大象传媒

Claudia Hammond tells the story of mental health care in the UK from the 1950s to the present day and explores, with the help of listeners' testimonies, how treatment and understanding of mental illness has changed over the past 50 years.

Prescriptions for anti-depressants have risen and now one in six of us experiences depression or anxiety. But instead of a pill, some would simply like to talk. Claudia visits Canterbury Christ Church University to meet some of the first trainee mental health advisers who are part of the government's new Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative.

She also asks whether it is the stresses of modern life that cause us to experience depression or anxiety and whether, bombarded by marketing that tells us we can have it all, our expectations of happiness have become unrealistic.