Start of the Week

In my journal and to a lesser degree, here on the blog, I have been examining the idea that writing helps you to explore your thoughts and feelings and that by doing so, we may have a better understanding of ourselves. This morning I had the opportunity to listen to Andrew Marr's programme, Start of the Week on Radio 4. One of the contributors has written a book on the history of women and mental illness. She put forward the same idea. In particular she looked at women writers who had also suffered from mental illness or periods of depression. Below is the description from the website of her research and book:


From Mary Lamb who, in the throes of a breakdown, turned on her mother with a knife, to the depression suffered by Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, women have played a vital role in the history of how we understand madness and its treatment. Novelist and broadcaster LISA APPIGNANESI charts how female patients - and doctors - have contributed to the medicine of the mind and how mental illnesses mirror the malaise of each era. Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present is published by Virago.

If you are interested in hearing this programme, you can go to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/starttheweek.shtml