Julius Bourke

It’s time we accepted that depression is a terminal illness

For Robin Williams, depression was a terminal illness. He also, his wife has revealed, suffered from Parkinson’s disease. These two problems are far more connected than most people know: for many sufferers the first signs of Parkinson’s, often ten years or more before the more readily recognized abnormal movements are seen, are those of a

Save the heritage of Barts Hospital

Everybody wants to support cancer charities, don’t they? Take Maggie’s Trust, which ‘empowers people to live with, through and beyond cancer’. The Maggie’s approach is defined by their cleverly designed modern care centres, which welcome not just people battling against cancer but their families and those who care for them. Maggie’s now plans to build

It is NOT the time to talk about mental illness

Of all the online reactions to the Newtown horror, the most disturbing was probably the blog post written by Liza Long, the mother of a 13-year-old boy with an autistic spectrum disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder – highly intelligent but given to unpredictable aggression and violent threats. The post is called ‘I