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Performance art, frozen in time

For over a year, live performance art with an audience present has been largely impossible. But still images continue to allow artists in this sphere to inspire audiences at home.

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.

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

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

Sex work, stigma and whorephobia

Like everyone, sex workers sometimes need medical or mental health support. But shame and stigma seriously affect attitudes and access.

How depression ruined my relationship with sleep

One reaction to depression is a craving for sleep, creating a dependence that can provoke guilt and anxiety. Emerging from “five blurry years”, one writer tracks her steps to better health.

The meaning of happiness

What is happiness? Tiffany Watt Smith charts how its definition has changed over time, from chance emotion to something that can be measured and controlled.

Tracing the roots of our fears and fixations

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

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.

Good animals, bad humans?

Could an animal be more evolved than a human? Victorian psychologists thought that in some cases the answer could be ‘yes’.

What writing myself has revealed

Caroline Butterwick talks to two creators about how lived experience feeds their art, and reflects on her own year of writing about her life.

Finding solidarity in arachnophobia

Arachnophobia is very different from just disliking spiders. Izzie Price shares the reality of having the phobia, and explores its likely origins.

How trauma affects the body and mind

The long and devastating aftermath of an attack have given writer and broadcaster Bidisha unique insight into the suffering of other victims. Here she explores survival and healing in those who have experienced trauma.

What is violence?

Criminologist Laura Bui explores her early understanding of violence and outlines its definition and wider consequences.

Out of the mouth trap

After 15 years of speech therapy, Jonty Claypole decided to make peace with his stammer. He explores our fear of disfluency, revealing how accepting it could actually increase our creativity and persuasiveness.

The hell of hay fever

After years suffering in silence, David Jesudason finds speaking out about his pollen allergy gives him hope for a future where his hay-fever symptoms are under control.

Parasites and pests from the medieval to the modern

Humans have been reluctant hosts to a plethora of unpleasant parasites for centuries. And medieval evidence shows our modern distaste for these little irritations is just as ancient.

How nature is defending itself in court

The idea that nature has legal rights is increasingly being taken seriously, but who gets to speak for it? Isabella Kaminski asks how the non-human can be represented within a human-made system.

Inside the minds of Teeth’s two curators, James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing

James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing talk visceral reactions, their interactions and object extractions.

Sharing Nature: Alone

Being alone in nature can be a contradictory experience of fear and freedom.

The first seizure

Historian Aparna Nair had her first seizure when she was 11. Here she recalls that first time, and how other people’s reactions are sometimes the most disturbing part about having a seizure.

Why some patients make my heart sink

Instead of getting nowhere with certain demanding, manipulative patients, our anonymous GP wonders if there’s a way to help them.

“I’ve never talked to anybody about this before”

Douglas is furious. He’s at crisis point and needs help. Read the first of his two sessions with psychoanalyst Susie Orbach.

Spiritual joy

Spiritual joy can be a source of strength. Like the optimistic Pollyanna, there’s a lot to be said for finding reasons to rejoice, even in adversity.

A message from my skin

As wildfires threatened Seattle, resident Sydney Baker experienced corresponding flares of acne and rashes. Her skin was telling her something about the health of the world around her.

Titans in the landscape