Julius Bourke

Friday

Julius Bourke

It’s time we accepted that depression is a terminal illness

For Robin Williams, depression was a terminal illness. He also, his wife has revealed, suffered from Parkinson’s disease. These two problems are far more connected than most people know: for many sufferers the first signs of Parkinson’s, often ten years or more before the more readily recognized abnormal movements are seen, are those of a depressive illness. Why? Because the abnormal brain chemistry of the two illnesses is essentially the same. But it is a grave mistake to assume that Williams must have killed himself because he couldn’t face the onset of Parkinson’s. He killed himself because he suffered from depression. Suicide is the final symptom of a mental illness.

Thursday

Julius Bourke

Save the heritage of Barts Hospital

Everybody wants to support cancer charities, don't they? Take Maggie’s Trust, which ‘empowers people to live with, through and beyond cancer’. The Maggie’s approach is defined by their cleverly designed modern care centres, which welcome not just people battling against cancer but their families and those who care for them. Maggie’s now plans to build a new centre, only the second in London, at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield. We desperately want to stop them. Before you start shouting at the screen, let us explain. We represent another group, one that was set up to protect the heritage of Barts, rather wordily calling ourselves ‘The Friends of The Great Hall and Archive of St Bartholomew’s Hospital’.

Friday

Julius Bourke

It is NOT the time to talk about mental illness

Of all the online reactions to the Newtown horror, the most disturbing was probably the blog post written by Liza Long, the mother of a 13-year-old boy with an autistic spectrum disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder – highly intelligent but given to unpredictable aggression and violent threats. The post is called 'I am Adam Lanza’s mother' and its message is discomforting to say the least. Long suspects that her own son is, like Adam Lanza, a potential school massacrist. She thinks he should be incarcerated. ‘It is time to talk about mental illness,’ she concludes. Inevitably, the blog went ‘viral’. Even more inevitably, there was a backlash.