mental illness
Sebastian Faulks looks back on youth and lost idealism
The novelist describes key moments in his life from boarding school onwards in essays originally intended to discuss ‘the things that have meant the most to me’
Courage and humour in the face of unimaginable grief
Miriam Toews meditates on suicide, silence and the messiness of survival as she attempts to answer the question: ‘Why Do I Write’?
A shortage of Nigels and other calamities: humorous stocking-fillers
Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Stuart Heritage and Rob Orchard, among others, explore the mysteries and frustrations of modern life
Blow your mind
The UK seems on the brink of a ‘psychedelic renaissance’ – but, stripped of shamanic ritual and sanitised for medicinal purposes, will psilocybin retain its power?
The trouble with mothers
Simpson writes from personal experience in this moving story of three children’s commitment to their mentally ill mother
Seriously deluded
A friend who works in social care speaks to me earnestly about a troubled young colleague: ‘Of course, she’s got…
Easy pills to swallow
Having a breakdown? Try this pill, or that — or these? Built on the 1950s myth of a chemical imbalance…
A novel about depression that doesn’t depress: Starling Days, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, reviewed
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan has achieved that rare feat, in her second novel Starling Days, of writing a convincing novel about…
Exposed: Our dangerous dependency on antidepressants
We have become a nation of sad pill-poppers. The British, once Churchill’s ‘lion-hearted nation’, are now among the most depressed…
Why can’t we get our minds around ME?
Do you ever wake up worried that you have tiny fibres growing beneath your skin, all along your spinal column?…
My obsession with litter is bordering on mental illness
It’s no good. I’ve tried to resist it, but I’ve succumbed. I’m now a full-blown litter Nazi. Whenever I leave…
Letters
Suicide and assisted dying Sir: As a mental health practitioner, I am grateful to Douglas Murray (‘Death watch’, 29 August)…
