HERE is a lively survey of the mental-health landscape for the general reader. Significantly, it is not by a psychiatrist, but by a very experienced GP, who has somehow found time to write half a shelf of other books on the medical world and on travel.

Gavin Francis reminds us that much of a GP’s work lies in the provision of everyday mental healthcare, and his book attractively weaves together three elements. It is a fascinating personal memoir of what led him into medicine and of his experience as a GP with a special interest in mental health, and it is illustrated with telling accounts of individual patients. It draws on the cultural history of society’s varying approaches to mental illness, “maps of the mind”, before evaluating the current situation. And it looks at the various “states of mind” which conventionally go under headings such as anxiety, trauma, mania, depression, psychosis, addiction, and autism.

Francis consistently challenges the labelling effect of standard diagnostic manuals, and the danger of “diagnostic creep”. “If we were able to hold the labels more lightly, aware of the human tendencies they oversimplify, would we be able to create a society more accepting of difference? Might it be less stigmatising, but also more hopeful, and more open to recovery?”

Religion appears from time to time. People who attend religious services evidently have a 20 per cent lower rate of depression than others. There is something priestly in the role of psychiatrist, “in that it concerns questions of doubt, faith and love”. More fundamentally, the author conveys a marvellous sense of wonder at the miracle and mystery of the human body and mind: “Wonder fosters humility, compassion and reverence for life — the cornerstones of all the major world religions, and fundamental qualities for the effective practice of medicine.”

Those involved in pastoral care can learn much from Francis’s account of his practice, and not least his insistence on the central place of kindness and compassion. “Sometimes I realise that the patient isn’t necessarily looking for a cure, but for validation of their suffering, a listening ear, or a sense of fellowship.”

The Fragile Mind is not a self-help book, but a highly informative, distinctly thought-provoking, and frequently entertaining map of territory that concerns us all. And it has more implicit theology than it might realise: “If I had one ambition for the twenty-first century, it might be that we human beings become more tolerant of uncertainty, more comfortable with paradox, more compassionate and open-hearted about the fuzzy edges of the categories we try to impose on the world.”

The Revd Philip Welsh is a retired priest in the diocese of London.

The Unfragile Mind: Making sense of mental health
Gavin Francis
Profile £18.99
(978-1-80081-975-7)
Church Times Bookshop £17.09