Dear friend, welcome to my world. Writing a book is like stripping your soul naked in public, exposing your thoughts and feelings. It’s hard. Therefore, I am willing to call you My Friend … Friends are always cozier to confide in to.

You may ask me, what is the difficulty? The thing is that, it is not proper to talk straight in public and since I am a practicing doctor and, moreover, a psychiatrist-psychotherapist, as always, I speak straight from the shoulder, cannot do other way.

I was given a nickname of a “Homeland Psychiatry Rock Star”, the title I am honored to possess.

I am a great dreamer. I know how to make dreams come true! For example, this book has long been a secret and cherished dream of mine… Now it has

been incarnated. It is extremely exciting for me.

Often, when it was really difficult to work in the mental hospital, I was dreaming that one day I would open my own clinic… and you tell you what? I did it!

In Kharkov, there exists Dr. Isaenko’s Clinic of Mental Health. (Don’t consider me to be uppish, but its name is determined by the fact that I answer my own name for the quality of medical services). I managed to create a place (and not a single one, since there are already two entire clinics), where people can find peace of mind and be cured from mental and physical ailments with the help of expert professionals.

Now you know where to go if you are anxious and have no desire to live. We will always help!

As it happens among friends, the conversation is developing swiftly and I have completely forgotten to introduce myself. My name is Svetlana. My family name is Isaenko. I am a practicing psychiatrist and psychotherapist. I draw your attention to this fact, since in some places the book will be of medical slang. As well as of psychotherapeutic one, just a tiny bit.

I graduated from the medical university, then entered MA courses, being, at the same time, through the internship training, specializing in psychiatry. Further on, I started a postgraduate study on extramural basis and, in 2020,

I became a Doctor of Medical Science.

I’ll make a boast: at my Ph.D. pre-defense one professor called me ‘The Messenger of Destigmatization to the People’. And it is true. I run my blog on Instagram, where I show that a psychiatrist is not scary (after all, you know what the gap between people and psychiatrists is. It’s like, ‘they will put you on clinic register’, ‘they will turn you into a vegetable’, when this all is not true) and also, I talk about disease symptoms and syndromes, using monsters by way of example. Come over and read sometime, when you have a minute to spare, if interested.

The page is written like this: @Dr_isaenko.

Let’s get back to my internship training. It took place in the department of primary psychotic episode. Thereafter, I went to work in the ‘neurosis’ department, to be more precise, the department of borderline and crisis states of Kharkov Regional Psychiatric Hospital No. 3.

Had been there from 2013 to 2019. In 2016, I became the head of this very department, which is, I am very proud of. Becoming the head of the department at the age 28 is quite a thing, which, by the way, had also been my dream!

Simultaneously, I spent a year working in the toxicology department of Kharkov City Hospital No. 2.

I am a member of the European Association of Psychiatrists (for some reason people like to know this). I love my profession with all of my heart and, probably, that’s why I manage to heal. Hundreds of thousands have recovered, and therefore, I do not live in vain in this the world.

I bet you are very interested to know what the book is about. Well, I’ll try to describe. The book Uninvented Stories of Invented People is about a psychiatrist girl, her life, her patients and love, her pain and joy … Hm… No.

It’s about life and death. Human baseness and sublimity, psychiatry and love, pain and joy, happiness and sorrow, illness and hell, destruction and making. After reading, if there is time, please, do give a feedback on what it is about. It will be very important for me to know your opinion.

Children under 18 are not allowed to read.

All events and characters are fictional, any coincidences with real people are accidental (dear lawyers, did I put it correctly?).

And yes, the most important thing! All chapter illustrations are drawn by me. I wanted to show you and convey everything the way I saw it. Even the music in the audio book is also composed by me.

I wrote the book in my iPhone, in the Notes application, even now I am typing this text that way. I don’t like laptops.

For some reason, everyone, who reads it, says it is going to be a bestseller. Believe me or not, I don’t care. Either it will become one or not, it’s like with children. A child is born and you love it only because it is here in this world. That’s all. It makes no difference to you whether the kid will become an astronaut, a millionaire, an engineer, a blogger, a model, or a Nobel laureate. The main thing is that the child be happy.

The same thing about the book, the most important here is that it does already exist. Should, after reading it, at least one person in the world feel better, then my mission is accomplished. I conveyed to the world what I wanted to say. Perhaps, this is the reason, why you are holding the book Uninvented Stories of Invented People now in your hands.

Read, love, dream, breathe, live.

Sit back and let’s roll into the world of emotional orchestra! Enjoy your reading, my dear friend.

P.S. And more … Tears may appear. So, at the end of the book, I put a ‘crying handkerchief’ for you…

We first met after my internship graduation. It was decorated with colorful autumn leaves under the blue sky, with the blue being distinctive and deep, unlike over the rest of the city. And there it stood sullen and sad, scattered across a hectare of land. Shabby buildings of historical significance were holding on majestically if only not to fall apart. It was saturated with human suffering, condemnation and, moldering bit by bit, rested on the time- worn post-Soviet regimen and principles. The bars on the windows added more to its dramatic appearance. Each building’s perimeter included closed courtyards for patients to walk outside. Ordinary people were afraid to even pass by. Shrouded in myths, it inspired horror. Crossing its territory brought some sort of tension. I was scared by its inhabitants, wandering aimlessly around the area in their strange clothes, with empty eyes and faded faces. Inside, there was a different world, the world with dissimilar rules, but down there inhabited the truth, – the truth of human relationships, of the depth of thought and of the omnifaceted internal pain.