Revisit: My Body Clock is Broken

Jay Griffiths, Vincent Deary, Louise Robinson and Matthew Smith discuss our mental health.

How does depression affect our sense of time and the rhythms of daily life? Our body clocks have long been seen by scientists as integral to our physical and mental health - but what happens when mental illness disrupts or even stops that clock? Presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by those who have suffered depression and those who treat it - and they attempt to offer some solutions.

Jay Griffiths is the author of Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression and a book Pip Pip which explores attitudes to time across the world.

Doctor Vincent Deary teaches at Northumbria University, works as a clinician in the UK's first trans-diagnostic Fatigue Clinic and is the author of a trilogy about How To Live - the first of which is called How We Are.

Professor Louise Robinson is Director of Newcastle University's Institute for Ageing and Professor of Primary Care and Ageing.

Professor Matthew Smith is a New Generation Thinker from 2012 who teaches at Strathclyde University at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare.

This programme was recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead in 2017 and is being broadcast now as part of the BBC's contribution to Mental Health Awareness week.

You might be intereseted in Sleep;Freedom to Think from the Festival Lecturer Professor Russell Foster https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hz9yw and another Festival discussion from 2019 looking at how medical staff cope Should Doctors Cry ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000488q and an interview with Buddhist monk and thinker Haemin Sunim about coping with the pace of life https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08jb1mp

Producer: Zahid Warley.