Mind & Membrain is a book that not only reveals the ''missing link'' between head impacts, mental health issues and early onset dementia but also offers a new approach to mental health diagnosis and treatment. It will interest patients, carers and practitioners across the whole field of mental health.

The book begins with the link between head impacts and mental health issues, and early onset dementia. The statistics are well documented and the link is now headline news for sports such as rugby and football. Yet while knocks to the head of all kinds are commonplace and the consequences for mental health are now recognised, the link remains poorly understood. No one so far appears to have grasped the crucial role of the medically neglected dura membrane that lines the skull, envelops the brain and controls the vital irrigation system of the cranium. “Membrain disorder” gives a name to a common but typically undiagnosed condition where the skull is impacted, the dura responds, and – without preventive treatment – the brain and thus the patient’s mental health are impaired, both short and long term. The book, uniquely, explains how membrain disorder can be diagnosed and then successfully treated by a hands-on approach, without drugs or surgery.

The book then addresses the current crisis in mental health diagnosis and treatment. Rather than lament the situation, this book offers a solution: an original model for mental health diagnosis. Drawing on complexity theory and biology, the approach generates a practical ‘road map’ guiding a practitioner to discover the dimension of origin of a mental health issue (rather than seek the closest match to the symptoms in the quasi-official doctors’ diagnostical manual, DSM-5). Similar symptoms can have completely different origins, ranging from microscopic molecular imbalances to society-level pressures. With the dimension of origin identified, an effective treatment can be implemented.

The book will interest doctors, therapists, manual practitioners and others and give hope to mental health patients, their loved ones and their carers, especially those struggling to find a solution for problems that respond neither to drugs nor talking therapies. Mind & Membrain is written for the lay person and includes personal case histories that bring the topic alive.