of NATION, irritating, repetitive, boring and presumptious.
I think Slater (the author of PROZAC DIARY) is a much, much better writer. True, she uses a lot of metaphors and poetic language but, for me, that language worked. I have no symptoms of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) which plagued Slater, yet I could really empathize with her. The author of NATION lost my sympathy at about the fifth or sixth whining diatribe on what her parents did to her. Or maybe it was when she slept with her friend's boyfriend (that's a sore spot with me!).
Slater's language is so moving, that I wondered what this book would have been if she hadn't lost some of her creativity to Prozac. I highly recommend this book.

This is a book I wanted to like. I enjoyed Ms. Slater's "Prozac Diary" (although, interestingly, she never seemed to be suffering from what you might term "major depression"--whininess and an overinflated sense of self-importance was more like it) and "Lying," while another exercise in self-indulgence, at least had wit, good writing and a certain honesty that redeemed it.

Not so with this book, which is, to put it mildly, awful. It seems to be in vogue for women writers to pen memoirs about motherhood as a kind of self-improvement program--as in, "Yes, I was wonderful before, but motherhood has made me go such deeper and now I'm an even better writer and I Have It All." I'd expected better of Ms. Slater, but this book fits neatly into the trend, along with Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions, Martha Beck's Expecting Adam, Suzanne Finnamore's Zygote Chronicles, and more (I'm sure Elizabeth Wurtzel will be weighing in soon.) Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, these ladies are all multi-degreed and Ivy League--I suppose that makes their issues much more important than those of the lumpen proletariat.

Slater's book doesn't crack much new ground. Like the writers mentioned above, she's over-educated, a psychologist ("with over a hundred publications!") seeing herself occupying lofty heights as one of the intellectual elite. When she finds herself pregnant (her opening--a paragraph-long description of her urine--is priceless) she worries a lot about whether or not she'll be able to keep writing, presumably self-indulgent tomes like this one. Her husband tells her that she can "be the aunt"--in other words, he'll take all the responsibility for raising the baby, along with live-in help. Oh, how awful--a Mr. Mom and a full-time nanny. However will she keep writing? Her apparent "mental illness"--which seems to be little more than garden-variety dysthymia and very poor coping skills--is not examined in much depth, nor is her relationship to the long-suffering husband, who has to put up with her pronouncements such as "I hope you want this baby, because I sure don't." I also felt terrible for her live-in nanny, described as fat and pimply and whose major crime in life seems to have been not having wealthy parents to send her to Harvard.

Much of the book revolves around her agonizing decision as to whether or not to keep taking Prozac and her raft of additional "meds," but again, it's not made clear why a woman in a comfortable marriage, with a seemingly good career--as a psychologist, for heaven's sake!--is in such dire need of drugs that are usually prescribed in such massive quantities only to hospital inpatients. The ending is neatly tied up with her telling her sister, "I feel like a mother"--yet she seems to have had no transforming experiences that warrant this conclusion. Her self-absorption, already boundless, seems to have only added the ego-gratifying, "And I'm a mommy!"

Suffice it to say that I found this book almost offensive, and a huge disappointment from a once-talented writer. I won't be rushing to buy her next exercise in self-aggrandizement.

I've enjoyed other works of Lauren Slater, and this was no exception. It takes courage to write about the experiences she's had emotionally. Especially when it involves being heartfelt and honest about the giant step of having a baby.

Anyone who is pregnant or plans to become pregnant should read this book regardless of whether or not you have a history with depression or other mental illnesses. Many of the feelings and emotions Ms. Slater expresses about having a baby are ones that many women have, but are not honest enough to express. Reading about her experiences and emotions authenticates just how serious a choice having a baby is, not just for someone with mental illness, but for every responsible couple.

This is a good, informative and honest piece of writing. I would recommend it highly to anyone who wants an emotional look at what it's like to be pregnant. Ms. Slater is an excellent writer in both her use of imagery and emotion.

Lauren Slater is a highly gifted writer--her writing is eloquent, descriptive, and fluid. So this book is a pleasure to read just to experience her giftedness with language. She has a sense of humor and frankly and acknowledges a complicated constellation of emotions around her pregnancy and subsequent childbirth, (including ambivalence, anxiety, guilt) and the process of the unfolding attachment and love she comes to feel for her baby. The lengthy, difficult labor may be hard for some moms-to-be to read about, but again I appreciated its frankness--so many moms say they forget the difficulties of labor. This memoir is valuable for the many first-time moms, over-30 moms, those with "high risk" pregnancies, and those for whom depression is a concern and complicated medication decisions during pregnancy are a reality.