Full Profile
Harry is an experienced medical doctor who, following a period of running a hospital in the Third World, has worked as a senior GP within the Irish Health System for over thirty-five years. He has a long-standing interest around mental health especially the management of anxiety, depression, toxic stress and prevention of suicide He is also interested in the area of mental health challenges during the adolescent period. He has developed a holistic approach with an emphasis on the combination of combining Neuroscience concepts, lifestyle changes and where necessary drug therapy, with the application of simple CBT approaches to effectively manage these conditions.
He is a Member of the Royal College of GPs in London; a Member of the Irish College of GPs and holds a Masters in CBT. He is passionate about emotional resilience and how developing skills in this area could transform our mental health all domains of life, including the workplace.
He is passionate about the areas of Emotional Distress, Self-Care and Emotional Resilience and has taken part in numerous webinars on the subject to multiple companies, educators, state bodies, medical teams, administrative teams, fellow medical and nursing colleagues and others during the Covid pandemic. He is also concerned about the post traumatic effects of this pandemic on us as individuals and as a community and about the hidden impact of grief during it.
In relation to the workplace, he has spoken regularly about the importance of self-care, combining lifestyle changes and emotional resilience skills to improve our mental wellbeing and reduce incidence of mental health difficulties. He has spoken in well-known companies such as Google in Dublin and Which HQ in London. He was asked to give the keynote speech for the St John’s Ambulance Mental Health First Aid conference in London in 2018 where he addressed many of the major companies present on the importance of managing emotional distress in the workplace.
He retired from full time general practice in 2013 to focus solely on mental health. He now works on a consultancy basis combining clinics, writing, media and public information lectures, workplace conferences and webinars, as well as assisting fellow GPs, nurses (including occupational health nurses), guidance counsellors, parents, teachers, sports clubs and therapists with lectures and workshops.
He is the author of 10 books about mental health. His books Anxiety and Panic and Emotional Resilience and Self-Acceptance reached number one on the Irish nonfiction best seller list. Anxiety and Panic laid out a revolutionary new approach to banishing panic attacks, phobias, social anxiety and general anxiety from your life. Emotional Resilience laid out 20 key skills that can revolutionize your mental health. Self-Acceptance which was launched in 2019
Self-Acceptance was reviewed by Bruce Daisley former Vice President Twitter Europe – ‘This is the most remarkable book you will read this year. Surprising, stimulating and guaranteed to change your behaviour. I found myself riveted by its compelling evidence’.
His previous book Emotional Healing, which was launched in London and Dublin and recently by Pegasus in New York, dealt with the world of emotional distress and how to manage it, including an in depth discussion on grief. His last book Embracing Change was launched in May 2021. It deals with the mental health challenges presented by stressful periods of transitional change in our lives, from becoming a new parent, to a cancer diagnosis to the menopause to retirement and so on. His next book The Power of Connection just published by Orion UK on 2nd February 2023.
He is a regular contributor to national press and national and local media (both TV and radio) on the subject of mental health and is a monthly contributor to the Sean O’ Rourke and now the Claire Byrne Today show for past nine years. He has also been a contributor over the years, to TV shows such Claire Byrne Live, Prime Time, Ray Darcy Show, Morning AM, The Tonight Show and the ‘Late Late Show’. He served on the national board of the Depression Charity Aware for over ten years. He is a former member of the Advisory Board of the College of Psychiatry of Ireland. He has also been a member of an international group of experts (which included for example Professor Catherine Harmer, Professor Cognitive Neuroscience Oxford), exploring how best to measure cognition in depression and who published a journal article on the subject in 2019. His website is drharrybarry.com
