Showing results by narrator "Brendan Kelly" in All Categories

In 1814, the Richmond Lunatic Asylum at Grangegorman in Dublin started an extraordinary programme of asylum building across Ireland, aimed at alleviating the suffering of people with mental illness who were homeless, in prison, or confined in appalling circumstances. By the mid-twentieth century, Ireland had proportionately more people in 'mental hospitals' than any other country in the world.

As a psychiatrist, Brendan Kelly is used to extolling the benefits of a daily meditation practice, but following his own advice is a different story. Finding the time to sit quietly every day isn’t easy when you’re already trying to juggle a stressful job, a busy family life, a cinema addiction, a cake habit, a high-maintenance cat and low-level feelings of guilt over an unused gym membership. But this is the year he is going to do it.

Five hours. Four points of view. Vincent is a wealthy banker living in one of the plushest penthouses Dublin has to offer. Ryan is a former PR executive who quit his job in an attempt to write a best-selling novel. Jack is a former member of one of Dublin’s notorious crime gangs, keen to get away from his illicit past. Darragh is young and dumb, desperate to make a name for himself in gangland circles.

The anxiety associated with the coronavirus crisis is different from the anxiety seen in traditional disorders, because demonstrably there is something to fear, and that’s what makes this worry so ubiquitous, so persistent and so challenging to manage. The good news is that, just as we are capable of finding sophisticated ways to make ourselves more anxious, we are equally good at finding sophisticated ways to manage our mental health, once we put our minds to it.