Twenty years after he died, Sally Festing inherited an archive of her father's letters and diaries. Through these she learnt how her aunt and uncle, who she never knew, had been destroyed by schizophrenia. The suffering of his brother and sister drove her father, the neuroscientist Derek Richter, to establish the Mental Health Foundation. Sally talks with familiarity, respect and affection for relatives she got to know largely through studying her father's records. Her poems vividly capture the lives of people whose suffering led to greater understanding and support for those suffering mental illness.
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