- Comic
- Comic
Hallucination
When your sight is impaired, you might just see more than you ever thought possible
- Comic
- Comic
I was hallucinating
That moment when you realise that no one else sees what you see is when the dissonance becomes unbearable.
- Prose poem
- Prose poem
Intrinsic Evanescence
Will Alexander on the poetry of the rarefied atmosphere of a friendship.
- Article
- Article
Fake news and the flu
Discover how history shows that fake news could play a deadly role – by generating potentially lethal misinformation during a future pandemic.
- Article
- Article
A head apart from the body
We look to the future of science via science fiction to explore how a head may live apart from its body.
- In pictures
- In pictures
The trouble with absinthe
Famed for inducing “green fairy” hallucinations, absinthe has been simultaneously lauded for its medicinal properties and condemned as the source of debasement and debauchery.
- Article
- Article
Do you see what I see?
Is reality actually what you see, or just an elaborate illusion?
- Article
- Article
Witches
Many of the women persecuted as witches in the 16th-century “witch craze” were over 50 and exhibited signs of menopause. Helen Foster suggests that the stigma of the wicked witch still affects older women and how they deal with menopause.
- Article
- Article
The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria
A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.
- Article
- Article
The cures and demons of sleep paralysis
Discover the murky past of sleep paralysis, the terrifying disorder once associated with demonic possession
- Article
- Article
Migraine, creativity and me
Novelist Lydia Ruffles explores how migraine has made her mind stretch, shrink, widen and change, and how it’s influenced her art.
- Article
- Article
The leukaemia diagnosis I didn’t see coming
Treatment for leukaemia kept journalist Hannah Partos in isolation, like the female prisoner whose image inspired her to write this piece.
- Article
- Article
Acid and the sexual psychonauts
How LSD fuelled one woman’s journey of sexual self-discovery in the late 1950s.
- Article
- Article
Can isolation lead to manipulation?
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.
- Article
- Article
Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines
From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.
- Article
- Article
How the mental health system fails Black people
Accessing mental healthcare as a Black woman can be a challenging experience. Rianna Walcott shares her story, alongside those of three other women, to reveal the barriers she faced.
- Article
- Article
Spanish flu and the depiction of disease
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed many millions more than World War I did. Find out why contemporary artistic depictions of its devastating impact are so rare.
- Article
- Article
Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high
The rapid, short-lived high we get from whippets, reefers and vapes can be accompanied by long-term health consequences. The search is on for safer ways to get stoned.
- Article
- Article
Tripping for spiritualism and science
Getting high in the name of religion or creativity has been practised for centuries. Now it seems hallucinogenics could help treat mental illnesses too.
- Article
- Article
Synaesthesia, or when senses overlap
What’s it like to see heartbeats, taste Tube stations or hear paintings?
- Article
- Article
Finding the words to talk about emptiness
Shored up by a diagnosis and medication, Cassie Doney tried to find out more about the profound feeling of emptiness they were experiencing. But research is thin on the ground.
- Interview
- Interview
Refugee health on a pound a day
Two refugees living a hand-to-mouth existence in the UK explain how trauma has affected their health, and how a little kindness is bringing them hope.