We Don't Use Words Like 'Crazy': On the Frontline of Mental Health
By (Author) Elliot Sweeney
Narrator Elliot Sweeney
Bonnier Books Ltd
BLINK Publishing
22nd July 2025
24th April 2025
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Psychiatric nursing / Mental health nursing
Mental health services
Coping with / advice about mental health issues
Autobiography: science, technology and medicine
616.890231
Hardback
304
Width 162mm, Height 240mm, Spine 28mm
499g
Barking: Out on the Frontline of Mental Health is a 'professional confessional' from Elliot Sweeney, a mental health nurse who works on the frontline of mental health services. His touching and often humorous memoir lifts the lid on the realities of the profession, in an attempt to highlight the need for compassion for some of the most vulnerable people in the world, and the very committed people that work with them on a professional basis.
This book is for anyone who wants to know what it's really like to work in contemporary mental health services in the UK, and why people like Elliot stick at it. Funny, frank and beautifully observed, Elliot's memoir explores all aspects of mental health care, including hospital, youth care, post-partum, dementia, community care, and the more extreme experience of working with Broadmoor inmates, highlighting a service that underpins our society and that reflects the full spectrum of humanity.
'I'm a Londoner born and bred, but these days divide my time between the capital and my adopted home in Lancashire, where there's a bit more space to write. By day I'm a community psychiatric nurse specialising in adolescent mental health and post-traumatic stress. Through fiction, my aim is to fuse my professional interests with a love of fast-paced crime writing.'