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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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Picturing mental health
Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?
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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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How hip-hop can save your mental health
Hip-hop is an unusual tool in the mental health professional’s armoury. But fans and performers can testify to the sympathetic and restorative powers of the genre.
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When depression is worse than physical illness
Chronic physical illnesses can be accompanied by troubling depressive symptoms. Elly Aylwin-Foster urges doctors to treat every aspect of her condition with the same care.
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A reflection on art in a mental hospital
Artist Beth Hopkins explains how she used her experience of researching the Adamson Collection to create an embroidered wall hanging.
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Chronic illness and the pressure to get well
When she was ill, Naomi Morris assumed she was on a straightforward journey from sickness to health. But what if our experiences of mental distress and ill health aren’t that neat?
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My illness made me an activist, but now I’m exhausted
Emily Bashforth’s illness made her an advocate but now she’s battling burnout. She argues why we all need to be mental health activists, not just those with lived experience.
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Reversing the psychiatric gaze
Nineteenth-century psychiatrists were keen to categorise their patients’ illnesses reductively – by their physical appearance. But we can see a far more complex picture of mental distress, revealed by those patients able to express their inner worlds in art.
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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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When you can’t return home
Migrants and refugees cannot choose to return home, so homesickness becomes a profound and long-lasting feeling. This powerful force infuses migrant cultures, and is rarely given the serious attention it warrants.
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Making sunstroke insanity
Medical historian Dr Kristin Hussey takes a closer look at sunstroke and mental illness, and how, in the late 19th century, they connected at the crossroads of colonial science and the idea of whiteness.
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Happy Joy Smile
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.
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Stigma, schizophrenia and being transgender
When he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, Ashley McFord-Allister discovered that the medical world will not continue gender confirmation treatment while treating a mental health condition. Here he exposes the prejudice behind this attitude.
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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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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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Why the truth is better than a happy ending
Caroline Butterwick often uses lived experience to inform her journalism, but she’s discovered a tension between the truth and stories that will sell.
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Reclaiming my story
Sharing her story of mental illness and treatment with trainee social workers has helped Caroline Butterwick make sense of her past, and continues to be a positive part of her life today.
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The boundaries that shape my writing
While writing about her life can be enormously helpful, Caroline Butterwick needs to regularly reassess her boundaries. Here she explores the line between what’s public and what’s private, and how porous that can be.
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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.
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On body horror and growing up strange
A young child’s unusual feelings, reactions and assertions are routinely dismissed by adults. Find out how manga horror stories became a source of strength, and helped them trust their adult body.
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Hysteria
Mental health and emotional symptoms are common during menopause, but a long history of dismissing sufferers as 'hysterical women', at the mercy of their emotions has made it much harder to discuss these issues and to get support.
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Is it really OK to not be OK?
Our mental healthcare system is still the poor relation of services that treat physical illness, and the pandemic has shone a spotlight on this situation. Campaigner James Downs argues for fundamental change.
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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 indelible harm caused by conversion therapy
With first-hand evidence from two powerful testimonies, neurologist Jules Montague explores the destructive history of conversion therapy, a punitive treatment designed to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality.