Fragile Minds
Stories from an NHS mental health ward
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Fragile Minds
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Narrated by:
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Emma Fryer
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By:
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Bella Jackson
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Beautifully wrought and staggeringly urgent , Fragile Minds documents Bella Jackson's time as a trainee mental health nurse, and the devastation and hope she encountered in winding corridors and behind locked doors.
There is a narrative we’ve become comfortable with: Mental health services are underfunded and understaffed. But that is only half the story. The other half is messy and confronting; uncomfortable enough to make us look sharply away.
It is the story of the staff who believed they could make a difference, but were worn down by morally ambiguous tasks, impossible workloads and a systemic resistance to change. It is the story of the patients who are failed by hastily made diagnoses, overreliance on medication, coercion, stigma and inconsistency of care, and of the inspiring individuals struggling for justice and revolution.
With compassion and care Bella introduces us to a vivid cast of staff and patients, prompting us to look closer, ask questions and demand more for them.
"I loved this book. Its power is giving a real insight into a world that many of us are unfamiliar with but that we need to understand."
CHERRY HEALEY
"Beautiful and compelling, often distressing but ultimately hopeful."
PROFESSOR JIM LUCEY, Mental Health Commission IE
"This book will rock your complacency towards how we understand and treat mental health..A must read for anyone concerned about our whole society’s wellbeing."
TESSA McWATT, author of Shame On Me
"Sensitive and powerful. Bella Jackson tells incredible human stories with wisdom and insight. This is a very compassionate book. One that opens up a righteous anger at a system that's failing."
PROFESSOR SIMUKAI CHIGUDU author of upcoming When Will We Be Free?
© Bella Jackson 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
I experienced 'the' very same things as Bella did, during my own Student Nurse Psychiatric Training. Horrendous treatment of patients when I was a 'newbie' - from Day 1 of my own training.
Patients were not 'treated'. They were drugged up whilst 'many' of the experienced nurses laughed and chatted and talked about things, other than the patients. They would have been far better working in supermarkets (no disrespect to supermarket workers!). Nursing should be a vocation - not just a job to get through in the best and quickest way that suits you! The patients were an inconvenience. They were not encouraged to be 'listened to'. That was not, in the main, what they were there for. They were there to be 'treated via being drugged up - hushed up and comatosed'.
I was a Whistleblower on very many occasions. This was not the way I was going to be a nurse. I had expected to be taught practices of listening skills, how to encourage patients to open up so that the root cause of their trauma could be identified, before them being 'treated'. This was not the case. There was no encouragement and no time allocated to nurses to talk with patients and get to know them and their backgrounds. This was the training that the student nurses received. They copied the more 'experienced' staff and followed suit. This was the norm.
I did not fit in with any of this. I was most certainly the 'odd one out'. I actively talked to patients and got to know them and - I got in trouble for this because I was not swiftly seeing to everyone quickly, as was required. Dressed, toileted, fed, drugged, bed, repeat.
I feel, with not a hint of martyrdom, that my patients benefited from the 'individualised' care I gave them. I enjoyed being with them and assisting them. I did not enjoy being a nurse on the wards though. The environment was not conducive with caring - in the main.
I left nursing altogether after training and instead turned to the law. I now work in Medical Law and Ethics. The two worlds are very inter-connected - or, at least they should be and in a positive way.
Well done, Bella. You have written such a masterpiece. I am so glad I came across it but so sad also, that it shows that my experiences were not isolated - if only they were.
Anyone who finds my own personal view offensive or untrue and is a psychiatric nurse - if you can look in the mirror and honestly say that you have not come across this - then you are truly lucky and your patients too.
UTTERLY OUTSTANDING & CONCURRS WITH MY EXPERIENCE
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