The book is a wonderful insight to mental health
Speaking from someone who suffers with bad anxiety and has seen therapists for anxiety, this book really hit home to me, just how powerful the human mind can be. It also showed me how the mind can rally effect us in day to day life.
At some points, this book was a bit too in-depth for me and I struggled to know what the author was talking about, but overall this was a very insightful read and one that I would recommend.

I found this a really interesting book and I thought it was really well written considering the nature of the book.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

In Head First, Santhouse, a psychiatrist, explores the mind body link and how our personalities, attitudes and beliefs impact on our lives and how we interact with our health. Importantly he looks at how our beliefs and emotions keep us stuck in the same behaviour and highlights how medicine is perhaps not always giving people what they need. He uses patient case studies as a framework to explore these ideas and includes conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome. In the latter case study he highlights what has been a controversial opinion, that fatigue can be maintained by a range of physical and psychological factors and how defining it as a psychological condition does not make it less worthy of treatment or research. I was pleased to read his brief mention of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) and how they are a marker for a range of poor health outcomes including chronic pain. Overall I found this an interesting read, but as someone who has experienced fatigue and chronic pain and healed using a mindbody approach there are much better books on this subject. I feel that there could have been further reflections and information on his approach. However if you are looking for a medical approach and initial introduction to the subject this is worth a read.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

Not often do books look at the sometimes controversial area of mental health. This book is a wonderful insight in to the work done by psychiatrists and the things that can happen without mental health

After exploring various medical specialities early in his career, Dr Alastair Santhouse found his ‘home’ in psychiatry, a field he’d become interested in as an undergraduate medic at Cambridge University. In Head First: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of Mind and Body, Santhouse draws on his own experiences and observations from a distinguished career straddling medicine and psychiatry, to show how our emotions are inextricably linked to our physical wellbeing. Santhouse knew something was wrong the night he was on call during his medical training and got the news that a woman on the way to the ER had died in the ambulance. That meant he could go back to sleep! But he couldn't. He was overtaken with the sense that his joyful reaction was a terrible failure. That night began his long journey away from the ER and into psychiatry. Head First chronicles Santhouse's many years treating patients and his exploration of the ways in which our minds exert a huge and underappreciated influence over our health.

They shape our responses to symptoms that we develop, dictate the treatments we receive and influence whether they work. They even influence whether we develop symptoms at all. Written with brutal honesty, deep compassion, and a wry sense of humour, Head First examines difficult cases that illuminate some of our most puzzling and controversial medical issues--from the tragedy of suicide, to the stigma surrounding obesity, to the mysteries of self-induced illness. Ultimately he finds that our medical model has failed us by promoting specialization and overlooking perhaps the single most important component of our health: our state of mind. This is a provocative, incisive and fascinating examination of the human mind in which it becomes clear that the author is not only a first-class, perceptive clinician but a truly gifted and empathetic writer, too. Through his clinical case studies, he makes a convincing case that it's practically impossible to separate, or disentangle, physical and mental health from one another. Highly recommended.

Another addition to the narrative medical experience genre and a well written and engaging one. Santhouse tries to look around all aspects of medical ethics and as well as recounting psychiatric cases looks at the psychology around other health conditions

I was very disappointed by this book. The description says "eminent psychiatrist Dr Alastair Santhouse draws on his experience of treating thousands of hospital patients to show how our emotions are inextricably linked to our physical wellbeing." I eagerly anticipated reading about all the insights he had gained from this experience, notably his insights into treating psychosomatic problems.

Unfortunately, the 'insight' stops there. Yes, the mind and the body are connected and troubles in the mind cause trouble in the body. Boom. No further information about what to do about this (apart from the implied 'see a psychiatrist'). I have the greatest respect for psychiatry and psychology professionals and their role in treating the mind and psychosomatic illness, but I expect a book on this topic to go a lot deeper than this.

Early in the book, the author decries the fact that modern [mainstream] medicine separates the mind and body ('Cartesian dualism') and fails to recognise that the mind and body are deeply connected.

Then he scornfully dismisses all forms of alternative medicine.:

"Alternative health beliefs are part of a mindset that at one end of the spectrum is a benign and harmless addition to standard medical care, and at the other end merges into overt conspiracy theory and paranoia. [...] many alternative health conceptualizations of how the body works are at odds with accepted science. Illnesses are thought of in simplistic ways that fit the particular alternative medical theory [...] Sometimes [alternative health theories] appeal to common sense in the way that it is common sense to think the earth is flat if you look as far as you can along a sandy beach."

Wow. That's tarring with a broad brush indeed, and it displays a huge degree of ignorance of a whole range of alternative health theories.

Then the rest of the book is just lots of examples to demonstrate that many health issues are actually rooted in people's minds; their traumatic life histories, their unhappiness, their loneliness, etc. Since this very 'insight', the mind-body connection, is at the heart of many, if not most, so-called 'alternative health theories', it is astonishing to see the theme treated like this. He writes the whole book as if the mind-body connection was a 'new' idea that he came up with thanks to his years of experience.

If you are interested in genuinely helpful books about the mind-body connection, psychosomatic illness and - most importantly - how to get relief from or even cure your symptoms, I highly recommend looking into books by Dr John Sarno, Steven Ray Ozanich, Suzanne O'Sullivan, Dr David Clarke or Dr Howard Schubiner, and other books on mind-body syndrome. Or just google mind-body medicine, mind-body syndrome or psychophysiologic disorders. There's a wealth of information out there. And while some might consider it 'alternative medicine' it is certainly not quackery written by flat-earthers.

What does it mean to be well? Is it something in our body? Or, is it rather something subjective - something of the mind? In this profound collection of clinical stories, eminent psychiatrist Dr Alastair Santhouse draws on his experience of treating thousands of hospital patients to show how our emotions are inextricably linked to our physical wellbeing.

Our minds shape the way we understand and react to symptoms that we develop, dictate the treatments we receive, and influence whether they work. They even influence whether we develop symptoms at all. Written with brutal honesty, deep compassion, and a wry sense of humour, Head First examines difficult cases that illuminate some of our most puzzling and controversial medical issues-from the tragedy of suicide, to the stigma surrounding obesity, to the ongoing misery of chronic fatigue. Ultimately he finds that our medical model has failed us by promoting specialization and overlooking perhaps the single most important component of our health: our state of mind.
I’ve always been obsessed with mental health conditions and how they are interlocking with Physcial health so this book was right up my street. Amazing!