Mental ailments are presently the fastest growing diagnostic category in world medicine, particularly anxiety, depression, and the damaging effects of abusing alcohol and recreational drugs. Intuitively, we tend to associate this with the accelerating stresses of modern living. This podcast tries to test this assumption by looking at the history of changes in the incidence of certain mental pathologies such as schizophrenia. It explores whether they actually took place, and asks if changes are the result of different perceptions or thresholds, or of changing illness patterns.

Image of the week: Emil Kraepelin, 1856-1926

Full Bibliographic Record: Wellcome Library Catalogue L0030730

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

I conclude this block of podcasts by showing what insights can be gained into the mind of the suicide, using historical evidence. The podcast sets out how survivors struggled to understand why someone had killed themselves and asks if we can build a picture of how suicides felt. The podcast returns to the selective and stigmatising portrayal of suicide in historic newspapers. It concludes by looking at some attempts to adopt a more pro-active approach to preventing suicide in Victorian and Edwardian times.

Image of the week: Voluntary Euthanasia Society Poster, 1930s

Full Bibliographic Record: Wellcome Library Catalogue L0028037

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

I conclude this block of podcasts by showing what insights can be gained into the mind of the suicide, using historical evidence. The podcast sets out how survivors struggled to understand why someone had killed themselves and asks if we can build a picture of how suicides felt. The podcast returns to the selective and stigmatising portrayal of suicide in historic newspapers. It concludes by looking at some attempts to adopt a more pro-active approach to preventing suicide in Victorian and Edwardian times.

Image of the week: Voluntary Euthanasia Society Poster, 1930s

Full Bibliographic Record: Wellcome Library Catalogue L0028037

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In this podcast I outline historic patterns of suicide and I’ll explore attitudes towards it. Historic suicide resembles modern in important regards such as the predominance of males among those who kill themselves. The most distinctive feature is the very high proportion of suicides in past centuries, who were children or young adults. The podcast tries to explain this disturbing historic pattern.

Image of the week: restraint blanket, Brighton Mental Hospital, early twentieth century

Full Bibliographic Record: Wellcome Library Catalogue L0066388

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In this podcast I outline historic patterns of suicide and I’ll explore attitudes towards it. Historic suicide resembles modern in important regards such as the predominance of males among those who kill themselves. The most distinctive feature is the very high proportion of suicides in past centuries, who were children or young adults. The podcast tries to explain this disturbing historic pattern.

Image of the week: restraint blanket, Brighton Mental Hospital, early twentieth century

Full Bibliographic Record: Wellcome Library Catalogue L0066388

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Suicide is the most private of acts. It leaves surviving relatives and friends with more profound puzzlement, guilt, and shame than any other kind of death. It is the cause of bereavement most likely to make the living experience mental problems. Even now, when the subject is discussed more openly in mass media, we often speak of it in hushed terms. This is the legacy of centuries of horror and condemnation, which I want to look at in this block of three podcasts. Today, I’ll explain how we know about suicide in the past, because it is far from straightforward to get evidence.

Image of the week: suicide from a bridge. From George Cruikshank, The Drunkard’s Children (1848).

Full Bibliographic Record: Wellcome Library Catalogue L0007446

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Suicide is the most private of acts. It leaves surviving relatives and friends with more profound puzzlement, guilt, and shame than any other kind of death. It is the cause of bereavement most likely to make the living experience mental problems. Even now, when the subject is discussed more openly in mass media, we often speak of it in hushed terms. This is the legacy of centuries of horror and condemnation, which I want to look at in this block of three podcasts. Today, I’ll explain how we know about suicide in the past, because it is far from straightforward to get evidence.

Image of the week: suicide from a bridge. From George Cruikshank, The Drunkard’s Children (1848).

Full Bibliographic Record: Wellcome Library Catalogue L0007446

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In the previous three podcasts in this section I have talked about the portrayal of madness in media, though at the end of the last one I touched on how sufferers represent themselves. Today I want to do something slightly different, by looking at the creative artistic products of those who suffer from mental disorders. This podcast looks at the assumption that manic depression and genius are linked, charting its fluctuating popularity over time and assessing its validity.

In the previous three podcasts in this section I have talked about the portrayal of madness in media, though at the end of the last one I touched on how sufferers represent themselves. Today I want to do something slightly different, by looking at the creative artistic products of those who suffer from mental disorders. This podcast looks at the assumption that manic depression and genius are linked, charting its fluctuating popularity over time and assessing its validity.

Modern understandings of asylums, mental disorder, and psychiatry are strongly influenced by the medicalised identities portrayed in film. This podcast sets out some examples of the interaction between sociology, psychiatry, and social comment, and between medicine and history, to show how film representations shape understandings – and how they are often a product of their own time. It concludes by looking at more modern documentaries produced by sufferers.

Image of the week: George III in his final illness, c. 1820

Full Bibliographic Record: Wellcome Library Catalogue L0000507

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/