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Pain and the power of touch

As a new physiotherapist, Fiona Murphy quickly learned that her patients’ pain was unpredictable and very personal. But using the right words became the key to helping them.

Vivid nights, dream-filled days

Each night, intense and memorable dreams create another life for Katie da Cunha Lewin. Find out how her waking and dreaming selves have become enmeshed, allowing her powerful self-knowledge.

’No you’re not’ – a portrait of autistic women

In this sensitive series of portraits and interviews, photographer Rosie Barnes acknowledges the voices and experiences of autistic women.

Rag mags and monthly issues: Five period zines to stop you seeing red

Using humour, personal experience and political activism to explore the bloody reality of menstruation.

Healthy scepticism

Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.

Love, grief and assisted dying

In this deeply affecting story, Michelle Elliot explores the events and emotions around the time of her mother’s medically assisted death in Canada, where the practice is legal.

Chasing spring

Isabella Kaminski reflects on a transformative journey that saw her cycle the length of the UK, tracking the first signs of spring. She explores what the changing seasons can tell us about ourselves and the climate crisis.

Rediscovering a love of the game

Sexism and homophobia in football prompted Lara Goodwin to stop playing the sport at 19. Today, while discrimination in the game is still rife, Lara has found hope – and like-minded players – in an inclusive east London club.

How can we prevent violence?

Evidence shows that strategies to prevent some types of violence can be very effective, while other, less well-acknowledged forms continue unabated. But hope can still guide us into a more peaceful future.

What is violence?

Criminologist Laura Bui explores her early understanding of violence and outlines its definition and wider consequences.

Performing my disability

Caroline Butterwick explores the idea of disability as performative, and the pressure to act out what we think others expect.

Robinson Crusoe and the morality of solitude

Robinson Crusoe, fiction’s most famous castaway, was certainly isolated, but did he suffer the intrinsically modern affliction of loneliness?

How to play on the District line between Stepney Green and Embankment

From the crossword to the smartphone, distractions for the commuter relieve the tedium of crowded, dull journeys. Game designer Holly Gramazio delves into the world of games for trains.

Drugs in Victorian Britain

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

What is hysteria?

Hysteria has long been associated with fanciful myths, but its history reveals how it has been used to control women’s behaviour and bodies

Revelations of blindness in the Middle Ages

Medieval texts, from Islamic medical treatises to Christian books of miracles, reveal surprisingly varied and complex experiences of blindness. But when medieval scholar Jude Seal experienced visual impairment themselves, they gained an even deeper understanding of the lives they were studying.

When self-deception becomes global hoax

Being deceived isn’t always a case of believing someone else’s lie. Experiments have shown that many of us can be manipulated into accepting our own fictions as true.

How writing helps me manage schizophrenia

The enduring myth of the mad genius

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

What writing myself has revealed

Caroline Butterwick talks to two creators about how lived experience feeds their art, and reflects on her own year of writing about her life.

The meanings of hurt

In the early modern period, gruesome incidents of self-castration and other types of self-injury garnished the literature of the time. Alanna Skuse explores the messages these wounds conveyed.

Why are women more willing donors than men?

Why is there a gender imbalance when it comes to the donation of organs, blood and tissue, and what can be done about it?

A Drop in the Ocean: internal reality

This immersive audio piece was designed to give listeners a greater understanding of psychosis, something that’s hard to explain in words.

Conflicted and confused about lithium

Covid-19 left Laura Grace Simpkins out of work and living back with her parents. She now had time to restart her research into her medication, but was she mad to continue?

Hamlet, the melancholic Prince of Denmark

Hamlet clearly demonstrates an excess of black bile and is arguably the most famous literary melancholic.