The Bullet

In August 2014, Tom Lee and his parents drove out to visit Severalls Hospital, a former in-patient psychiatric hospital. Closed since the 1990s, as part of a nationwide shuttering of psychiatric institutions, the buildings now stand derelict and overgrown. But in the recent past, the name 'Severalls' resounded with dread and fear, entering local lexicon as a place where the strange, deranged and dangerous were 'kept away'. Among those strange, deranged and dangerous people were Tom's own parents.

The Bullet is a memoir of their time in Severalls, and the breakdowns and difficulties that led them there—often against their will. It is also Tom's own story of his struggle with his fragmenting mental health—a hereditary bullet he believed he'd dodged—and the extraordinary physical crises that precipitated them.

Deeply moving, clear-sighted and enormously poignant, The Bullet is a window onto the treatment of mental health disorders in the UK, and a searing analysis of living with a fracturing mind.