Mending Minds is a compassionate blend of memoir and science that explores how trauma transforms the brain and how understanding that transformation can lead us toward healing and resilience. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I wrote Mending Minds to share my research into mental illnesses with others. Anxiety, depression, and PTSD cause much pain, shame, and despair. Educating and empowering those experiencing these complex and debilitating conditions will, I hope, give them hope that life can be wonderful. Hope often seems impossible with these conditions. I want to tell people that they can heal.

Besides helping others, I also found the writing process therapeutic, the research enlightening, and the challenges of creating a book helped me realise that I am not a flawed or weak person; I was sick. Realising this allowed me to forgive myself for thinking I was less than.

You write about the frustration of being dismissed by the medical system. What changes do you hope to see in how professionals treat psychological trauma?

The most important change I would like to see is doctors screening young children for Adverse Childhood Experiences and then educating parents on how negative influences in children’s lives shape the health of little brains. Educating parents is crucial for addressing intergenerational trauma and thereby minimising the number of children who develop mental illnesses.

I would also like to see further education for police officers and our judicial system regarding coercive control within families. Coercive control is insidious, cruel, and deeply damaging for victims. Addressing, as opposed to minimising, the impacts of psychological manipulation, gaslighting, and controlling behaviour is vital to promote healing and will lessen the short- and long-term effects on families.

Recognising that mental illnesses have a biological basis helps lessen the stigma attached to these conditions. Hopefully, healthcare professionals such as doctors, nurses, psychologists, and therapists will challenge the misconception that they are less serious than physical illnesses and that they are issues people should simply ‘get over’.

How did you balance scientific accuracy with emotional accessibility for general readers?

As a retired nurse, I have extensive experience in explaining complex medical information in simple terms. Emotional accessibility came easily to me. Having lived with mental illnesses for decades, I know exactly how they feel and could write quite freely about them.

I love research and learning, though I found some of the more scientific information difficult to understand. I would frequently read journals and textbook chapters with both a medical and a science dictionary at hand to ensure I provided accurate information in my book. Hence, my book took 6 years to write.

If readers take away one message from Mending Minds, what do you hope it is?

You are not mad. Delicate structures deep in your brain have been damaged by psychological trauma, but our amazing brains can heal. Don’t lose hope.

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