My friend and colleague Dr Mabel Tannahill, who has died aged 90, was a psychiatrist and champion of mental health in Wales. In 1990 she established an academic sub-department of psychological medicine at Denbigh, the first university centre for any branch of medicine in north Wales. This boosted her specialty and brought about a sea change in staff morale and recruitment in psychiatry in the region.
Mabel was born in Glasgow, the only child of parents who moved among leading cultural figures of the city from the 1920s to the 60s. Her father, Andrew Tannahill, a poet and translator, was a close friend of Hugh MacDiarmid and a descendant of the “Weaver Poet” Robert Tannahill.
