Heavy Light cover art

Heavy Light

A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing

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Heavy Light

By: Horatio Clare
Narrated by: Horatio Clare
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Heavy Light is the story of a breakdown: a journey through mania, psychosis and treatment in a psychiatric hospital and onwards to release, recovery and healing.

After a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under section two of the Mental Health Act.

From hypomania in the Alps, to a complete breakdown and a locked ward in Wakefield, this is a gripping account of how the mind loses touch with reality, how we fall apart and how we can be healed - or not - by treatment. A story of the wonder and intensity of the manic experience, as well as its peril and strangeness, it is shot through with the love, kindness, humour and care of those who deal with someone who becomes dangerously ill.

Partly a tribute to those who looked after Horatio, from family and friends to strangers and professionals, and partly an investigation into how we understand and treat acute crises of mental health, Heavy Light's beauty, power and compassion illuminate a fundamental part of human experience. It asks urgent questions about mental health that affect each and every one of us.

A book to look out for in 2021 in the Observer.

©2021 Horatio Clare (P)2021 Penguin Audio Art & Literature Authors Medical Medicine & Health Care Industry Mental Health Professionals & Academics Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Health Inspiring Thought-Provoking Suspenseful

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Critic reviews

"An extraordinary book: deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful." (Robert Macfarlane)

"One of the most brilliant travel writers of our day takes us us now to that most challenging country, severe mental illness; and does so with such wit, warmth and humanity, that, better acquainted with its terrors, we may better face our own." (Reverend Richard Coles)

"A record of the bravest, most perilous, most intrepid journey that any human being can ever make. It is stricken, moving, urgent, crucial.... A luminous, beautiful achievement." (Niall Griffiths)
All stars
Most relevant  
The subject of the book was topical and in a journalistic manner highlighted the strange and terrible route the British psychiatric establishment has chosen to pursue. The rigid and simplistic approach to mental problems based on little knowledge has been known in the very public decline of Peter Green, Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson. Their friends were left to salvage some life for them from the strangely prescriptive and destructive chemical regime imposed on them by the official medical powers. Since the release of the book It seems the government here have adopted a new line with the announcement that long term medication for chronic illness should no longer be relied upon. Perhaps the apparent determination of pharmaceutical corporations to create a climate of addiction may be stifled. Kafkaesque in style delivered with impeccable enunciation and grammar appropriate for an English rather than American accent the book makes its point sharply with a compelling tale.

Impeccable story and delivery

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Absolutely brilliant. Powerful, important, absorbing. The narration is so good that I think text readers will miss out. Thanks Horatio.

exquisite

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A powerful, personal memoir which shifts from lunatic delusion, through haphazard healthcare experiences and out into an impassioned call for a more nuanced and human-led approach to nurturing those who err from accepted codes of ‘normality’. If you’ve had any encounters with the mental health system or struggles with mental wellbeing, there’s a great deal to treasure here. Vaulting, poignant descriptions of nature, sequences of excruciatingly honest detail, and the author’s polished rosewood intonation combine to create a deeply rewarding experience.

Intense and rewarding

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Amazing insights into mania and from a lay person’s perspective a fascinating as insight into the treatment of mental illness which seems to need the change that is slowly taking place.

Fascinating and engaging

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Having heard Horatio Clare’s Radio4 series asking if Psychiatry is working, and having experienced a life changing event involving mental health last year, I was drawn to this book and found it incredible helpful and insightful. A must read/listen for anyone who “suffers with their mental health” or has a loved one who does.

If only I’d read/heard this, this time last year

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For anyone with an interest in mental health, this is a wonderfully clear account of a decent into illness and rise to recovery. For anyone else it is a human story of love and strength.

Outstanding

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Challenging at times to listen to, this is an honest and fascinating account of a descent into mental illness and subsequent recovery, showing that recovery is both possible and achievable with the right conditions.... which includes going against our institutional norms of medication and medicalisation and instead listening to our own selves as humans and being treated in that way as a human in distress. Well written and nicely narrated, Horatio Clare became a familiar and trusted voice and is very much worth listening to. Some fascinating detail and statistics from our mental health system past and present too.

Brilliant and inspiring

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Horatio has such an brilliant way of interweaving story with facts and opinion to give a book that’s gripping and revelatory. He handles the subject of mental health or perhaps just ‘well-being’ with frankness and sensitivity.

Highly recommend!

Brilliant

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This is a really important book and I am hugely grateful to Horatio for sharing his own story with such honesty, openness and with such powerful writing.

My daughter has had four psychotic episodes in the last four years, so much of this book resonated with me and I have now recommended it to friends and family.

I sincerely hope that many mental health professionals (especially psychiatrists) read or listen to this book. I feel it would really help them understand things from the service user and family’s perspective, and it would also hopefully encourage them to reflect on the practice of modern day psychiatry - and ask themselves some questions about psychiatry’s total reliance on long term neuroleptic medication as the only answer for people with serious mental illnesses like psychosis, bipolar, schizophrenia and schizoaffective conditions.

Part 1 is a gripping account of Horatio’s hypermania - how it intensifies and builds before tipping him into psychosis, and how difficult it was for the family to get him Sectioned - all too common an experience of families with a loved one with a serious mental health condition in the UK.

Part 2 is a journalistic investigation into the mental health system in the UK. Horatio goes back and interviews some of the individuals and professionals who dealt with him during his manic episode and his Section. He then goes on to take a close look at the scientific evidence for dealing with psychosis and he interviews many people who question the standard practice of placing someone on antipsychotics for life once they have had an initial breakdown.

One fact that really stood out is that countries where antipsychotics are prescribed for shorter time periods tend to have much better long term outcomes for people with psychosis than those countries where people are placed on meds for life, The reasons for this are explained clearly in the book and that was very helpful for me to read about as we navigate the mental health system to try and support our daughter towards her own healing.

From reading this book I feel the bottom line is that there needs to be far more money put into research for serious mental illnesses (it’s nothing like the amount that is spent on cancer and other life threatening conditions) and we also need a seismic change in how psychiatry is practiced - with much more emphasis on therapy and in particular Open Dialogue, instead of just plying people with horrendous antipsychotic medication which causes weight gain, diabetes, heart attacks, permanent movement disorders and a lot more for the vast majority of people who take it.

Fascinating personal account of mania and psychosis

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which should be read by all those in the mental health business, doctors, carers, family of "mentally ill", definitely by those who have power over the NHS,. It is exercise and talking that will get most through the worst, thank God I have a dog.
very informative, very entertaining, I just hope it changes the way we treat the mentally ill.

a Bible for "bi-polar"

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