Work to do
Sir: I agree with Kate Andrews’s diagnosis: the nation’s mental health is appalling and a major barrier to our economic prosperity (‘Sick list’, 24 February). I agree with her criticism of the treatment offered by the health service: we are failing to restore people to working health.
Antidepressants are handed out like sweets while provision of talking therapy falls woefully short. What is missing from her otherwise excellent analysis is a consideration of aetiology. The pandemic unmasked, so to speak, but did not itself cause, a dearth of interpersonal connection in our society. We must all take responsibility for landing ourselves in this mess, and for finding a way out of it.
Dr Richard Thomson
Morpeth, Northumberland
Temple of delights
Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 17 February) applauds the variety of the 1924 Exhibition’s pavilions, citing among other examples Burma’s temple. In the 1950s, when I was a teenager, the temple was in our garden in Hampshire, where my parents had started a school, and it regularly formed an unusual backdrop to school plays and other activities.
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