Girl, Interrupted interrogates how women are 'mad' when they refuse to conform – 30 years on, this memoir is still important

Winona Ryder played Susannah Kaysen in the film of Kaysen's memoir, Girl, Interrupted Columbia Pictures/IMDB

Thirty years ago, American writer Susanna Kaysen published her memoir Girl, Interrupted. It tells the story of her two years inside McLean Hospital in Boston as a psychiatric patient.

She was admitted, aged 18, in 1967. A few months earlier, she had taken 50 aspirin in a state of despair. Late in the book, she reveals she had a sexual relationship with her male English teacher at school.