10: Conclusion: Mental Health and Trauma Recovery

In this final chapter, Jerome brings the book to a conclusion from his perspective.

Julie Liebrich in her book A Gift of Stories talked about ‘gathering’ stories of people living with mental health problems (Leibrich, 1999). This is what Amanda has done here. Seven stories came to her, and she crafted them into narratives for this book. Robert Hurst performed a similar role for our book on Creative Mental Health Recovery (Hurst et al., 2024). There is a power in stories that we can all connect with. In fact, I have argued elsewhere that the growing number of first-person accounts of mental health issues has been one of the most positive developments in modern psychiatry (Carson, 2015). The stories in this book are united by their focus on trauma. While Amanda conducted all seven interviews and will have her own unique perspective on the stories, my own views derive from my clinical training and my research in the field of mental health over three decades. Despite my familiarity with this subject area, I was still shocked by the stories told to Amanda. Why are people continuing to be treated in ways that either cause or exacerbate existing mental health problems?