Susanna Kaysen - The author and narrator. A doctor diagnoses Kaysen with borderline personality disorder in 1967, when she is 17. The previous year, Kaysen attempted suicide by swallowing fifty aspirin. She voluntarily commits herself to McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Belmont, Massachusetts. Over the next two years, Kaysen confronts her illness, experiences profound unhappiness, as well as the treachery and kindness of peers and authority figures, and finally meets the future that awaits her outside the confining but protective walls of the ward.