Unseen: A Memoir of Trauma, Ireland's Psychiatric System and a Lifetime spent Healing
About this ebook
Breda O'Toole's early life was marked by abandonment. When she sought help, she entered a mental health system that continued the pattern – misdiagnosing her, medicating her into silence, binding her in a straitjacket for 11 days and subjecting her to 29 rounds of electroconvulsive therapy.
Refusing to be defined by the failures of the system, Breda fought to reclaim her health, her voice and her life. Through courage, determination and a relentless search for dignity, she uncovered a sense of self that had long been buried.
Unseen is the story of a mental health system that too often ignored the human being at its heart. More so, it is the story of the fierce capacity of the human spirit to heal when we are safely allowed to reveal and feel our pain so that we can move forward with hope.
'When a dysfunctional system adds trauma to the already traumatised, it takes a powerful person to overcome it and thrive. Breda O'Toole is a shining example to us all of the courage of the human heart.' Fiona Brennan, author of The Positive Habit
About the author
Breda O’Toole is a music teacher, a mother of eight, three of whom died as babies, and a grandmother of twelve. She lives in Connemara, County Galway.
Dr Tony Bates is a clinical psychologist and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at University College Dublin. He was Head of the Department of Psychology for 30 years at St James’s Hospital Dublin. Following psychotherapy training at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oxford, he established the MSc in Cognitive Psychotherapy at Trinity College Dublin. In 2006, he created Jigsaw (The National Centre for Youth Mental Health). He trained as a mindfulness teacher at the University of North Wales, Bangor, in 2001 and is patron of the Mindfulness Teachers Association of Ireland. Tony lives on a headland in north Sligo.
