State of Mind

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. The 1960s saw anti-psychiatrists including RD Laing question the notion of insanity, believing madness to be a special state. Claudia visits one of only two remaining NHS residential therapeutic communities, the Cassel Service in Richmond, Surrey, and goes to Bradford to meet the members of Sharing Voices, a community development approach to mental health services.