The July issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry has another edition of its ‘psychiatry in 100 words’ series – this time on melancholia and the blues legend Robert Johnson.
‘I got stones in my pathway/And my road seems dark at night/I have pains in my heart/They have taken my appetite’. Robert Johnson, known as the King of the Delta blues singers, distilled into these lines the essence of severe depressive illness – somatic ills, fear and suspicion, emotional and physical pain, nocturnal troubles and struggle against obstacles. The words are one with the powerful, haunting music. ICD-10 and DSM-IV have their place, but poets have often been there before us, and done a better job. We can all learn from Robert Johnson, born just 100 years ago.
Link to BJP ‘Melancholia in 100 words’.
Mind Hacks 
Another case of someone retouching out the cigarette in the picture!
Another case of Robert Johnson overshadowing his mentor, Son House:
I hate stuff like this. Get a hobby. Either that or use your enthusiasm for diagnosis on people who are suffering badly and are not dead.