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<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a familiar moral quandary for journalists. You have a vulnerable interviewee who wants to tell a powerful story that could have a big impact. But you also have a duty of care towards them and worry about the emotional consequences of them publicly sharing. When does giving someone a platform to tell their story turn into something more exploitative? <\/p>\n
This is the dilemma with which Darren McGarvey starts his third book, Trauma Industrial Complex. He describes interviewing for a BBC documentary the mother of a 12-year-old girl who was fatally stabbed by a 14-year-old boy in Liverpool. \u201cAs [she] speaks, I lose track of the details, drawn instead to her face. Her expression, a hypnotic blend of rage and sadness. In her eyes, I see the same desolation parents display when cradling their dead children in images beamed from war zones.\u201d He says she had \u201cthe most severe case of untreated trauma\u201d he had ever encountered. She has told her story over and over to try to change the law on knife possession \u2014 and McGarvey grapples with the ethics of giving this wounded woman a platform.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s an arresting way to introduce us to the trauma industrial complex, which he defines as \u201cthe system in which the very real and urgent issue of mass unacknowledged, untreated trauma is commodified, medicalised and repackaged for profit, validation and influence\u201d. He argues that we see it everywhere \u2014 on social media, television and the press \u2014 and it powers self-help industries and political campaigning. <\/p>\n
But telling people\u2019s stories can quickly become exploitative. For instance, McGarvey wonders whether the hugely successful Netflix drama series Baby Reindeer<\/a>, which drew on the comedian Richard Gadd\u2019s traumatic experiences, was a responsible endeavour. He cites the example of Stephen Dymond, a man who took his own life after appearing on The Jeremy Kyle Show in 2019. An inquest concluded that there was no causal link between the programme and his death, but he had a history of suicide attempts and was reportedly left \u201cdistraught\u201d after he failed a lie detector test about whether he cheated on his partner live on air.<\/p>\n The book\u2019s opening section is peppered with tantalising hints of the ethical risks involved. There are the dangers for those sharing their trauma, that they might be doing so in a misplaced belief that it will not only heal them, but cause the social change that would give their suffering meaning. And what happens when personal narrative is mistaken for universal truth? What about when one person\u2019s lived experience is taken as representative of a whole subsection of society? <\/p>\n He writes that \u201cthere\u2019s a risk \u2014 and it\u2019s not a small one \u2014 when people with lived experience are positioned, or come to position themselves, as \u2018experts\u2019\u201d in public health or clinical decision-making. McGarvey is worried that our collective appetite for hearing traumatic stories means we might end up \u201celevating the loudest and most relatable voices over the most rigorous ones.\u201d<\/p>\n But then less than a third of the way through the book, perhaps aware that he\u2019s bitten off more than he can chew, he narrows its remit. McGarvey becomes \u201cprimarily concerned with addressing one specific conundrum: how do we protect the integrity of lived experience stories and the safety of storytellers?\u201d He then focuses on his own experience of putting his traumatic experiences into the public domain. <\/p>\n \u2022 What we\u2019re reading for summer 2025 \u2014 by Rachel Reeves and more<\/a><\/p>\n We hear how ill-equipped he felt to deal with the success of his first book, the polemical Poverty Safari<\/a>. This gritty account of the causes of poverty, which draws on his life growing up in a poor part of Glasgow with an alcoholic mother, and of his own adult recovery from addiction, won the Orwell Prize in 2018. Talking about his experiences on the BBC triggered \u201can unbearable state of mania\u201d as emails started to pour in and his phone beeped continuously. It culminated in an alcohol and drug binge that left him feeling suicidal and drove him back to rehab.<\/p>\n McGarvey writes with brutal honesty about his mixed motivations for sharing his story; how it was about validation as much as anything else and how the reality of his story is more complicated than his public narrative about trauma, poverty and class. He describes how he feels he \u201cdined out\u201d on his grief, using it as an excuse for his addiction, and how it left him trying to put the toothpaste of his trauma back in the tube. <\/p>\n The author and Orwell Prize winner Darren McGarvey<\/p>\n JAMES GLOSSOP FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n McGarvey\u2019s conclusions are intended for two audiences. There\u2019s a warning to those who have experienced trauma to be wary of throwing themselves into political campaigning in the futile hope that it will heal them; it\u2019s clear that McGarvey sees his own work in this area as an avoidance tactic. Today he is devoting himself to the recovery movement, which \u201cactively resists the temptation to become embroiled in politics or contentious matters of public debate\u201d. There\u2019s also a sensible list of suggestions for how media and campaigning organisations should show a greater duty of care to those whose trauma they are giving a platform to.<\/p>\n But those tantalising ideas McGarvey dropped into the earlier part of his book \u2014 his belief that adversity \u201cdoesn\u2019t grant us special rights or privileges to shape policy or clinical care\u201d, or how trauma narratives are only welcomed if they toe approved political lines on things like race and class \u2014 are left unexplored. I think there is a problem with traumatised people being afforded a higher moral status in public debate, making it look cold-hearted or insensitive to argue against their proposals. Doesn\u2019t it become harder to question tighter internet regulations if they\u2019ve been advanced by parents who have lost their children in the wake of harmful online interactions?<\/p>\n![\"Portrait](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/d932657a-574b-4655-8472-920104c2b947.jpg\")
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