mental illness
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?
Mother trouble: Commitment, by Mona Simpson, reviewed
Simpson writes from personal experience in this moving story of three children’s commitment to their mentally ill mother
Why America’s attitude to mental illness is dangerously deluded
A friend who works in social care speaks to me earnestly about a troubled young colleague: ‘Of course, she’s got…
The problem with pills: The Octopus Man, by Jasper Gibson, reviewed
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…
The ME lobby is just a symptom of our stupidity about mental illness
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…
Spectator letters: Mental health and assisted dying
Suicide and assisted dying Sir: As a mental health practitioner, I am grateful to Douglas Murray (‘Death watch’, 29 August)…
