Read Cathy’s new blog for Seen & Heard ‘The Female perspective of boarding school’
Watch Cathy’s appearance on the Locked Up Living Podcast HERE
Watch Cathy’s appearance on the Piers Cross Evolving Man Podcast HERE
Connecting With Cathy and her work
Email: cathy@realspeak.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathy-wield
www.linkedin.com/in/cathy-wield-4b821450
https://www.facebook.com/hopeneverdies.life/
Dr. Cathy Wield, is a psychiatric survivor and A&E doctor. This book covers her life, from childhood to the present day highlighting her time in boarding school as a child.
Dr. Cathy Wield is also featured in a documentary that premieres on the 1st March called Boarding on Insanity. This explores the trauma that resides in children who attend boarding school.
‘A candid and revealing account that takes the reader on a unique journey through the experience of mental illness, and the ‘treatments’ they encountered on the way.’
Hugh Middleton, Psychiatrist and Author
‘A Moving and powerful story we all need to pay attention to’ Johann Hari, New York Times Best Selling Author
Unshackled Mind is a story of hope and resilience, written by an A&E doctor who endured years as a psychiatric patient, diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression.
Cathy’s life became a constant battle, marked by frequent hospital admissions, episodes of suicidal thoughts and self-harm. Despite psychiatry’s best efforts to treat her – including numerous drugs, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and even brain surgery – these interventions only deepened her suffering. However, through profound self-discovery, she uncovered the true causes of her emotional turmoil rooted in the past, sparking a transformative shift in her mindset.
Unshackled Mind outlines her extraordinary journey to freedom and the remarkable healing that followed.
Cathy Wield was born and raised overseas before returning to the UK for her education. She has spent most of her career as a doctor, specialising in Emergency Medicine. As an author, she has written and spoken extensively about her experiences as a psychiatric patient and is passionate to improve care and offer hope to those suffering from emotional crises.
Cathy explains: “I wrote ‘Unshackled Mind’ to put right what was already in the public arena. My previous book ‘Life After Darkness; a doctor’s journey through severe depression’ was serialised in the The Mirror and received great accolade from the press. But I suffered a relapse soon after publication and started to realise that psychiatry wasn’t helping me as I had claimed when writing the first memoir. It took years to finally unravel the truth and to understand how I had been duped into believing that psychiatric treatment held the answers to my problems. Once the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of depression had been revealed as a myth, and I discovered others who had also suffered as a result of the traditional biomedical model of psychiatry, I found the confidence to re-tell my story. My childhood was marred by years in boarding school, and meeting others who had also been traumatised in a similar way, validated the difficulties that had first led me to seek help for my emotional turmoil.
As a doctor working in A&E, I have seen countless other patients stuck in the hopelessness of a psychiatric diagnosis, unable to tackle the root causes of their problems. By writing about my life story, I hope that they too will find the right support to break the cycle of despair.”
Further information on Unshackled Mind is available from The Book Guild, at: https://www.bookguild.co.uk/bookshop/autobiography/unshackled-mind/
