Overview

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 today’s realities, Dr. Francis examines how mental health care has evolved—and 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 understand—and navigate—common but often invisible illnesses.

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Reviews

""Praise for Recovery ""Francis sheds nuanced light on an often fraught and private experience, and encourages readers to reimagine illnesses as ‘stories of the mind and body’ because ‘within limits, stories can be rewritten.’ Those on the mend may gain the most, but readers of all stripes will find wisdom here."" -- Publishers Weekly, starred review ""We spend too much time thinking about illness and hardly enough thinking about recovery and recuperation. Gavin Francis’s literary talent combined with his years as a seasoned medical practitioner make Recovery a unique and delightful read."" -- Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone ""Praise for Shapeshifters ""In this provocative and important book about our shared future, Francis . . . delves into medical history, and, with equal ease, into medical case studies. . . . Steeped as much in history as in the future, we might describe this book as an audacious attempt to write a manifesto for a trans-human future (read it to understand what that phrase might mean)."" -- Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene ""Ambitious... [Francis] is well schooled in the literature of medical curiosities, from Galen to Sir Thomas Browne and beyond. Francis has an engaging way with medical-cultural history... Such is the breadth of [his] interests that Shapeshifters is never less than intellectually energetic."" -- The Guardian ""Praise for Adventures in Human Being ""Engaging and edifying."" -- The New York Review of Books ""A sober and beautiful book about the landscape of the human body."" -- Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prize?winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

""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 ""Praise for Recovery ""Francis sheds nuanced light on an often fraught and private experience, and encourages readers to reimagine illnesses as ‘stories of the mind and body’ because ‘within limits, stories can be rewritten.’ Those on the mend may gain the most, but readers of all stripes will find wisdom here."" -- Publishers Weekly, starred review ""We spend too much time thinking about illness and hardly enough thinking about recovery and recuperation. Gavin Francis’s literary talent combined with his years as a seasoned medical practitioner make Recovery a unique and delightful read."" -- Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone ""Praise for Shapeshifters ""In this provocative and important book about our shared future, Francis . . . delves into medical history, and, with equal ease, into medical case studies. . . . Steeped as much in history as in the future, we might describe this book as an audacious attempt to write a manifesto for a trans-human future (read it to understand what that phrase might mean)."" -- Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene ""Ambitious . . . [Francis] is well schooled in the literature of medical curiosities, from Galen to Sir Thomas Browne and beyond. Francis has an engaging way with medical-cultural history. . . . Such is the breadth of [his] interests that Shapeshifters is never less than intellectually energetic."" -- The Guardian ""Praise for Adventures in Human Being ""Engaging and edifying."" -- The New York Review of Books ""A sober and beautiful book about the landscape of the human body."" -- Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prize–winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

A sober and beautiful book about the landscape of the human body.--Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prize?winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies Ambitious... [Francis] is well schooled in the literature of medical curiosities, from Galen to Sir Thomas Browne and beyond. Francis has an engaging way with medical-cultural history... Such is the breadth of [his] interests that Shapeshifters is never less than intellectually energetic.-- ""The Guardian"" We spend too much time thinking about illness and hardly enough thinking about recovery and recuperation. Gavin Francis's literary talent combined with his years as a seasoned medical practitioner make Recovery a unique and delightful read.--Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone Praise for Recovery ""Francis sheds nuanced light on an often fraught and private experience, and encourages readers to reimagine illnesses as 'stories of the mind and body' because 'within limits, stories can be rewritten.' Those on the mend may gain the most, but readers of all stripes will find wisdom here. --Publishers Weekly, starred review Praise for Adventures in Human Being ""Engaging and edifying.-- ""The New York Review of Books"" Praise for Shapeshifters ""In this provocative and important book about our shared future, Francis ... delves into medical history, and, with equal ease, into medical case studies... Steeped as much in history as in the future, we might describe this book as an audacious attempt to write a manifesto for a trans-human future (read it to understand what that phrase might mean).--Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene

Author Information

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.

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