“Those that the gods would destroy they first make mad” is a quotation misattributed to Eupirides and is a historical example of the negative connotations and stigma experienced by individuals with mental health problems. These have been perpetuated through the centuries and continue to be enshrined in current UK legislation, which restricts the ability of […]
Tag: mental health
Chris Naylor: Effective chronic care means recognising the importance of mental health
The interaction between physical and mental health has been attracting increasing attention across the political spectrum. Last year, the government recognised the importance of the issue with its mental health strategy “No health without mental health.” And more recently, Andy Burnham chose integration of mental and physical health care as the subject of his first […]
Guy Rughani: Thou Art therapeutic
“My parents called the police and had me sectioned. I thought: ‘I’m going to paint.’” David is a participant in “Thou Art,” a project which explores the effects of community-based art therapies on the wellbeing of mental health patients. Led by Olivia Sagan of the University of the Arts London, the project is a collaboration with […]
Retelling the asylums. Harriet Vickers on “The Knitting Circle”
Years of experiences and memories have gone into Julie McNamara’s play The Knitting Circle. Examining the long stay hospitals of the 80s and 90s, through the lives of patients and healthcare workers who inhabited them, the piece takes us through the transition from institution to community care. McNamara is still working on the play, it’s […]
Vidhya Alakeson on parity for US mental health patients
Buried in last week’s legislation to bail out Wall Street was a small but important victory for healthcare in America. At the same time as passing a $700 billion rescue package for the financial sector last Friday, the US House of Representatives also passed a bill on mental health parity. Rumour has it that parity […]
Birte Twisselmann: It’s good to talk
Cracking up, to be broadcast this coming Sunday on BBC2, will be the second television programme to be broadcast in the context of the BBC’s Headroom campaign for mental health and wellbeing (bbc.co.uk/headroom). I had a preview at a screening organised by the Royal Society of Medicine. The documentary provided a moving insight into journalist […]
Bruno Rushforth: The jailer
Who’d be a psychiatrist? The emotional burden of caring for patients presenting in real distress; trying to negotiate a way forward when dealing with someone with a skewed sense of reality; potentially life and death risk assessments on a daily basis; general lampooning from medical colleagues… No wonder psychiatry’s not such a popular choice among […]
Aliya Razaaq on learning about dementia
Baroness Warnock, one of Britain’s leading ethical experts recently talked of the “right to die” of patients with dementia. She called for more research into the illness, in order to establish whether patients with dementia were mentally competent. Thus when they reached a certain point in their illness, they could make a decision of whether […]
Julian Sheather: Is Prozac destroying the arts?
Do art and misery share a bed? Although we might expect art to entertain and even, at a push, to improve its audience, artists themselves are surely supposed to suffer. It is part of the job spec. […]