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Susie Orbach
Susie Orbach created fictional ‘patients’ in collaboration with theatre director Ian Rickson for In Therapy. Photograph: Linda Nylind/Observer
Susie Orbach created fictional ‘patients’ in collaboration with theatre director Ian Rickson for In Therapy. Photograph: Linda Nylind/Observer

The week in Radio: Unhappy Child, Unhealthy Adult; In Therapy; The Forum: Anger

This article is more than 8 years old
There are lessons in sadness, anger and listening in a week focused on mental health and the consequences of poor provision

Unhappy Child, Unhealthy Adult (Radio 4) | iPlayer
In Therapy (Radio 4) | iPlayer
The Forum: Anger (BBC World Service) | iPlayer

Of late, the BBC has been focusing on mental health and it’s felt a little depressing, if you can excuse the term. Not because we shouldn’t be talking about it – clearly, we should – but because the provision for mental health in this country is so utterly inadequate that almost every story you hear is a heartbreaker. Patients being shunted between A&E and police cells for problems that are clearly not physical. Women with postnatal depression having to cope on their own; with the depression, plus a baby. And oh, the stories of the young! Falling through the cracks – the yawning abysses – in the system. So sad.

So this week I’m reviewing a few programmes on the topic that made me feel hopeful or inspired. We all need to know that there’s something positive out there. First up, Unhappy Child, Unhealthy Adult. Presented by the calm, informed Geoff Watts, this programme was a mixture of hope and frustration. Doctors have discovered that childhood stressors – growing up with physical/sexual/emotional abuse, being neglected, having an alcoholic as a parent etc – not only lead to mental health problems later in life, but physical health problems too. Surely, this is hardly a surprise – my initial reaction was, “Duh, of course” – but you know doctors: they like evidence, and now there is some.

Geoff Watts presents Radio 4’s Unhappy Child, Unhealthy Adult. Photograph: BBC

Health studies in Britain and the UK have started inserting a single question: Have you experienced adversity in childhood? The results are unequivocal. People who have suffered more than six ‘Aces’ (adverse childhood experiences) are 4600% more likely to be intravenous drug users (duh, again), but also their life expectancy is shortened by almost 20 years and they are 50% more likely to have suffered cancer, a stroke or cardiovascular disease by the time they are 69. Which means, of course, that if we can make people’s early childhood better, we can reduce illness in older age. More than that: the programme demonstrated that if doctors simply ask the question of patients (face to face) and listen to the answer, then there is an instant reduction in outpatient call-out. Ill people need to be heard; sad children need to be seen, heard and cared for.

Then, in Radio 4’s nice 15-minute slot after lunch, we had In Therapy, where we heard the psychotherapist Susie Orbach talk to what appeared to be real-life patients during their therapy sessions. They weren’t real patients, of course. They were actors, given the details of a life by Orbach, which was then developed by the actors plus theatre director-cum-genius Ian Rickson (he directed Jerusalem and also, fact fans, PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake tour). The result was not like acting at all (at least, not like the acting you get on, say, The Archers). You felt like you were eavesdropping on real, unhappy people. Crikey crikey, it was gripping. Even when you disliked the patient – Jo the out-of-work actor was teeth-grindingly irritating – you couldn’t stop listening. And you could hear the benefits of therapy, of sad people being listened to. A great series by indie production company Whistledown.

Bridget Kendall, host of BBC World Service’s The Forum. Photograph: BBC

Over on the World Service’s The Forum, Bridget Kendall and guests were unpicking anger. This, too, was revealing. Anger has been ignored for a long time by the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic communities (one expert described it as “forgotten”). This is partly because it’s hard to define. Do we mean the fight-or-flight anger that rises when someone threatens you or your child? Or do we mean long-term resentments, insistence that you’re right, the desire to confront every injustice you feel that you see? There was a lot to think about (the fact that venting makes anger worse, for instance) and again, that same revelation: the most successful way to get angry people to calm down is to listen to them.

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