Fern Press signs 'groundbreaking' book from Timimi as rights snapped up around the world

Fern Press has signed a "hard-hitting" examination of ADHD and the "mental health industrial complex" from child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Sami Timimi.

Publishing director Michal Shavit acquired world all-language rights directly from the author. Rights have also been sold in Canada (PRH Canada, McClelland & Stewart), Brazil (Companhia Das Letras), Spain (PRH Spain, Debate), Hungary (Libri) and into the Arabic language with Jarir Bookstore. The book will be published in February 2025.

In The End of Normal, Timimi highlights the growth of, what he terms, the "mental health industrial complex" revealing how diagnoses "now function as commercial brands that prey on vulnerabilities and how today more people become long-term patients than get better".

The publisher continued: "Drawing on a mixture of case material, research and leading scientific, medical and sociological evidence, The End of Normal reveals the shocking truth about the unintended harms that the mental health industry has caused, both to those in distress and to our culture more broadly, while offering a radical alternative vision for what future mental health research and care could look like."

Shavit commented: "The End of Normal is a radical reframing of how we might think about mental health. In this ground-breaking work, Dr Sami Timimi explores how our very concept of mental health is shaped and ’marketised’ by the politics, economics and culture that we inhabit and that includes our notions of ’trauma’. He considers how the way we talk about mental life and emotional distress is itself colonised and then financialised."