On a fine April morning in bright sunshine, Mary Ann Kenny’s husband died suddenly while out jogging near their family home. John, the stay-at-home dad, had brought the children to school, popped in his earphones and gone out for a run.
The Episode begins and nothing will ever be the same again. “The first indication I had that something was wrong was when I glanced at my phone at around 1.45pm and noticed six missed calls.”
It is the prelude to a descent into grief, psychosis and months of hospitalisation before a journey back to health and happiness.
This is a story that tells many interconnecting and inter-related stories. Chief among them is the life of a family devastated by the sudden death of a father and husband and the traumas it triggers. We read about the limitations of mainstream psychiatry, the protective role played by family and friends, the tenacity of the human spirit and the exceptional bravery of Mary Ann Kenny.
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Kenny’s strength is demonstrated by her capacity to endure a catastrophic loss, crippling depression and the inadequacy of mental health services. This unflinching account serves as a strong illustration of her courage.
She gains access to her medical files and quotes from her medical notes throughout the book. This provides the reader with a visceral, near-tangible sense of the world she was thrown into on the day her husband never returned home.
She paints a painful picture of committed professionals operating in a psychiatric system preoccupied with risk. It is a system that focused on the symptoms resulting from the trauma she experienced, as opposed to the trauma itself.
Over the course of her engagement with mental health services, the real episode - the devastating loss of her husband - is virtually never spoken about. This failure to truly acknowledge Kenny’s devastating loss is as bewildering as it is distressing. Her tenacity and resilience, on the other hand, can only be described as utterly epic.
This deeply personal and moving memoir offers wisdom and inspiration. It does more than that, too, addressing issues of urgent public interest. Mental health professionals and policy makers would benefit from reading it.
Paul D’Alton is a clinical psychologist and associate professor of Psychology at UCD.
