Inside the Madhouse

Inside The Madhouse gives a bitterly honest account of life on a modern psychiatric unit including the incredible camaraderie and the often unintentionally funny day-to-day routines. Hope Daniels became a poster girl for surviving abuse and the care system, thanks to her 2014 Sunday Times bestseller Hackney Child. Despite everything, Hope grew up determined to have a career and after the release of Hackney Child, she went on to have more successful books, building a loyal fanbase, while also becoming an ambassador and role model for others like her. However, in Inside The Madhouse, her new and most raw memoir to date, Hope reveals her new life was not quite as rosy as many thought. In 2022, when her difficult relationship came to a toxic end and her unresolved trauma of being abused as a teenager began to resurface, she tried to take her own life. It resulted in her being forcibly sectioned and spending three months in two very different psychiatric hospitals - one NHS and one private. Now, against a backdrop of rattling keys, slamming doors, and the shrieks of patients resisting treatment, Hope reveals what life is really like on a psychiatric ward today - celebrating the unexpected camaraderie amongst the patients and the moments of dark humour which helped her through. She met countless women who, like her, were haunted by the memories and effects of a lifetime of cruelty and neglect. Their stories are rarely told, they are the shadowy figures who often exist in the margins of society - far from family and friends.In this powerful memoir, Hope shares her own lived experience, and that of her fellow patients, and documents their joint journey towards redemption and recovery.