With the mental healthcare system in trouble, people are facing long waits for care and inadequate treatment. This book is Horatio Clare's traveller’s guide to the mental health system, helping you to draw up a treatment plan whilst also explaining how to understand your own condition or that of a loved one, how to ask for the right kind of treatment, and how to get the individualised care that can lead to recovery. This is a guide that everybody can gain something from, whether or not you have personal experience of mental health struggles.

Horatio Clare is renowned for travel writings, memoir, nature and children's books, and his writing and broadcasting on mental health and psychiatry. He worked at the BBC as a producer on Front Row, Night Waves and The Verb. His published works include include Running for the Hills (Somerset Maugham Award); A Single Swallow; Down to the Sea in Ships (Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year); and Orison for a Curlew.

Photo © Caroline Flinders