The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery by Mary Cregan. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. You can read my full disclosure policy here.
Content note: The Scar by Mary Cregan and my review deals with the death of a child, mental illness, suicide, psychiatric hospitalisation and electroconvulsive therapy.
When her daughter Anna dies, shortly after she was born, Mary Cregan's life is changed forever. In the months following Anna's death, Cregan's grief becomes suicidal depression and she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Following treatment with medication that does not improve her symptoms, Cregan is given electroconvulsive therapy. Something that was becoming less common by the 1980s, when Cregan was hospitalised. The ECT has the desired effect and Cregan is soon on the road to recovery—I say on the road because, as becomes clear in the book, recovery is a process.
The Scar by Mary Cregan is part memoir, part history of psychiatry, and part critique of the ways in which psychiatric illnesses and electroconvulsive therapy have been portrayed in popular culture.
This is not an easy read subject wise, but it is well researched, skilfully written and movingly told.
It is not a reading experience that I will forget any time soon.
The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery by Mary Cregan is published by The Lilliput Press in Ireland and by W. W. Norton & Company in the US. The Scar is available in paperback, audiobook and ebook format.
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