Patrick McGrath has done both he has written about psychiatry and the experience of mental suffering ( Spider), but he has also written about psychiatrists. Writers also write about psychiatrists, often with the same result. The result can produce stereotypical depictions of mental health and of the people who work in that arena. Fiction writers often write about psychiatry for dramatic effect, but not always faithfully. As Baker et al 4 note, for writers ‘madness has long been, and remains, a compelling preoccupation’. Novelists write about the human condition, that much is evident. Psychiatrist/writers can help to restore that link. Garcia-Nieto 3 says that there used to be a strong connection between literature and psychiatry, a connection that was severed during the 20th century. Certainly, fiction can be powerful, but so can psychiatry. This observation is pertinent to this paper, which will look at the connection between psychiatrists and fiction writing. Femi Oyebode 2 notes the similarity in the tasks of the fiction writer and the psychiatrist, pointing out that they are both trying to make sense of human behaviour. 1 This paper asks the related question of whether psychiatrists should write fiction? Chekhov did it, and so did Oliver Sacks, even if he did burn his first efforts. In 2003, Allan Beveridge examined the idea of whether psychiatrists should read fiction.
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