Pharmaceuticals Anonymous

Monday, September 21, 2009

PTSD and Lord Peter Wimsey

as my whimsy takes me Pictures, Images and PhotosMental Health in Fiction
Did Dorothy Sayer's fictional detective suffer from PTSD? It would seem so. Link
How writers get PTSD wrong in fiction.
PTSD in the Lord of the Rings, and
PTDS, the West Wing and the Apocalypse
Rachel Manga's PTSD handbook is also reccommended.
In The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers tells another story of mental health. A lovely girl marries her doctor, who is pathologically jealous and abusive. By chance a former would-be suitor finds her in the remote Basque mountains, hideously changed - "the face white and puffy, the eyes vacant, the mouth drooled open... a dry fringe of rusty hair [clinging] to the half-bald scalp". From the suitor's description, Lord Peter Wimsey recognises the symptoms of thyroid deficiency, or hypothyroidism. He travels to see her, secretly feeds her the thyroid hormone she needs, rescues her, and restores her to health and beauty.