'[ ] this timely text makes a valuable and enjoyable intervention into the literature on twentieth century Britain. Feeling the Strain will be a valuable resource for gender historians and historians interested in mental health. It marshals a range of revealing source material to inform our historical understanding of a problem that seems, at the present moment, to be ubiquitous and inexorable.'
Twentieth Century British History
Introduction
1 Nerves and the nervous: self-help books in the early decades of the twentieth century
2 Neurotic tendencies: workplace and suburban neurosis in the interwar period
3 Just Nerves!: civilian nerves in the Second World War
4 Th e great strain: domestic troubles in post-war Britain
5 The democratisation of stress: popular and personal discourse in the 1960s and 1970s
6 The ruthless years: burn-out and the paradigm of stress
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index