Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

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Radio 4. The My castaway this week is Baroness Sheila Hollins, an emeritus professor of psychiatry

she has specialized in the health and welfare of people with learning disabilities, advising on policy and influencing attitudes.

She started off as a GP. Turning to psychiatry after finding 70% of her patients were suffering from

emotional and social problems. Significantly, her personal experience shaped

her professional ambitions, one of her four children has a learning disability. She says,

sometimes having vulnerable people in our midst brings out the best in other people.

So, Sheila Horns, you have an eminent career then in medicine, you're the mother of four now grown

up children and you are about to become the president of the British Medical Association,

clearly a highly motivated person.

What is your driving force do you think?

Dear, what a difficult first question. I'm sorry about that.

Do you know, I think I would have to say that it probably goes back to my parents because they always

encouraged my sister and myself to believe that we could do things and encouraged

us to have an education and indeed to assume that we would go to university even though it was not that common

when we were growing up.

So it was just always an assumption that we could. You've commented that people always

apologize for being a psychiatrist. Why do you think that is? I remember when I was a

GP and went to a party people would always ask me

could I give them advice about this or that physical complaint but when I became

...