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  • Published: 21 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9781529195064
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

What Mental Illness Really Is… (and what it isn’t)




A vital corrective and accessible guide to the science of mental illness

'A must-read... Fascinating' JO BRAND

We need to rethink the conversation around mental health - psychologist Lucy Foulkes explores how and why.

How do mental health problems arise?
How do we distinguish between the 'normal' challenges of modern life and actual illness?
Is society really experiencing a new mental health crisis?

In this urgently needed book, psychologist Lucy Foulkes investigates what we know about mental illness - and shines a light on what we don't. It offers a profound new approach to how we think, talk and help when it comes to mental health.

(Previously published in 2021 in hardback under the title Losing Our Minds.)

'Captivating...engaging and lucid' Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

'Clear-headed, compassionate and, ultimately, optimistic' Mark Haddon

'Thorough, wise...much needed' Mark Rice-Oxley

  • Published: 21 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9781529195064
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

About the author

Lucy Foulkes

Dr Lucy Foulkes is a psychologist who researches mental health and social development in adolescence. She is currently a senior research fellow at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, an honorary lecturer in psychology at UCL and a research fellow at Oxford University. She is the author of What Mental Illness Really Is (and What It Isn't) and has written for the Guardian, New Scientist and numerous other publications and has been interviewed in The Times, VICE and on the BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind and Start the Week.

Also by Lucy Foulkes

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Praise for What Mental Illness Really Is… (and what it isn’t)

This is a book that calls for nuance in answering difficult questions... To Foulkes, the way forward is in acceptance of a hard truth: we need to support everyone who is struggling in a way geared to their needs; we need a different conversation about managing life's sadness

The Times