Description The best way I can describe my book of poems and thoughts is as a poetic memoir. I have suffered from various mental illnesses throughout my life, including Bipolar Disorder, Panic Disorder, General Anxiety, and Clinical Depression. These intense thoughts fueled me to write poetry, which has always been my outlet. The works enclosed in my book, The Defective Model, follow my life chronologically through my various stages of mental illness; including substance abuse, Bipolar symptoms, medication, side effects of medication, institutionalization, and panic attacks that ruled my life and kept me bed-ridden. The conclusion of the book is my current feelings on the issues I am going through, my acceptance of them, the current treatment effective for me, and the lack of isolation I now feel. That, in essence, is the purpose of this book in my eyes. Isolation from the outside world was very often my biggest misconception; the feeling that nobody else could possible be going through what I was. On paper, I see my faults and mistakes now; hopefully this book will help someone somewhere, because I poured my soul into The Defective Model with the same intentions as a helping hand. Through deep and thoughtful poetry, and provocative prose, I have chronologically put my life into a binding; on to real paper pages. I hope these pages will mean as much to you as they do to me. I hope they will help you in the same way, as well.