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12 results
  • Article
  • Article

Stigma, schizophrenia and being transgender

| Ashley Ford-McAllisterOlivia Twist

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.

  • Article
  • Article

How writing helps me manage schizophrenia

| Erica Crompton

For Erica Crompton, writing is much more than a career. It’s an essential component of her mental health toolkit.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

The man who remembers everything

| J A Mortram

Tilney1 can remember his life in minute detail, but can’t control the incessant intrusion of thoughts and images from the past. As cuts to mental health services isolate him more and more, a crisis approaches.

  • Article
  • Article

Why “crazy cat ladies” are healthier than you may think

| Erica CromptonCamilla Greenwell

Writer Erica Crompton ponders the reasons behind the misogynist “crazy cat lady” trope, and reclaims cat ownership as a positive way to help restore mental equilibrium.

  • Article
  • Article

The enduring myth of the mad genius

| Anna Faherty

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

  • Article
  • Article

Designing better mental health wards

| Emily Reynolds

Bringing colour and natural light to tired, grubby mental health wards has a measurably positive effect on patients. A few groundbreaking projects are showing the way.

  • Article
  • Article

Cracks that let the light in

| Rai WaddinghamOlivia Twist

Rai Waddingham lives with voices other people cannot hear. Here she describes how she has come to accept, understand and calm her voices, and to acknowledge her strength.

  • Article
  • Article

We are from here, but not from here

| JJ Bola

Novelist JJ Bola on being a refugee with a British passport and what that placenessless means for a search for identity.

  • Article
  • Article

Picturing mental health

| Lalita KaplishSolomon Szekir-Papasavva

Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?

  • Article
  • Article

Mary Bishop and the surveillant gaze

| Rose RuaneMary Bishop

Writer and artist Rose Ruane explores the paintings of Mary Bishop, created during a 30-year stay in a psychiatric hospital, which speak of constant medical surveillance and censorious self-examination.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

The history of brainwashing

| Daniel PickSteven Pocock

Is it possible to control what other people think? In this abridged extract from his book ‘Brainwashed’, psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick offers us a new history of thought control.

  • Article
  • Article

Finding the words to talk about emptiness

| Cassie DoneyJames Albon

Shored up by a diagnosis and medication, Cassie Doney tried to find out more about the profound feeling of emptiness they were experiencing. But research is thin on the ground.