I read a piece recently by Jenny Lawson - AKA The Bloggess - in which she said that when she was anxious she read more voraciously but that when she was in the midst of deep depression she didn’t read at all. Reading for me, like for Lawson, like for many other people, is an escape and a distraction when most needed.

A couple of years ago I was talking to a colleague and friend about anxiety on the BBC Ouch Podcast. We both have and were working on a project about OCD and how we often felt wracked with worry even when nothing was happening.