By day: policy wonk. By night: history and art nerd. PhD in Politics & History. Views are my own.
Between roughly 1818-1828, Richard Dighton did a series of profile portraits of men in Regency London's high society. Most were etchings, and the BM has digitized many prints held in its collection--they are worth your time if you're interested in Regency society, style, and art.
The late-Renaissance building with an inner courtyard surrounded by arcades was multi-functional: it housed the royal stables, guest apartments, the royal art collection, and an armoury. In fact, the ground floor is still used as the stables for the vaunted Lipizzaner Stallions. 
Stephanoff shows Castlereagh perched on a staircase, watching from a small window. The 1823 key for Stephanoff's work identifies this figure as "The Marquis of Londonderry [Castlereagh], who usually took his station on the stairs leading to the gallery during the investigation." 
I was at a loss for how to mark the day after spending the last 2 years writing the research article on which all these tweets are based.
First, the stress on Castlereagh was cumulative and pervasive. The downward spiral that he experienced in the weeks preceding his suicide was only the final chapter in a story that had been developing for yrs. The overlap between the professional and the social made it worse.
If you've been following these #Castlereagh200 threads, you may call that I'm drawing from a risk framework that forms the basis for my upcoming article on Castlereagh and mental health. See the attached table, adapted from Boini, 2020 and Gollac et al, 2011.
Value conflicts can be internal (e.g. an individual having to choose between competing values at a personal level) or external (e.g. an individual's personal values conflicting with a competing value system in their professional or social environment). 
In this context, autonomy refers to one's ability to influence the pace, organization, or outcomes of their work. Ultimately, greater autonomy allows individuals to manage their work in ways that mitigate stress, improve well-being, and lead to greater pride in the outcomes. 
Given the level of scorn heaped on Castlereagh in the radical press, it was predictable that these writings and imagery would inspire some to action and there was no shortage of threats to the Foreign Secretary's personal safety. 
Specifically, I want to focus on a stressor that is important in politics: tension with the public. Research has shown that jobs where there is sustained tension with the public (e.g. public hostility) have higher levels of chronic stress, contributing to poor mental health. 
The cumulative stress related to work can be reduced when a person has a number of elements in their life, and distinct separation between them--often termed ‘self-complexity’ (e.g. hobbies/interests/responsibilities that are separate from work, co-workers, and the workplace). 2/
Reminder: chronic stress is a key factor in poor #MentalHealth, so structural factors that are organizationally ingrained and exacerbate stress are particularly problematic. 2/
Labour intensity (the volume, pressure, and complexity of work), and working time (length and unpredictability of working hours) are well-recognized in biographies of Castlereagh, so I'll zero in on a specific element: the consistent pressure on Castlereagh over a long period. 2/
Today, I'll use a passage from Mills's 1884 study of mental overwork among 'professional and public men' to consider Castlereagh's behaviour preceding his suicide on August 12, 1822--changes that bear strong similarities to what Mills identified as acute nervous exhaustion /2
We have to consider broader historical understandings of #stress. The idea of mental exhaustion has a long history. A writer in Aristotle’s circle in c. 350 B.C.E identified ‘melancholia’ as an affliction that was particularly tied to learned men, including statesmen. 2/ 
Several studies have proposed an overarching framework of six domains and 17 sub-domains of exposure to chronic stress (See table below adapted from Gollac et al 2011 and Boini et al 2020). 2/ 
Psychiatric analysis has concluded that Castlereagh likely suffered from recurrent major depressive disorder with psychotic symptoms. However there have also been other hypotheses, most notably neurosyphilis. 2/
What role did social stressors play? How did social and professional stressors interact? What role did personal, professional, or societal expectations play? 2/3
To take 2 lines from the abstract: