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Given the supremacy of the biomedical model in defining our understanding and treatment of a wide range of physcial and psychological disorders, it is perhaps curious that simultaneously, scientists, clinicians, governments and patients routinely employ the concepts of “lifestyle” and “balance” to try to explain the causes of bodily disease and psychological disorder. Concurrently, the health advantages that are assumed to be inherent in a “balanced life” have been exploited by a rapidly expanding consumer market in “wellbeing”—by companies and individuals promoting food supplements, “wearable fitness”, diet trends and the self-help material. Exploring the tension between the biomedical doctrine and the parallel preoccupation with balance and lifestyle has provided the impetus for this special issue. Emerging originally from papers presented at an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Exeter in June 2015, and augmented by two further comment pieces, the collection of articles aims to explore the ways in which changing notions of “balance” have been used to understand the causes of mental illness; to rationalise new approaches to its treatment; and to validate advice relating to balance in work and family life.

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Writing in 1960, Alfred Torrie, consultant psychiatrist and former superintendent of the Retreat at York, observed that many books had been written about the problems of children and old people; however, little guidance was available to middle-aged men with personal problems. Having identified this lacuna in health advice literature, he noted that there were a number of reasons for such inattention: The middle-aged man is expected to have reached maturity; to be in the prime of life; to have passed the problems of adaptation to adulthood; to have become settled; to have become a husband and a father; and to be respected in the community as a leader, looked up to by his fellows. 1

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