Beyond Pathological with Sarah Fay
Cured
Stories of Healing: Leon MacFayden
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Stories of Healing: Leon MacFayden

Mental health recovery is possible...

This post is part of the accompanying tips, resources, interviews with experts, and stories of mental health recovery included in the exclusive serialization of Cured.

In addition to bringing you my story, the wonderful aspect of serializing Cured is that I get to mix in other elements like other people’s stories of recovery.

It’s so important to bring everyone’s story of recovery to the forefront. We need to urge the media, publishers, and mental health professionals to discuss these stories and share with people the fact that mental health recovery is possible, even from serious mental illness.

I’m thrilled to have Leon McFadden here. He’s an amazing man. His story is beyond remarkable.

Leon MacFayden is a writer and the creator of the Substack Policing Mental Health. He writes for many publications, sharing his experiences as a police officer who experienced mental health problems for twenty years and recovered. 

As a police officer, he worked in challenging inner city areas and eventually cracked under the strain. He began suffering flashbacks, depression, and anger and was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Schizophrenia and told he was 100 percent disabled forever. His life as he knew it was over.

After a long struggle, he defied expectations and healed.

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Visit the Table of Contents and Introduction of Cured:

Table of Contents

Find more resources for mental health recovery.

Read the prequel to ‘Cured,’ ‘Pathological’ (HarperCollins):

Discussion about this podcast

Beyond Pathological with Sarah Fay
Cured
Welcome to the exclusive serialization of Cured—the sequel to Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses (HarperCollins 2022). Cured explores an extraordinary idea: We can recover from mental illness, even serious mental illness.
No one told Sarah Fay this during the twenty-five years she spent in the mental health system. She ended up one of those “hopeless” cases—chronically suicidal, unable to live independently.
Yet she recovered. Not remission. Full recovery.
Cured is that story.
It's also the story of the mental health recovery movement, which has been trying to make recovery the centerpiece of mental health care for over four centuries.
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