Bill Harvey: What cannot be seen but is perfectly real

You may have noticed that last week was Mental Health Awareness week and to coincide with this one of the CET articles offers an overview of the main forms of mental illness. All of us will at some stage suffer some form of mental illness or know well someone with mental problems. The main theme of the awareness week was to encourage the building of better relationships (see www.mentalhealth.org.uk).

Since 1979, there has been a clear move towards self-advancement and material gain, and this has resulted in a steady decline in support networks, either state-funded or community and neighbourhood-based. This decline in social cohesion leaves too many people with little or no option for support when they find themselves suffering from severe anxiety states or depression or worse. And as the article shows, many of the signs of mental illness can be kept hidden, especially when the tendency for those around us is to turn a blind eye.