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Any mother would die for their child. She would do anything to take away their pain. In the case of suicide, the mother keeps the pain and loses the child. On 5 July 2020, Jessica Revill took on her son's agony and had to learn to live as an "emotional amputee". She couldn't grow her son back. She had to navigate the world without her beautiful, funny, musical, autistic boy.
So, if you can't die for your child, how do you live for them? Over the year following Gregory's death, his mother went on an intense journey of grief and post-traumatic growth as she did a deep dive into Australia's fractured mental health system. With her background as a clinician and an academic, Dr Revill investigates how poor medical training, ill-equipped emergency rooms, ineffective prevention programs and the bias against the disabled and mentally ill fail to save over 3000 lives a year.
The book is framed by Revill's daily connection to a child who continues to guide his mother's prevention work as she finds him among the living.
About the author
Dr Jessica Revill is an Australian psychologist in clinical practice. She began her professional life as a journalist and then studied psychology as a mature age student. She gained her masters degree from California State University, Los Angeles and her PhD in educational psychology from UCLA. She has a video podcast on mental health called Prisoner of the Mind with Dr Jessica Revill and has refocused her clinical orientation to suicide prevention since the loss of her son Gregory. She lives in western Sydney. For more about Jessica or to get in touch, visit her website: www.prisonerofthemind.com.au
