Stories

We tell stories about health and human experience. Our words and pictures make connections, provoke new thinking and share lived experiences. You can pitch a story to us.

  • Article

The catharsis of cringe

Watching cringe comedy can be therapeutic. Find out why some of us are drawn to the build-up of stress in shows like ‘Frasier’ and ‘The Office’.

  • Comic

I feel so disconnected

Do you feel disconnected from those around you?

Part of Weewaaz

  • Article

The sum of my parts

Testing positive for a rogue gene meant Jessica Furseth was more susceptible to cancer. After the years of anger and dissociation from her body that followed, she began to pick up the pieces.

  • Book extract

The give and take of caring

Kate Mosse argues that how we define ‘care’ matters, and explores the reciprocity of caring and being cared for.

Part of Inside Our Books

  • Comic

Where are you going?

Do you know where you're going?

Part of Weewaaz

Voices of thalidomide

In this series Ruth Blue explores the legacy of thalidomide, from its effect on public trust in the pharmaceutical and medical professions to the stories of the devastated families, and including the accounts of survivors, now adults, who continue to live with the consequences.

Books

Get stuck into one of our books, and explore the complexities of the human condition.

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  • Article

We who can’t believe

Unless she falls to the floor unconscious, Anne Boyer has always ignored signs of illness. Cancer, however, made her face her fallibility.

Part of Hypochondria

  • Article

Notes on need

Writing about bodies, and hearing the stories of others’ bodies, Johanna Hedva also heard, over and over, how people blame themselves – and are encouraged to do this – for illness and disability.

Part of Hypochondria

  • Article

Writing in remission

Reading the writings of the lifelong hypochondriac Jacques Derrida during lockdown, Brian Dillon realises his own health anxiety has become unusually subdued.

Part of Hypochondria

  • Article

Coleridge’s hypochondria

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

Part of Hypochondria

  • Article

On contagion

Reading descriptions of the way humans become infested by parasitic flatworms, Daisy Lafarge experienced painful physical symptoms. Perhaps the very creature she was studying had invaded her body.

Part of Hypochondria

  • Article

Between sickness and health

In early 2020, the subject Will Rees was studying – imaginary illnesses – took on a new relevance as everyone anxiously scanned themselves for Covid symptoms each day. But this kind of self-scrutiny is nothing new, as he reveals.

Part of Hypochondria

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