WHAT DOES AN ENGINEER KNOW ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH? by John Elliott-White

My mother often told me how, shortly before my fourth birthday, she found me hitting my older brother while he was reading – because I couldn’t.  She set about teaching me, and I haven’t stopped since; books and learning have always been an important part of my life.

But another constant in that life has been mental suffering.  Not my own, but all around me, it seems; my colleagues, friends, and family members. For many, suffering at a level requiring professional intervention.  Yet even besides this, a lower level of mental suffering – much of which, I believe, is avoidable – seems almost universal.

I did not intend to publish a book, at least not until recently.  The book Equanimity grew from personal notes I wrote over several years as I sought to understand the causes of mental suffering.  And to understand how I might use that knowledge to support or even help mend broken friends.

Equanimity sits uneasily in the self-help category.  I say this because one major theme is that I consider the ‘self’ fiction and a great deal of sorrow can be avoided by marginalising it.

The book draws upon related domains of neuroscience, psychology – and philosophy spanning millennia.  As an engineer, I have no formal qualifications in those areas; however, I am a painstaking researcher.  I lean heavily on the knowledge and insights of many others, both contemporary and ancient.  And despite the rather weighty subject matter, I have tried to present these topics in a simple, conversational, and entertaining manner.  The reader will decide whether I pulled it off.

I didn’t write Equanimity for money, recognition, or validation.  Living by my own counsel, I content myself with enough of the former and have little use for the latter two.  I chose to self-publish and have put little effort into marketing; I am not invested in outcomes.  If it is of any value, those who need it will read it.  It will find its way to them.

For Authors: I would suggest that today, there’s no need to produce anything other than clear prose and correct spelling and grammar.  Mainstream word processor programs provide spell-check and grammar suggestions, and there are so many other online aids. 

I use MS Word with the free Grammarly plug-in (not that I always agree with its suggestions!).  But free grammar-check plugins are available for the (also free) OpenOffice word processor. I used a brief subscription with Quetext to check for any unwitting plagiarism, and then I experimented with Dall. E 2 to create a cover I was happy with.

Written by John Elliott-White