The business secretary, Vince Cable, has spoken of the postnatal depression suffered by his mother, on the eve of a speech in which he will emphasise the importance of further educational opportunities for people with mental health problems.
Cable said his mother, Edith, disappeared from his life for a while when he was 11. She had postnatal depression after the birth of her second son, Paul, but it was not described in such terms 60 years ago. Edith was taken to hospital, while the baby temporarily went into foster care.
Cable, who will speak at a conference in London on Wednesday, said: “People who had mental breakdowns were taken off to institutions, as she was, near York, and the whole language and approach to mental illness was quite different in those days. They had this phrase, ‘the loony bin’; they treated people in a very bad way.”
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Boseley, go to http://www.theguardian.com/soc...ental-illness-speech]
Comments (0)