#BookReview ‘Will You Read This, Please?’ by Joanna Cannon

About the book…

‘Some people who deal with mental illness have the opportunity and ability to write about it, but many do not – and it was those people, those unread stories, I wanted to find’ JOANNA CANNON

How do we give a voice to those who so often remain unheard? ‘Will You Read This, Please?’ is a frank and impactful collection of twelve stories as told to our best British writers, based on the lived experience of people who have faced mental illness in the UK.

Edited by Joanna Cannon, the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, Three Things About Elsie and A Tidy Ending, the stories told here are powerful, resonant and heart-breaking. This is a ground-breaking and unforgettable collection, shining a light on the stigma and isolation of living with mental illness, while also showing the strength and resilience of the human spirit.

In this book, adults living with a variety of mental health conditions discuss their histories, their diagnoses, and their lived experience of having this condition. They have submitted their stories to a matched writer, who creates a dialogue of what they have been through, and as per the introduction, Dr Joanna Cannon, herself a psychiatrist, has insisted the individuals whose testimonies make up the book, are paid the same rate as the authors themselves.

This adds a level of veracity, a sense of taking these people seriously, not exploiting or sharing their lives carelessly for any other sake than, as Joanna says at the start, to ask the general public to listen.

Not to relate it their experiences, not to offer help, but to sit in a safe space, and quietly work through each of the cases and be present , take on board what is being said as well as what is becoming increasingly apparent-the mental and physical health services in the UK may be having the best of intentions in providing care at the point of need, however, this does not translate into individualised, person centred care.

The gatekeeping of access to services needed-for example, gender specific therapy in the case of Franki Ayres-is immediately obvious. What all of the people have is a struggle to be heard-Alain Knight’s tale mentions the 10 minute ward round which happens in his institution on a weekly basis, and the way the room is laid out, the chairs they use, all contribute to create an arena of us vs them, a place where patients struggle to remember what they want to place in front of those who can decide their fates. This can extend from visiting time to access to outside areas and can make or break a patient . The first story, that of Nicola Knight, discusses birth trauma , that contributes massively to Post Partum Psychosis, further exacerbated by baby-not mum-focussed postnatal ‘care’.

This book goes deep, and it goes dark.

I had to stop reading several times, as Nicola details it, once you have this mental health condition then you spend the rest of your days aware that there is this part of your personality, intrinsically you but also on a hair trigger.You are no longer the person you are and this acknowledgement is part of a recovery which is lifelong-

”You can’t explain that to anyone,so it sets up a distance between people who you’ve previously been really close to: you’ve had this experience that has marked and changed you forever , and they haven’t.

Rarely have I read a book which illuminates and brings into the light experiences of trauma, survival and adaptation to a life post-trauma. Once this has happened, does your personality become adapted to accommodate what you have been through? And the acknowledgement that this has forever changed you, put you in a before and after situation, is devastating, there is no ‘normal’ just a ‘new normal’. This is how it is for you now.

Releasing this so close to Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK is brilliant, very few people seem to be aware that a diagnosis is just the start of your journey, not the ending of it by giving it a name, myself included as someone diagnosed with anxiety and depression. You don’t beat it, it’s like grief, it has a weight which therapy, good friends, supportive workplaces and if needed, medication, helps you bear it. Sometimes it takes you over. But what comes through each story here, each life swung wildly off course is that the stigma attached to living with a mental health condition is ever present. And this book goes a way towards contributing to an understanding for those with, and those without mental health conditions , those who support us and keep us going when that weight is dragging you down. This is our lives, written down, born witness to by writers who lend their shoulder to the wheel of bringing what was previously hidden and considered shameful into the sunshine. For here are tales of redemption and hope alongside grief and regret.

Deeply personal, deeply moving and endlessly brave, this is a necessary read for all of us. There is such a long way to go to meet those in need at their point of need. We need to mould the offered treatment to what is needed, not squeeze mental health condition bearers into the boxes society has expected them to fit into. And that is going to take people as brave and strong as Nicola, Marie,Jen,Lewis, Alain,Jeremy, Joyia, Sarah, Sanmeet, Cat, Phoenix and Franki sharing what their reality is , to effect a paradigm shift in mental health service provision.

About the author….

Joanna Cannon is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling debut novel ‘The Trouble With Goats And Sheep’, which has sold over 250,000 copies in the UK alone and has been published in 15 countries.

The novel was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, shortlisted for The Bookseller Industry Awards 2017 and won the 2016 BAMB Reader Award. Joanna has been interviewed in The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Times, and Good Housekeeping magazine, and her writing has appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail, and the Guardian, amongst others. She has appeared on BBC Breakfast, BBC News Channel’s Meet the Author, interviewed on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5, and is a regular at literary festivals across the country including Edinburgh and Cheltenham.

Joanna left school at fifteen with one O-level and worked her way through many different jobs – barmaid, kennel maid, pizza delivery expert – before returning to school in her thirties and qualifying as a doctor. Her work as a psychiatrist and interest in people on the fringes of society continue to inspire her writing, and Joanna currently volunteers for Arts for Health, an organisation bringing creative arts to NHS staff and patients. Joanna Cannon’s second novel ‘Three Things About Elsie’ was published in January 2018 and explores memory, friendship and old age. She lives in the Peak District with her family and her dog.

Links-https://joannacannon.com/

Twitter @BoroughPress @JoannaCannon