(Reviewed by JD Jung)
“They plant little beasties in your psyche that love nothing more than to dart out from the holes they’ve bored into your brain, race around inside your skull, flipping switches, overturning tables, and playing the stereo way too fucking loud.” The “They” that Tom Dombrock is referring to are actually his occupations.
He eventually had to learn to “disengage and detach” in order to survive his eight years as a psych aide in an locked psychiatric unit and then twenty-two years in the county morgue. He first worked as a forensic tech and then was promoted to forensic investigator. Tom gives an insightful and often humorous look into his thoughts and work experiences in “Lunacy and Death: A perspective developed over thirty years of working in mental health and death investigation.”
Though he goes into a few similarities between the three occupations, he starts out with his experiences working in a mental ward in the 1980s where he had to get rid of his preconceptions about mental illness. I especially enjoyed his recollection of specific incidences, such as the woman who kept hearing nagging voices from her dentures.
He follows up events with general thoughts such as feeling that patients do better when they have family members who participate in their rehabilitation. This holds true whether the patient is suffering from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or other conditions.
His career at the county morgue is just as fascinating. I must admit that I had to put my lunch down when he described details of when he was faced with a decomposed body. Needless to say, it was graphic and grotesque.
Dombrock is quite direct in his stories and opinions. He gives examples of how otherwise sensible and intelligent individuals died from their own stupidity. He tries to expel myths based on his experiences, such as suicide rates increasing during the holidays. I also enjoyed reading cases where a cause of death can look one way on the surface, but the truth is in the details.
I appreciate that he didn’t go into unrelated events in his life like most memoirs. This kept me engaged throughout sixty percent of the book. Unfortunately the last part drags as he goes into tangents on general thoughts and ideology as it relates to death and society as a whole.
I would still recommend Lunacy and Death for a captivating look at mental health and forensics. It is well worth your time even you don’t read the entire book like I did.
