- Comic
- Comic
Mood
What is your mood at the moment?
- 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.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Winter blues and the story of SAD
In ‘Chasing the Sun‘ Linda Geddes reveals why for some people, winter is literally depressing, showing how we first came to recognise seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
- In pictures
- In pictures
The aphrodisiac apothecary
Not in the mood? Come and visit our traditional drug store for natural tonics rumoured to increase sexual desire.
- 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
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.
- Article
- Article
Happiness in time
Trying to define happiness is like trying to grasp water: it evades us, constantly changing and becoming evident only in retrospect.
- Article
- Article
A quick guide to drugs, the brain and brain chemistry
Discover some of the major chemicals that govern activity in our brains, how they work, and why certain drugs have the effects they do.
- Article
- Article
How injury changed my brain
Meg Fozzard, who experienced a brain injury in her 20s, writes about the huge impact it's had on her life, and talks to others with similar injuries.
- Article
- Article
Diagnosed bipolar, prescribed lithium
In the first part of a series looking into lithium, Laura Grace Simpkins recounts the beginning of her troubled relationship with this mysterious drug.
- Comic
- Comic
Exercise
Exercise to music to stimulate both your mood and your muscles.
- Article
- Article
Audrey and her family
In working on Audrey Amiss’s archive, Elena is getting closer to understanding her. But the way her niece and nephew remember Audrey adds essential detail to the picture.
- Article
- Article
My ADHD titration diary
After her ADHD diagnosis, Verity Babbs wondered how well medication would work. Her diary details the controlled process of trying different doses, and how her body reacted.
- Article
- Article
How electromagnetic therapy inspired me
Poet Sarah James explores how repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treated her depression and influenced her art.
- Article
- Article
Crones
Menopause can be tough when nobody talks about it and all the stereotypes are negative, but it can also be transformative, marking the start of a new stage of life - cronehood.
- Article
- Article
How I escaped my anxiety and depression through architecture and poetry
Social anxiety led him to introversion and silence. The brutalist architecture of London’s Barbican Estate inspired his liberation in poetry.
- In pictures
- In pictures
Pum Dunbar’s living lessons
Read the ‘legends’ that give insight into Pum Dunbar’s creative process while producing her recent series of collages.
- Article
- Article
Trust me, I’m a patient
Artist Rachel Rowan Olive is an expert in the way her mental health condition affects her. Here she explains how it helps if doctors understand that.
- Article
- Article
Questioning the psychoanalyst
Maggie Robbins gives her personal take on the common misconceptions around her field of work.
- Article
- Article
Blood
Discover the history, mythology and taboos around blood and menopause, and hear from some contemporary voices about their experiences of periods and the onset of menopause.
- Article
- Article
Losing touch
In these pandemic times, when touch has become taboo, Agnese Reginaldo explores the importance of physical contact to our wellbeing.
- Book extract
- Book extract
How stories bring us together
Elif Shafak considers how hard it is to be heard in our divided world, but how listening can nurture wisdom, connection and empathy.
- Article
- Article
Is shoegaze the loneliest genre of music?
Christine Ro explores the connection between shyness and shoegaze.
- Article
- Article
The smile catchers
From facial recognition to emojis in apps, find out how the monitoring of emotions is used to get more out of workers.
- In pictures
- In pictures
A short history of wellbeing through exercise
During the current pandemic, billions of people around the world are confined to home, making mood-boosting daily exercise indispensable. Discover how humans from the ancient Greeks onwards have realised the benefits of physical activity.