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A compassionate and heart-felt memoir, written by a retired forensic psychiatrist, whose thirty-two year career exposed her to more diversity, challenges, risks, and yes, opportunities, than many of us can even imagine.

As a psychiatrist who works with mentally-ill criminals (and not dead bodies, as is a common misconception), Dr Rhona’s world involved the diagnosis and assessment of sometimes violent, often incoherent, and always unpredictable offenders – before or after their illness and its impacts that could not help but make “good people behave badly”.

As a prison psychiatrist, on and off for eighteen years, Dr Rhona has seen it all – placing herself and her service team in situations that can only be described as chilling as they evaluate the risk presented by an individual, their baseline mental state and ability to plead, or stand trial, and most importantly, establish a rapport and a communication pattern that will allow access and treatment of the disordered thoughts, delusions, or hallucinations that may be the patients perceived reality.

Confronted with each violent offender, and faced with a need to understand what “life experiences or illness may have contributed to him becoming a dangerous (in many cases) man”, Dr Rhona shows remarkable self-control as she suspends judgement, engages with the patient to build trust, and begins the process of assessment and ultimately, treatment – doing what is necessary to support and connect with individuals experiencing secondary crises stemming from their own mental illness, trauma, abuse, emotional distress, drug addiction, rage, violence, and alienation.

What follows is a journey both horrifying in its portrayal of the criminally-mental ill (who may be society’s most in need), and yet still uplifting, as Dr Rhona and her team, take it upon themselves to service, educate the public, manage and compassionately advocate on their behalf.

A fascinating and deeply insightful read, this wonderful memoir is my stop on the @randomttours #blogtour for #Idonttalktodeadbodies today.

A great big thank you to the author, the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

@DrRhonaMorrison

#MentalIllness #MentalHealth