Charge Nurse Anne Cowan
Alison Peebles, who takes the part of Anne Cowan, was hooked by the subject matter of Psychos. “Mental health is something that is so rarely discussed, never mind televised. Given that there is so much hospital drama, mental illness is one of the last taboos. Everybody has some family association with psychiatric illness, but it’s something we just don’t talk about. So this is a step forward, and I hope it’ll start a lot of inquiring into it. It is brave because the way it deals with the subject is not completely reverent. It’s not bathed in cotton wool. That will be provocative, but not necessarily so.”
The actress, who has made appearances in The Final Cut, Taggart, Rab C Nesbit and The Advocates, reckons that Anne is “a caring nurse who knows her job inside out. But she’s not totally Mrs Nice- there’s something else going on there, too. She approves of a slightly different approach, she’s not s rule-book nurse. That’s quite often the way with people who are hands-on. You want results, and you aren’t necessarily going to do things in a prescribed way. She relates to Nash because she understands his maverick, revolutionary approach.”
From the Psychos press pack