In this episode of The Family of Things Helen Shaw’s guest is the psychologist and author Dr Tony Bates. Tony founded Headstrong, (now Jigsaw), the National Agency for Youth Mental Health, after a long career in clinical psychology. He was the co-editor of Vision for Change, the mental health strategic review in 2006 and that work motivated him to create an NGO with a mission to provide mental health resources for young people. Jigsaw now has 13 centres across Ireland and has become a critical part of support services for young people in Ireland. Tony is also credited as one of the people who brought the practice of mindfulness to public attention in Ireland following his own experience at the Buddhist retreat centre in Plum Village, France with the spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh. He is the author of ‘Coming Through Depression, a Mindful Approach to Recovery’. In this episode he shares his own experienced of overcoming trauma, and how his brother's death when he was a child marked him. In an open and frank conversation he charts how his own troubled times in his teens prepared him for his life's work, and for a practice earthed in empathy. Tony now lives at the coast in Co Sligo and is working on a memoir. 

This episode of The Family of Things won Bronze in a best podcast category in New York Radio Festival 2019

www.thefamilyofthings.com/tonybates