According to the National Institute for Mental Health, over fifty-nine million adults and nearly a fifth of adolescents in the US have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness, with about 50 percent receiving treatment. But the explosion in diagnoses over the last ten years may be doing more harm than good: encouraging patients to define their identities in terms of their deficits, contributing to the overprescribing of pharmaceutical drugs, and saddling a generation with constricting labels that can linger long after symptoms have resolved.
Drawing on thirty years of medical experience, Dr. Gavin Francis, a general practitioner, delves with subtle nuance into the tangled history of psychiatry and the problems that he addresses daily in his patients lives: mood disorders, trauma, anxiety, and addiction. Expertly reckoning with the historical treatment of mental illness and todays realities, Dr. Francis examines how mental health care has evolvedand how a system built on diagnosing illness and prescribing medication too often forces patients into diagnostic boxes, with labels that too often become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Including case studies and conversations with therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, Dr. Francis takes a multifaceted approach to the constantly shifting landscape of mental health to argue that the mind, far from being something rigid and fragile, is in fact dynamic and adaptive, best treated with compassion, flexibility, and curiosity. The Unfragile Mind blends experience, history, and contemporary perspectives in a comprehensive assessment of how we can better understandand navigatecommon but often invisible illnesses.
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"Fascinating and beautifully written . . . a winning combination of pragmatism and compassion. His message is that mental health is more cultural and social, and less medical, than we often think." -- The Times "Elucidating. . . . Offers new perspectives on the maintenance of mental health." -- Sunday Post "A manifesto against an atomized society. . . . a really hopeful book." -- Evening Standard "Excellentbeautifully written, moving, and wise. Everybody with an interest in mental health should read it." -- Henry Marsh, neurosurgeon and bestselling author of And Finally "I thought Gavin Francis couldnt get any better, but I was wrong. This is his best and most important book." -- Bill Bryson, New York Timesbestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body "Dr. Gavin Francis writes with empathy, fluency, and elegance about one of the most important medical topics of our times. This is a book to change livesand save them." -- Sir Ian Rankin, New York Timesbestselling author "Gavin Francis, a wonderful writer and compassionate physician, shines a beacon of hope into the darkness of contemporary mental health care. Instead of quickly reaching for the diagnostic handbook and prescription pad, Francis does the hard but rewarding work of understanding people, seeing our healing journey as becoming more tolerant of uncertainty, more comfortable with paradox, more compassionate and open-hearted about the fuzzy edges of the categories we try to impose on the world. Focusing on strengths rather than pathologies, Francis encourages to recognize that our minds are not only capable of breaking, but of healing, and that unfragility is more common than fragility in the face of our daily suffering." -- David R. Kopacz, MD, author of Caring for Self & Others: Transforming Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Soul Loss and Re-Humanizing Medicine "Gavin Francis thoughtfulness shines in this meditation on the mind. . . . a clear and hopeful exploration of what it means to think and feel." -- Grace Spence Green, author of To Exist As I Am
Introduction: Adventures in Thinking, Feeling & Being
Part 1: Maps of the Mind
The Box of Delights
Constellations of the Mind
Physicians, Priests & Prophecy
Chemicals to Networks
Formative Experiences Interlude
Part 2: States of Mind
Living on Red Alert: On Anxiety, Anguish & Fear
The Worst Already Happened: On Trauma & Personality Disorders
A Fire Hose of Epiphanies: On Mania, Wonder & Awe
Tears Blue, & with a Wounded Heart: On Depression, Melancholia & Suicide
Privy to a Dream: On Psychosis, Delusions & Hallucinations
A Tender Place in the Mind: On Hurts, Scars & Addictions
The Many Dimensions of Being: On Neurodiversity, Autism & ADHD
Conclusion: Hope & the Unfragile Mind
Gavin Francis, MD, is a multi-award-winning author and GP who has worked across four continents as a surgeon, emergency physician, and medical officer with the British Antarctic Survey. He is the author of Sunday Times bestsellers Adventures in Human Being, Shapeshifters: On Medicine & Human Change, and Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence, and has been short-listed for such awards as the Saltire Literary Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year, Costa Book of the Year, and the Ondaatje Prize. His writing also appears in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, The Times, the London Review of Books, and he is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. Kay Redfield Jamison is the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as an honorary professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the coauthor of the standard medical text on bipolar disorder and author of An Unquiet Mind, Night Falls Fast, Exuberance, and Touched with Fire. Her most recent book, Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Dr. Jamison is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is a recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize, the Sarnat Prize from the National Academy of Medicine, and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.
