Mental Health

The psychologist and trustee of Alzheimer’s charity SPECAL says British and American women today are 5 times more likely to suffer a mental illness than in the 1950s

The author discusses books on mental illness, explaining the conditions that keep us sane and the effects of removing them. Recommendations include Sartre, Coetzee, and John Bayley on Iris Murdoch

As a young Dutch Jewish girl, Johanna Reiss survived World War II hidden in the attic of a farmer called Johan Oosterveld. Her memoir of that time, The Upstairs Room, is still read in schools today. But while she was researching that book in 1969, her American husband, Jim, killed himself. In this interview, she recommends books on the painful subject of suicide, as well as the music that helped heal the pain.