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152 results
  • Article
  • Article

The case for safe skin bleaching

| Ngunan AdamuAmaal Said

Skin bleaching tends to attract a negative press for a whole host of reasons. But when used to treat medical problems, its positive side becomes clear.

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  • Article

Healing through ink

| Josh WeeksLeticia Valverdes

Taking an approach learned from his OCD treatment, Josh Weeks faced his fear of getting tattoos, and embraced inking as part of the healing process.

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  • Article

Can isolation lead to manipulation?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

Military-funded researchers wanted to know if isolation techniques could facilitate brainwashing. One neuroscientist suggested that it might improve our own control over our minds.

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  • Article

When everyday environments become anxious spaces

| Louise Boyle

Social anxiety disorder isolates those who experience it. Part of the solution is to design public spaces with mental health in mind.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

The history of brainwashing

| Daniel PickSteven Pocock

Is it possible to control what other people think? In this abridged extract from his book ‘Brainwashed’, psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick offers us a new history of thought control.

  • Article
  • Article

The law of periodicity for menstruation

| Lalita Kaplish

Dr Edward Clarke's Law of Periodicity claimed that females who were educated alongside their male peers were developing their minds at the expense of their reproductive organs.

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Demanding a diagnosis for invisible pain

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

After dozens of hospital visits and handfuls of painkillers, a plethora of scans and tests bring diagnosis closer for Jaipreet Virdi.

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Hamlet, the melancholic Prince of Denmark

| Nelly Ekström

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

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  • Article

Dying to be in nature

| Matthew PonsfordAndy Merritt

The modern funeral business is one that uses up precious resources and pollutes the planet. But you can make sure it’s only your memory that leaves its mark with these new and natural ways to leave this earth.

  • Article
  • Article

Maria McKinney on ‘Sire’

| Maria McKinney

All my grandparents were farmers; I grew up in the countryside surrounded by farms and helped neighbours herd sheep and cattle into the field. My body of work called ‘Sire’ looks at the genomics of modern cattle breeding.

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Diagnosing the past

| Joanne Edge

Historical texts rarely supply enough detail for a definitive diagnosis, so medical historians need to proceed with caution.

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The sickness in the wellness industry

| Gwendolyn Smith

In recovery from anorexia, Gwen Smith began to realise how the wellness industry needs its followers to feel bad about themselves in order to make money out them.

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Dealing with the dead after a nuclear attack

| Taras Young

Cold War-era predictions of death on a vast scale became routine. But the British authorities were less prepared to dispose of the bodies.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Our complicated love affair with light

| Lauren ColleeSteven Pocock

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.

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What writing myself has revealed

| Caroline ButterwickKimberley Burrows

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

  • Article
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Is shoegaze the loneliest genre of music?

| Christine Ro

Christine Ro explores the connection between shyness and shoegaze.

  • Long read
  • Long read

The ambivalence of air

| Daisy LafargeCarol Nazatto

Daisy Lafarge investigates the effects of air quality and pressure on body and mind, exploring air as cure, but one with contradictions.

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  • Article

The gym of cartoon men

| Andrew McMillanBenjamin Gilbert

In men, body dysmorphia can be expressed as ‘bigorexia’ – the belief that your body is too weak and thin – or anorexia. Andrew McMillan explores two sides of the same coin.

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Making sunstroke insanity

| Kristin D HusseyGergo Varga

Medical historian Dr Kristin Hussey takes a closer look at sunstroke and mental illness, and how, in the late 19th century, they connected at the crossroads of colonial science and the idea of whiteness.

  • Article
  • Article

The healing power of breathing

| Effie Webb

The healing powers of different breathing methods are said to help with a range of health challenges, from asthma to PTSD. Effie Webb traces their spiritual origins and explores the modern proliferation of breathwork therapies.

  • Article
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Not one yoga, but many yogas

| Lalita Kaplish

From ancient tradition to modern gym class, yoga means many things to many people.

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Meredith Wadman’s prescription for writing

| Jennifer Trent Staves

The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘The Vaccine Race’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.

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The Key to Memory: Mark it out

Sarah Bentley explores what a papier-mâché figure from Japan can tell us about how and why we remember.

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Between two summers

| Michael MalayFaye Heller

As Michael Malay tends his allotment, absorbing all the sensations of his surroundings, he finds the repetition of work calms the mind.

  • Article
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Making sense of senses lost

| Steve BarkerMickel Smithen aka Ebony Rose Dark

In rapid succession, Steve Barker suddenly lost sight and hearing on his left side. The effect on how he perceives the world has been profound.