- Comic
- Comic
Green spaces
Green spaces can help us stay healthy and happy… if we can access them.
- Article
- Article
Living with less for spiritual gain
Today, a minimalist lifestyle is trumpeted as a route to happiness. Find out what religious ascetics from history and modern proponents of the spartan-looking home can teach us.
- Article
- Article
Chemical highs and psychedelic research
Could recreational drugs make you happy? Kate Wilkinson explores why keen clubber Simon believes taking psychedelics has helped him develop as a person.
- Article
- Article
This is a MOOD
Adults might sometimes dismiss teenagers’ ‘moodiness’, but adolescence is a time of complex shifts in brain and body, which are intricately bound up with fluctuating feelings.
- Article
- Article
This is what changed my approach to interior design
An interior designer examines how emotions and cognitive activity influenced her designs, and argues that spaces reflect the people within.
- Article
- Article
Dancing for joy
Dancing is a mood enhancer, it increases social bonding and it improves creativity. Maybe you really can dance all your troubles away.
- Article
- Article
Written on my body
Scars mean David Jesudason has never enjoyed seeing his reflection. Recounting the stories behind the marks on his face and body, he finds the only one that symbolises hope and happiness.
- In pictures
- In pictures
Expressions of joy
Does everyone express joy in the same way and can you always recognise it? Find out the conclusions drawn by artists, philosophers and scientists who have studied the way humans express emotion.
- Article
- Article
Investigating what lithium is and how it works
The more questions Laura Grace Simpkins asked about lithium, the more she realised how little is known about this powerful drug and how it affects our mental health.
- Article
- Article
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?
- Comic
- Comic
Winning
Because when my skin’s happy, I’m happy.
- Article
- Article
When parenting brings a paradigm shift
There were no indications during her pregnancy that Carol Nahra’s son would have severe, life-threatening disabilities. Here she describes the stages on her journey from shock to love and beyond.
- Article
- Article
The poor child’s nurse
Charming family scenes in Victorian ads for children’s medicines were at odds with some of the dangerous ingredients they contained.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Notes on need
Writing about bodies, and hearing the stories of others’ bodies, Johanna Hedva also heard, over and over, how people blame themselves – and are encouraged to do this – for illness and disability.
- Comic
- Comic
Can't have one without the other
Can you ever be happy without knowing sadness?
- Photo story
- Photo story
Obesity and Britain’s boys
Six young men and six experiences of being overweight. Find out how these boys and their loved ones feel about this stigmatising issue.
- Comic
- Comic
Smile
Check you’re happy when the smile police are on patrol.
- Article
- Article
Picturing mental health
Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?
- Article
- Article
A flat-packed forest
The regular ritual of creating seasonally changing mini-forests for her indoor cats brought Abi Palmer a focus for reflection while the cats explored.
- Article
- Article
The conditional child
Deanna Fei asks what it means to sustain a life, drawing on her own experience of having a premature baby as well as an 18th-century essay.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Care, creativity and a connected world
Find out about the challenges Wellcome Collection has faced during the last very demanding year.
- Article
- Article
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.