Legacy
of The Past Listen
British mental health expert Bob Grove describes
the shocking conditions he found when he first visited a Greek
psychiatric colony on the island of Leros. He compares the colony
to the madhouses of the eighteenth century which were the commonest
form of treatment for the mentally ill and which persisted right
up until the early part of this century. He has been working
on Leros for the past ten years with a European Union programme
to try to transform the asylum into a more humane institution.
The
Father of Psychoanalysis Listen
Ernst Federn talks about the work
of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Ernst Federn's
father worked closely with Freud at the start of the century.
Freud believed that neurotic illness was caused by actively
repressing painful or emotionally disturbing memories; this
became not just a theory of neurosis but a general theory
of the human personality.
Mental
Terror Listen
Rwandan
Pierre-Celestine Rusengatabaro talks about the trauma he suffered
in the genocide of 1994 when more than three quarters of a million
Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists. He
lost more than twenty members of his family and was forced to
flee to Burundi, where he waited in a refugee camp until relatives
helped him travel to England.
Prozac
Days Listen The
American writer Elizabeth Wurtzell has been taking the anti-depressant
drug Prozac for eleven years. When it was launched over a decade
ago it was initially hailed as a wonder drug. Elizabeth Wurtzell,
who wrote the semi-autobiographical book, Prozac Nation, talks
about her depression and the cocktail of drugs she takes to
help her through it.
Alternative
Therapy Listen Professor
Malik Mubbashar talks about his work in mental health in Pakistan.
This century the West has come up with many advances in how
to treat mental illness -- through therapy and drugs for example.
But after being trained in the West, Professor Mubbashar found
his expertise lacking to deal with the realities of life in
his native Pakistan.
