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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.
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Journeying home
A serious health scare was the catalyst to Chris beginning the process of understanding his experiences more clearly, and using that new insight to help other intersex people.
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Confession as therapy in the Middle Ages
The line between confession and counselling has been blurred for centuries.
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Equality in genetics
Genetic counsellor Sasha Henriques harnessed her energy and resolve to tackle the racial biases she saw in her profession – with positive and promising results.
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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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A story of death, trauma and austerity
Marienna Pope-Weidemann, whose teenage cousin Gaia died after going missing, advocates a rethink of our systems, which currently fail many in mental distress.
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The housing that gives hope to refugees
A safe place of one’s own can be a source of healing and hope. George Kafka reports on two Athens-based projects helping displaced people by putting housing first.
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Providing care across languages
When medics are taught in English but their patients speak other languages, effective communication becomes fraught. Niyoshi Shah explores the linguistic gaps between patient and doctor.
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To stop or stay on lithium
In the final part of her investigation into lithium, Laura Grace Simpkins faces a dilemma – should she put her own mental health or other people and the planet first?
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The pill, autism and me
Realising that her contraceptive was having a negative effect on her mental health, Catriona Reid saw her concerns dismissed by doctors. As an autistic woman on the pill, she was not an anomaly, but has often been made to feel like one.
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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.
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Drug sharing in desperate times
When Nicole was threatened with deportation, her mental health deteriorated. Now without a job, a passport or a doctor, she depends on others to send her their leftover anxiety drugs.
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Befriending heavy breathers
Read the fascinating story behind the rare manual that helped volunteers on one of Britain’s first free telephone helplines to deal with masturbating callers.
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Thalidomide, a bitter pill
Hear from some of the women who took the drug thalidomide over sixty years ago about the fear, isolation and grief that they experienced as the appalling pharmaceutical scandal unfolded around them.