Description

The gripping, unforgettable, and deeply affecting story of a young clinical psychologist learning how she can best help her patients, *The Skeleton Cupboard* is a riveting and revealing memoir that offers fascinating insight into the human mind. In *The Skeleton Cupboard,* Professor Tanya Byron recounts the stories of the patients who most influenced her career as a mental health practitioner. Spanning her years of training–years in which Byron was forced her to contend with the harsh realities of the lives of her patients and confront a dark moment in her own family’s past– *The Skeleton Cupboard* is a compelling and compassionate account of how much health practitioners can learn from those they treat. Among others, we meet Ray, a violent sociopath desperate to be shown tenderness and compassion; Mollie, a talented teenager intent on starving herself; and Imogen, a twelve-year old so haunted by a secret that she’s intent on killing herself. Byron brings the reader along as she uncovers the reasons each of these individuals behave the way they do, resulting in a thrilling, compulsively readable psychological mystery that sheds light on mental illness and what its treatment tells us about ourselves **.**