Recent years have seen an increased interest in mental health. Stephen Fry’s 2006 documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive has helped to dismantle the taboo of talking about mental illness. Neil Lennon’s decision to ‘come out’ in his memoir Man and Bhoy, about his experience of depression, is not something that could have been imagined from a football autobiography ten years ago.
Novels such as John Harding’s What We Did On Holiday, Willy Russell’s The Wrong Boy, and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, have all refused sensational treatment of mental illness. Since 1998, Bethlem Hospital, the original Bedlam, has had its own gallery, where it holds regular exhibition of works by artists who have been patients of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.
