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- Article
When ‘get well soon’ doesn’t cut it
When loved ones are seriously ill, we can hide behind dishonest platitudes or struggle to find the words. Meet the woman working to fix how we speak to sick people.
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Blood money: Taking periods out of poverty
Periods are not a wound that needs to heal, nor is the blood a sign of injury. So why are we still so repelled by them?
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- Article
The Key to Memory: Write it down
Nick Dent explores what the Library of the Human Genome can tell us about how and why we remember.
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Crones
Menopause can be tough when nobody talks about it and all the stereotypes are negative, but it can also be transformative, marking the start of a new stage of life - cronehood.
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The Key to Memory: Follow your nose
Elissavet Ntoulia explores what a pair of pomanders can tell us about how and why we remember.
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Daniel Regan on using photography to manage emotions
Artist Daniel Regan manages his emotions and stays grounded through photography, allowing him to engage in the world around him.
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Celebrating our soft toys
After cuddling a teddy bear cured her insomnia, Elspeth Wilson was inspired to speak to four other autistic and disabled adults, who praise the roles soft toys play in their lives.
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The empty bungalow
Grandma’s unsteady piles of stuff have been dismantled and dispersed. From an empty bungalow, Georgie Evans makes a plea for hoarding behaviour to be better understood.
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Where hoarding and dementia meet
As Grandma’s dementia advanced, the things she’d amassed became more important: they consoled her. Clearing safe walkways through the piles became the first – though unwelcome – compromise.
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Surviving a flesh-eating disease
Nearly dying from a skin infection gave Scott Neill a chance to start again after an early life marked by grief and depression.
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Trust me, I’m a patient
Artist Rachel Rowan Olive is an expert in the way her mental health condition affects her. Here she explains how it helps if doctors understand that.
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How architecture builds a profession of stress
Architects might produce buildings that enhance our health, but at what cost? Kristin Hohenadel explores architecture’s pressurised and stressful culture.
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Dying at home and the doctor’s role
Our anonymous GP talks about the bittersweet rewards of supporting a patient when he chose to die at home.
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Blood
Discover the history, mythology and taboos around blood and menopause, and hear from some contemporary voices about their experiences of periods and the onset of menopause.
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A freezer full of breastmilk
When new mum Alev Scott began pumping her milk between feeds, she soon found she was freezing more breastmilk than her baby would ever need. So Alev began to investigate ways to share her oversupply.
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Writing back to authority
As she cuts up old doctors’ letters and uses them to compose absurd poems, Caroline Butterwick reflects on the catharsis of creation and proposes writing as a way to take back control.
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- Book extract
How stories bring us together
Elif Shafak considers how hard it is to be heard in our divided world, but how listening can nurture wisdom, connection and empathy.
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When depression is worse than physical illness
Chronic physical illnesses can be accompanied by troubling depressive symptoms. Elly Aylwin-Foster urges doctors to treat every aspect of her condition with the same care.
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“Disability is never an individual diagnosis”
As a 35-year-old man, I am sure that my fear of getting old is not uncommon. But for me, that fear goes deeper. I have spina bifida.
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Invisibility
Why do menopausal women feel invisible? Because nobody talks about menopause or because society doesn't value older women?
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Seeds for the future
Indigenous groups have a key role as guardians of biodiversity, and their knowledge could help us all preserve our world. To survive, we all need to collaborate, reject prejudice, and share what we know.
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Surviving as an asexual person in a heteronormative world
Experiencing no sexual attraction led Seleena Laverne Daye to feel she was somehow failing as an adult. But she found a way to claim her identity and to thrive.
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Hands-on healthcare
A young hospital volunteer feared her contribution was a long way from the serious business of real healthcare. But time spent painting patients’ nails proved to be a valuable contribution to life on the ward.
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Six personal health zines that might change your life
Personal zines put health conditions back in the hands of the people who experience them. Here are six that Wellcome Collection staff love.
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Surviving grief when discussing death is off limits
When Iqra Choudhry’s dad died, she lost her words. Here she explains how finding a way to talk and write about loss has been essential for surviving it.