There is now more openness than ever about mental health and wellbeing.

There has been a lot of talk about the subject following Prince Harry’s revelation that his own mental health was affected as he struggled to cope with his mother’s death.

Prince Harry said he received counselling and now accepts that acknowledging the problems and talking about them is the way forward.

The Prince has received praise for helping to break the stigma surrounding mental health issues.

Closer to home, in Ross-on-Wye, the mental health pilot is underway, and various groups are being co-ordinated by Phil Shackell, the interim mental health lead for Herefordshire Council.

These groups give people who may be experiencing depression, anxiety or other issues projects to get involved with or activities to take part in, rather than relying solely on their GP to prescribe them with medication.

Today, the challenges many people may face in relation to mental health issues are widely understood, but for many years, there was a lot of confusion surrounding the topic.

In the Ross Gazette in 1888, the author of an article, entitled ‘Why am I so miserable?’ claimed they had the answer to what was causing so many people to suffer from anxiety and depression.

The article below may highlight just how far understanding surrounding mental health has evolved over the past 129 years.

Why am I so miserable?

So weak and languid? Why such heartburns and pains in the stomach, such acidity and such unpleasant taste in the mouth? Why at times such a gnawing appetite and then again such disdain for food?

Why so frequently irritable, despondent, melancholy and dejected? Why does one often feel under the apprehension of some imaginary danger and start at any unexpected noise, becoming as agitated as though calamity was impending?

What is the meaning of these dull, sick headaches, these violent palpitations of the heart, this feverish restlessness, these night sweats; this distorted and dreamy sleep, which brings no refreshing rest, but only moanings and mutterings and the horrors of nightmare?

The answer is; these are but the symptoms of indigestion or Dyspepsia - the beginning and forerunner of almost every other human disease.

Indigestion is a weakness, or want of power, of the digestive fluids in the stomach to convert food into a healthy matter for the proper nourishment of the body. It is caused most frequently by the irregularity of diet, improper food, want of healthy exercise and pure outdoor air.

It may be induced by mental distress - the shock of some great calamity. It may be, and often is aggravated and intensified, if not originally brought on, by exhaustion from intense mental application, of physical overwork, domestic troubles, anxiety in business or financial embarrassment.

If the stomach could always be kept in order, death would no longer be a subject of fearful anxiety to the young and middle aged, but what would be contemplated by all as the visit of an expected friend at the close of a peaceful and happy old age.

However, the first hostile invader upon the domain of health and happiness is Indigestion. Is there any relief, any remedy, any cure?

That is the question of the suffering and unhappy Dyspeptic. What is wanted is a medicine that will thoroughly renovate the stomach, bowels, liver and kidneys, and afford speedy and effectual assistance to the digestive organs and restore the nervous and muscular systems their original energy.

Such a medicine is happily at hand. Never in the history of medical discoveries, evidenced by a dozens years’ thorough test, has there been found a remedy for Indigestion so speedy, so sure, and so surprising in its results as Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup, but today it is a standard remedy for that almost universal affliction in every civilised country in Europe, Asia, Africa and America.

Public testimonials and private letters from military officers, bankers, merchants, ship captains, mechanics, farmers and their wives and daughters alike confirm its curative powers.

Sold by all chemists and medicine vendors throughout the world, and by the proprietors of A.J. White, Limited, Farringdon Road, London, EC. Price 2/6 per bottle.