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15 results
  • Article
  • Article

Chemical highs and psychedelic research

| Kate WilkinsonLaurindo Feliciano

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

Tripping for spiritualism and science

| Stevyn Colgan

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

When everyday environments become anxious spaces

| Louise Boyle

Social anxiety disorder isolates those who experience it. Part of the solution is to design public spaces with mental health in mind.

  • Article
  • Article

Happy Joy Smile

| Recovery in the BinOlivia Twist

Drawn from real-life experiences, this short story depicts a character negotiating the UK’s current mental health system. Discover what happens as they encounter waiting lists, sketchy healthcare and punitive government bureaucracy.

  • Article
  • Article

To stop or stay on lithium

| Laura Grace SimpkinsAlice BoydMatjaž Krivic

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?

  • Article
  • Article

The side effects of lithium mining

| Laura Grace SimpkinsMatjaž Krivic

Laura Grace Simpkins attempts to untangle some uncomfortable truths about the social and environmental costs of making her medication.

  • Article
  • Article

Can our sexual desires be transformed?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Tracing the roots of our fears and fixations

| Kate SummerscaleTim Robinson

Kate Summerscale explores the history of our anxieties and compulsions, and the new phobias and manias that are always emerging.

  • Article
  • Article

Investigating what lithium is and how it works

| Laura Grace SimpkinsMatjaž Krivic

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

Losing touch

| Agnese ReginaldoAisha Young

In these pandemic times, when touch has become taboo, Agnese Reginaldo explores the importance of physical contact to our wellbeing.

  • Article
  • Article

Coleridge’s hypochondria

| Mike JayNaki Narh

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

  • Article
  • Article

Can our minds be taken hostage?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

It’s not unusual for captives to end up feeling strong bonds with their captors. But is it a matter of submission or survival?

  • Article
  • Article

Migraine, creativity and me

| Lydia Ruffles

Novelist Lydia Ruffles explores how migraine has made her mind stretch, shrink, widen and change, and how it’s influenced her art.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

’No you’re not’ – a portrait of autistic women

| Rosie Barnes

In this sensitive series of portraits and interviews, photographer Rosie Barnes acknowledges the voices and experiences of autistic women.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Primodos, paternalism and the fight to be heard

| Florence WildbloodKathleen Arundell

Journalist Florence Wildblood examines the case of Primodos – a conveniently quick but risky hormone pregnancy test that was prescribed in the 1960s and ’70s – and profiles two women at the story’s shocking heart.