How to Treat Depression in 17th Century England

To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, Not Just the Tudors casts a 21st century eye over "one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance" - melancholy - and how it was addressed in "largest, strangest and most unwieldy self-help book ever written": Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy of 1621. 

So what did people in the 17th century think were the causes, symptoms and cures for melancholy? In this episode, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr Mary Ann Lund - author of A User's Guide to Melancholy, an accessible guide to Burton's work that reveals the Stuart era's approach to mental health. 

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