Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne’s first book, The Devil You Know, is an examination of violent behaviour through the stories told by patients to forensic psychotherapist Adshead in her decades-long career working in Broadmoor and other secure mental hospitals. A book of the year in The Sunday Times and the New Statesman, it was described as ”compassionate and fascinating” and “a powerful myth buster”.

Now Adshead, still working with Horne, has turned her attention to trauma with Unspeakable: Stories of survival and transformation after trauma, which uses eight stories of traumatic experiences and how they have affected the people involved. The range is wide, because as Adshead said in her Welldoing interview (below) “All traumatic experiences are not the same, and you can’t assume PTSD just because they [the patients] have been through a trauma. They might have depression, anxiety, their worst problem might be addictions, or very significant relationship problems.”

We chose this book as a Welldoing Book of the Month because it brings together clinical experience, great learning and concern with the complexity of the subject, but also masses of empathy. Adshead writes beautifully about the challenges faced by people who have been through trauma, but she also has a great understanding of the larger world, in which tales of trauma have been magnified by social media and the internet. “Very complex concepts can be wildly over-simplified in a way that doesn’t help.”

We believe that this book is a strong counter-balance to that hyped-up view of trauma, while at the same time being highly readable and humane.