But, touch wood, the UK has yet to import this perverse and almost exclusively American pastime, and becoming an expert in school shootings would not have proved a lucrative career path for native Britons. While it is relatively easy to identify physical well-being (“My word, you do look well!”) the other kind – health in the head – is more difficult to identify, even paradoxical

Try the following quiz You are Master / Mistress of the Universe. The quality of cultural life that universe supports will be changed by your MoU powers Be wise.. In the aftermath of Charles Roberts’s grotesque theatre macabre in the Amish town of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, I was dragged on to radio and television to shed light on American “school shootings” – their provenance, explanation, meaning. We do not agree, although it is as well to be aware of the complexities, and of the danger of going too far.. The very term “mental health” raises a number of questions. A healthy mind in a healthy body is the ideal, according to Juvenal’s dictum,.. mens sana in corpore sano If only this were as simple to achieve as to define.

In advance of Mental Health Day on Tuesday, he joins a growing band of public figures who have used their fame to raise awareness. In our special report today, we have tried to give some idea of the range of prominent people who have taken what is still the courageous step of speaking about their illness. Stephen Fry’s recent television programme reached millions with its simple message about the reality of the condition for sufferers – and it was honest enough to modify the idea of “suffering” with the benefits that it can sometimes capriciously bring

Of course, there is bound to be some spluttering. The floodgates of the confessional have opened, according to the stiff upper lip tendency, for whom talking in public about one’s unhappiness is a slip on the slope towards American-style emotional incontinence. There always is when social attitudes undergo a significant change. Whatever anyone thinks of his political career and his practice of media management as the Prime Minister’s press secretary, his personal story strikes a human chord. We welcome Alastair Campbell’s willingness to be open about his experience of the condition.

It is possible that not all women who wear the niqab are aware of the effect that it has, particularly on other women.. It feels like a turning point. Quite suddenly, the stigma attached to the most common form of mental illness – manic depression or bipolar disorder – is lifting. That has practical implications for public administration when identity is an issue – but problems of passports and driving tests have been solved by that most admirable trait of the British tradition, tolerant pragmatism. Face-covering has other implications, too, however, which were raised last week by Jack Straw, the former home secretary, former foreign secretary and current MP whose local electorate is one-quarter Muslim

Mr Straw made an important point. The veil is more than a symbol; it is a “statement of separation”, even of – a word he did not use but could have – rejection.