Plot: Visit to Dr Stead

In The Trick is to Keep Breathing, Joy’s visits to Dr Stead, her psychiatrist, form a prominent subplot.
These scenes are crucial for illustrating Joy’s deteriorating mental health and the inadequate mental health care system.
Dr Stead’s attitude towards Joy and his inability to fully understand her distress help highlight the isolation and misunderstanding individuals with mental health issues often face.

Joy’s dialogue with Dr Stead displays her frustration and hopelessness as he appears dismissive and offers little empathy towards her struggles.
The contrast between Dr Stead’s professional exterior and Joy’s internal suffering draws attention to the gap between lived experiences of mental health patients and their treatment.
Dr. Stead’s prescription of medication without adequate emotional support illustrates the tendency to treat only symptoms, not the underlying emotional distress.

The visits to Dr Stead show the ineffectiveness and insensitivity of the mental health care system, an important criticism Galloway includes in the novel.
These scenes show Joy’s increasing desperation and frustration, amplifying the novel’s exploration of the isolation associated with mental health struggles.
Dr. Stead’s inability to truly help Joy supports the novel’s depiction of mental illness as an often misunderstood and mishandled condition.

Isolation: Joy’s ineffective communications with Dr Stead emphasise her feelings of alienation and miscomprehension.
Medicalisation of Mental Illness: Dr Stead’s reliance on medication rather than emotional understanding criticises the medical approach to mental health.
Despair: Joy’s fruitless visits to Dr Stead underline her escalating despair and diminishing hope for recovery.

“He gives me the prescription. It is always the same.” - This line emphasises Dr Stead’s clinical approach and invokes a sense of monotony, which mirrors Joy’s bleak reality.
“He doesn’t listen…he doesn’t want to know.” - Joy’s internal thoughts during her visits to Dr Stead reveal her feelings of being unheard and misunderstood.
“I am tired of this. Tired of me.” - This line captures Joy’s mental exhaustion and despair at the lack of effective help.