Powerful case studies can’t make up for this book’s superficiality when it comes to the broader issues
‘W
e are today in need of more humility in how we frame geographies of the mind,” says Gavin Francis, a GP and travel writer. In his new book he attempts to combine both disciplines as he treks the uncanny topography of mental illness.
The journey is divided into chapters that explore various genres of human anguish – clinical anxiety, trauma, bipolar disorder, depression and psychosis – as well as autism and ADHD. He attempts to summarise each condition’s history in roughly 20 pages, evaluate past and contemporary theories, and weigh up the efficacy of treatments. To call this ambitious is to break new frontiers in understatement.
When recounting specific events and people, Francis is rarely less than excellent, his prose cadenced, vivid and crackling with telling details. He describes one professor as “short, neat, taciturn; he had a reputation for civility, and was rumoured to make all of his own clothes by hand”. As a student, his work dissecting human corpses is “an education in glory: on arrival I’d switch on the radio, don an apron and gloves, unwrap the shrouds over the cadaver I was working on and begin the revelation”.
