Bestselling author and psychologist Tony Bates has spent his career seeking to understand the lives of others. Here he turns his therapeutic eye on himself and describes the events and people in his own life that have made him the insightful thinker and teacher that he is today. He recalls traumatic events in his childhood that reverberated throughout his life and how, with therapy and time, he was eventually able to heal. He recounts the stories of the patients that affected him most deeply and informed both the direction of his work and his philosophy as a psychologist.
This book invites us to reflect with compassion on the meaning of our own lives, as well as on the way we, as a society, support those with mental health difficulties.
Dr Tony Bates is a clinical psychologist with more than 30 years’ experience. He is the Founding Director and CEO of Headstrong, the National Centre for Youth Mental Health, which was established in 2007 to change how Ireland thinks about and supports young people and their mental health. Prior to that, he was the Principal Clinical Psychologist at St James's Hospital, Dublin, and lectured on psychiatry and psychology in Trinity College, Dublin, and University College Dublin. He writes regular articles for the Irish Times on the issue of mental health and frequently appears on radio and television to discuss mental health, depression and suicide.