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  • Article

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.

  • Article

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.

  • Article

Writing back to authority

As she cuts up old doctors’ letters and uses them to compose absurd poems, Caroline Butterwick reflects on the catharsis of creation and proposes writing as a way to take back control.

  • Article

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.

All stories (19)

Images

  • List of danger signals of mental illness in Kenya. Colour lithograph by Ministry of Medical Services, ca. 2000.
  • A lunatic in a barred cell imagines himself to be a leading actor in a melodrama. Etching by T.L. Busby, ca. 1826.
  • Statues of "raving" and "melancholy" madness, each reclining on one half of a pediment, formerly crowning the gates at Bethlem [Bedlam] Hospital. Engraving, 1784, after C. Cibber, 1680.
  • Statues of "raving" and "melancholy" madness, each reclining on one half of a pediment, formerly crowning the gates at Bethlem [Bedlam] Hospital. Engraving in outline by [H.D.], 1816, after T. Stothard, 1783, after C. Cibber, 1680.
  • Statues of "raving" and "melancholy" madness, each reclining on one half of a pediment, formerly crowning the gates at Bethlem [Bedlam] Hospital. Engraving by C. Grignion after S. Wale after C. Cibber, 1680.
  • Statues of "raving" and "melancholy" madness, each reclining on one half of a pediment, formerly crowning the gates at Bethlem [Bedlam] Hospital. Engraving by A. Birrell, 1813, after T. Stothard, 1783, after C. Cibber, 1680.
  • Bellevue Hospital, New York City: male patients (criminal insane?) in bed in ward, prison bars in foreground guarded by policeman. Photograph.
  • Statues of "raving" and "melancholy" madness, each reclining on one half of a broken segmental pediment, formerly crowning the gates at Bethlem [Bedlam] Hospital. Engraving by C. Warren, 1808, after C. Cibber, 1680.
  • Statues of "raving" and "melancholy" madness, each reclining on one half of a broken segmental pediment, formerly crowning the gates at Bethlem [Bedlam] Hospital. Engraving by C. Warren, 1808, after C. Cibber, 1680.
  • Statues of "raving" and "melancholy" madness, each reclining on one half of a broken segmental pediment, formerly crowning the gates at Bethlem [Bedlam] Hospital. Engraving by C. Warren, 1808, after C. Cibber, 1680.
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Catalogue

All works (72)