5 August

What we now call mental illness (a terrible term) used to be called nervous illness. I much prefer that term because most garden variety mental illness is really a type of nervous exhaustion. Even people feeling ‘stressed’ a lot are on this same continuum, it’s persistent stress that can lead to more difficult nervous illness, like anxiety and depression. Claire Weekes was an astounding Australian doctor, who revolutionised the understanding of how to treat nervous exhaustion. She was a terrible sufferer herself, and it was a conversation with a solider back from the war that made a light bulb go off for her. This book has literally saved lives, around the world. Weekes (died 1990) is an international superstar of nervous illness. I’d recommend this book to everybody, as above we all feel stress at times, and this book is a wonder for how to feel calm in a stressful world.