On the Brink

Stories of harm and healing from a lifetime in psychiatry

We have lost our way when it comes to treating serious mental illness: this is a powerful call to arms from highly respected doctor and therapist, Penelope Campling.

'Deeply thoughtful and compassionate' Susie Orbach, author of In Therapy

'As a GP I wish I could send patients to Penelope Campling; as someone worried about failing mental health services, I wish she were in charge.' Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being

NHS psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Penelope Campling has spent a lifetime on the frontline of mental health care, working with patients in crisis. Now she has an urgent message for us all: with our health service at breaking point, we are failing people in serious mental distress. We can and must do better.

Dr Campling invites us into her therapy room. At the forefront of a radically new approach to working with mental illness, she shows how therapeutic communities have helped her patients to break generational cycles of trauma, change crippling internal narratives of shame and despair, overcome abuse and rebuild their lives to find meaning and hope.

Moving and insightful, On the Brink combines patients’ stories with candid self-reflections on the difficult business of helping others.

'A book with the power to move and inform . . . [Campling] is an expert in "intelligent kindness".' Gwen Adshead, author of The Devil You Know

'[An] insightful, important book . . . an exhibition of what could be possible and an invitation to act to deliver that vision.' Kathryn Mannix, author of Listen

'This book oozes compassion and kindness and made me want to be a more understanding doctor.' Kate Milton, British Journal of GP Practice

Previously published in hardback under the title Don’t Turn Away: Stories of Troubled Minds in Fractured Times