Public Lecture 'Madness in Fiction and Art'

University of Chester Public Lecture 'Madness in Fiction and Art'

Date: Wed 3 Jun 2026 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

Location: University of Chester, Best Building, Room CBB115, Exton Park Campus, CH1 4BJ

The University of Chester's Health and Wellbeing Research Institute presents 

'Madness in Fiction and Art' with Professor Graeme Yorston.

Writers and artists have always been fascinated by mental instability and madness. Many of them have had to navigate their own problems– some more successfully than others, and some have come to be defined as much by their illnesses as by their creative output. In a world in which the first person narrative and patient experience have rightfully become important in the teaching and management of the healthcare professions, the work of every creative artist, regardless of what medium they are working in, and whether they are famous or not, has something worthwhile to say. 

In this lecture, Professor Graeme Yorston draws on his 30 years’ experience in psychiatry and lifelong passion for history and the arts to explore the lives and mental health issues of writers, artists, musicians and icons of cinema and why it is important for their stories to be told.

Biography:

Graeme Yorston is a Visiting Professor at the University of Chester. After qualifying as a doctor in London and a period of soul searching travel, Graeme had the choice of going to work on Australia’s sunshine coast or heading to Dunfermline to train as a psychiatrist… After further training in Oxford and three years as a consultant Old Age Psychiatrist in Lanarkshire, he moved to Northamptonshire to set up a specialist forensic psychiatry unit for older adults at St Andrew’s Hospital – the world’s first. He has continued to work in rehabilitation, forensic psychiatry and the field of brain injury ever since.

And….he started a YouTube Channel in 2021, which now has 188k followers.