The bullet

In August 2014, Tom Lee and his parents drove out to visit Severalls Hospital, a former in-patient psychiatric hospital. Closed since the 1990s, as part of a nationwide shuttering of psychiatric institutions, the buildings now stand derelict and overgrown. But in the recent past, the name ‘Severalls’ resounded with dread and fear, entering local lexicon as a place where the strange, deranged and dangerous were ‘kept away’. Among those strange, deranged and dangerous people were Tom’s own parents. ‘The Bullet’ is a memoir of their time in Severalls, and the breakdowns and difficulties that led them there – often against their will. It is also Tom’s own story of his struggle with his fragmenting mental health – a hereditary bullet he believed he’d dodged – and the extraordinary physical crises that precipitated them.