Description

Today, trauma is everywhere, and it seems like everybody has it. Trauma shapes public debates on education, criminal justice and healthcare. It’s cited as a root cause of addiction, mental health issues, and relationship breakdowns. It permeates media, from music and television to films and books – my own included.

While the increasing openness is welcome, I’ve observed that this rise has been accompanied by a parallel explosion of disinformation. We now have a poorly regulated marketplace – powered by social media’s financial incentives – filled with confusing and sometimes harmful guidance about how to deal with personal trauma.

Every day, trauma-related content drives billions of views online. Across the Western world, millions are adopting narratives of their own fragility based on ideas they’ve acquired from under-informed content creators.

As trauma is rapidly commodified, I’ve seen our stories of lived experience become largely dislocated from their original social and political value: to defend the vulnerable and leverage for social change. Now, trauma stories are less about spotlighting injustice, and more about monetising self-help for affluent people.

How did we get here? Are the stories we are telling ourselves liberating us or keeping us trapped?

In this revealing and deeply personal book, I’ll pull back the curtain on the trauma industrial complex, tipping the sacred cows of lived experience and sharing the hard-won wisdom I’ve gained from the calamitous events brought on by telling my own story.

Publisher Review

Brilliant and thought provoking.-Nicola Sturgeon

Darren writes powerfully and poignantly about the unanticipated impact of becoming a poster boy for Scotland’s social ills.-Observer

Raw, insightful and provocative.-Irish Times

An at times brutally exposing account… McGarvey shows a maturity that belies many writers on similar topics; Trauma Industrial Complex therefore succeeds as far more than memoir.-The Scotsman

If it is taken seriously, it should have consequences… truly courageous, sincere and difficult.-The Herald

He’s a good person to write this book… uncompromising in his message.-Spectator

The standout, authentic voice of a generation-Herald

McGarvey is a rarity: a working-class writer who has fought to make the middle-class world hear what he has to say-Nick Cohen, Guardian

An Orwell for today’s poor-The Times

An absolutely fascinating individual-Owen Jones