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I’m going to do something a little more serious for this week’s Culture Friday.

There’s been a bit of discussion recently about the stigma associated with mental illness. Which is crazy, when you think about it; being mentally sick shouldn’t be make any more difference to those around you than if you’d broken a leg, or got diabetes. It’s something that happens, and fundamentally it’s just biology and chemistry. Moreover, as Professor Nicholas Craddock points out in this video, mental illness is just as accessible to scientific investigation as heart disease, diabetes.

Watch the film, featuring Neil ‘Twink’ Tinning, photographer for The Jam, and listen as he plays twelve bar blues* and talks, very movingly, about living with bipolar disorder:

There isn’t going to be a genetic treatment for bipolar disorder—that’s a ridiculous idea —Prof. Nicholas Craddock

*As my guitar tutor once told me, ‘If you can play twelve bar blues, you can play anything.’ He didn’t reckon on my tin ear, though.