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Religion and mental health
At a time of extreme distress, Jamila Pereira found that the faith she had relied on was failing her. Here she describes how she found other ways to begin healing and finding happiness.
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The solidarity of sickness
Visiting an injured friend in hospital prompts writer Sinéad Gleeson to reflect on the instant rapport forged between compatriots in the kingdom of the sick.
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When monarchs healed the sick
Our current Queen fortunately doesn’t have to spend hours laying hands on the sick to cure them. But it was a different story for monarchs of the early modern era, whose touch was a sought-after treatment for scrofula.
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The sickness in the wellness industry
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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When doctors get sick
Feeling guilty about developing a health problem, our anonymous GP contemplates how the system could better support doctors when they’re sick.
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Between sickness and health
In early 2020, the subject Will Rees was studying – imaginary illnesses – took on a new relevance as everyone anxiously scanned themselves for Covid symptoms each day. But this kind of self-scrutiny is nothing new, as he reveals.
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Caring for our Disabled daughter in lockdown
Jane Holmes talks about the challenges of caring for her Disabled daughter while working and trying to stay safe during the pandemic.
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How hospital care fails disabled bodies
Hospitals aim to make sick people well. But if the sick person is also disabled, the unbending nature of monolithic hospital systems can easily worsen the situation. Here Jamie Hale writes from painful personal experience.
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Pain, politics and the power of photography
Art historian Giulia Smith explains what she most admires in the work of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, and how their approach makes illness political.
- Long read
- Long read
The ambivalence of air
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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The blight of the ballooning blood vessels
In 1817 an emergency operation on a London porter was hailed a ‘success’ despite the patient’s swift demise. Find out how this case became a landmark in vascular surgery.
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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.
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The sum of my parts
Testing positive for a rogue gene meant Jessica Furseth was more susceptible to cancer. After the years of anger and dissociation from her body that followed, she began to pick up the pieces.
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The food diary and the power of unhealth
Food diaries might appear to present a strictly factual record of dietary choices, but what they don’t include is the more revealing story, as Virginia Hartley suggests.
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The secret sting of cystitis
Agnes Arnold-Forster recounts her experiences of cystitis, explaining how this illness intersects with sexism, shame, and stigma from medical professionals.
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The intermediate life of spirits
Courttia Newland explores the events and his feelings surrounding the death of his mother-in-law, Tara Chauhan.
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Battling the heteronormativity of sexual health
As a queer, Black women, Mary W is sick of the never-ending hetero-cycle of clinic appointments, where her needs and sexuality are always a surprise to the doctor. She calls for a revolution.
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In search of the ‘nature cure’
Under the competing pressures of modern life, many of us succumb to mental ill health. Samantha Walton explores why so-called ‘nature cures’ don’t help, and how the living world can actually help us.
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NHS Blue: the colour of universal healthcare
The 1980s and 1990s saw ideas from the world of business infiltrating the NHS, including the introduction of an internal market, followed by a corporate branding exercise.
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The birth of Britain's National Health Service
Starkly unequal access to healthcare gave rise to Nye Bevan’s creation of a truly national health service.
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A history of mindfulness
Matt Drage questions how an ancient religious practice became a secular cure for stress.
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The ‘undesirable epileptic’
Abused in her marriage for being 'a sick woman', Aparna Nair looked to history to make sense of the response to her epilepsy. She discovered how centuries of fear and discrimination were often endorsed by science and legislation.
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“People see the disability but forget the ability”
I’m a disabled Asian woman, and mother of four. I’m trying to show people that we have to talk about disability if we want things to change.
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Life on the line
Former Samaritans helpline volunteer Katy Georgiou recalls the desperate voices she heard during her night shifts, and those whose isolation she helped to alleviate.
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My mother, and metaphors of a pandemic
A pandemic. Two members of one family, living thousands of miles apart. And months of calls and messages that helped them grow closer.