Upended

A glorious day and my younger son was home. We went for a walk down the valley of the man who starved himself and came out at the lonely beach where my son threw of his clothes and swam across the bay. 

The rock formations in the cliffs there are curious, the shaley rock riven and  inversed by ancient subterranean forces. They remind me of the shelves of case notes in the general hospital psychiatric unit where I used to work. 
Back in the day 'fat folder patient' was the name given by family doctors to those frustrating people who repeatedly sought help with a variety of minor somatic complaints and would go away each time with another prescription for medication that didn't give any long term relief.for whatever  ailed them. (They were also known as heart-sink patients.) What could be done with them? They took up so much time. It was not until the second half of the 20th century that there was a recognition of the fact that these people required a different sort of help, regardless of the symptoms they presented with; they needed help to address the underlying anxieties and problems that forced them to seek medical attention - past trauma, present stresses, relationship difficulties and so on.  However, although counselling or psychotherapeutic help is now universally available in, or via, health centres, it doesn't provide resolution for everyone. 

News report on a self-starvation case in Germany almost identical to the one referred to above..