Excerpt from The Unfragile Mind: A Physician’s Call for Restoring Hope and Humanity to Mental Health Care by Gavin Francis. Published by The Experiment. Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved. “Life is inherently difficult,” wrote the English psychiatrist and pediatrician Donald Winnicott, and “it follows that in everyone there will be symptoms, any one of which, under certain conditions, could be a symptom of illness. Even the most kindly, understanding background of home life cannot alter the fact that ordinary human development is hard.” When the feelings that filter through into our awareness are negative, then clinicians call them “symptoms.” When those feelings are positive, we tend to regard them simply as elements of well-being. Our states of mind can make prisoners of us, make us want to die, make us slash at our own bodies, or make us believe we’re immortal or invulnerable. They can torment us with visions and persecutory voices, and distort the way we see our own bodies and those of others.…