A nurse walks with children outside an orphanage and hospital in Addis Ababa.
By Sheila Payne - 16 May 10:23

Pain relief and palliative care is a human right - and yet global access to drugs is grossly unequal. Change is urgently needed.

Foraging wild garlic is the way forward this spring.
By Felicity Cloake - 14 May 10:11

It's a tough life being a foodie, but fear not - a sumptuous delicacy awaits in our still damp woodlands between April and June.

Photograph: Getty Images
By Glosswitch - 13 May 11:16

After my hospitalisation for eating disorders, my brother's schizophrenia diagnosis came as a relief, of sorts. Whether family history or chemical imbalance, we desperately seek a reason for the unreasonable.

Photograph: Getty Images
By Margaret McCartney - 02 May 14:28

Doctors and patients need to question unnecessary procedures, writes Dr Margaret McCartney.

Maurice Saatchi. Photograph: Getty Images
By Rafael Behr - 02 May 7:55

Rafael Behr talks to Maurice Saatchi.

Sunrise over London. Photograph: Getty Images
By Nicky Woolf - 01 May 16:20

Sleeplessness is difficult to cope with, and can result in dizziness, paranoia and hallucinations. But chronic insomnia sufferer Nicky Woolf reckons he'll see the sunrise more times than you will.

Silhouettes representing French victims of domestic violence. Photograph: Getty
By Faridah Newman - 01 May 11:17

Domestic violence, especially related to an intimate partner, is inextricably connected to mental illness. Faridah Newman explains how mental illness can often represent a vulnerability which is exploited by abusive partners.

New Statesman
By Martin Robbins - 30 April 14:08

Mental health is a complicated thing, problems arise for complicated reasons, and the idea that it’s simply a question of being unable to cope with bad things is deeply unhelpful.

Natalie Portman as "yet another crazy lesbian" in Black Swan.
By Eleanor Margolis - 30 April 9:13

While dealing with the beak-faced bastard of her own depression, Eleanor Margolis worries she's a traitor for perpetuating the “crazy lesbian” stereotype.

Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind". Unfortunately, not all schizophrenics are g
By Glosswitch - 29 April 11:20

We’re brilliant at defending the mentally ill in principle, but we can be terrible at hiding our revulsion at some of the sick people we’ve encountered in the flesh.

New Statesman
By Caroline Crampton - 29 April 9:55

Each day this week, the New Statesman website will be hosting a blog exploring mental health issues.

Sleeping Girl.
By Rebecca Wait - 29 April 9:38

A novelist's account of depression and the struggle to find words to describe it.

A baby holds its mother's hand. Photo: Getty
By Glosswitch - 24 April 14:01

Tanya Gold writes that "motherhood and autonomy can never coexist" - but how does that affect the debate over abortion?

The celebration of the NHS during Danny Boyle's Olympics Opening Ceremony last y
By Alan White - 15 April 8:34

The battle over outsourcing for Suffolk’s community health services in Sudbury is a warning for the rest of the country - the future of the NHS is going to be fragmented.

A nurse draws an MMR vaccination.
By Philip Maughan - 13 April 13:26

On middle class exceptionalism and why despite his intervention in the Independent, Andrew Wakefield is still wrong.

Young women hiking on the Chiltern Hills
By Aisha Gani - 14 March 19:51

Young women from BME backgrounds are discovering that there's more to hiking than the white middle class stereotype.

Photograph: Getty Images
By Nicholas Lezard - 14 March 14:30

Nicholas Lezard's "Down and Out in London" column.

David Livingstone exploring in Africa. Image: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
By Michael Barrett - 28 February 11:43

David Livingstone’s life and death in Africa helped mould the Victorian missionary myth of exploration and sparked the Scramble for Africa. Yet he was never a typical imperialist and he left a powerfully charitable legacy.

Nurses dancing at Danny Boyle's Olympics opening ceremony
By Nelson Jones - 21 February 13:30

Universal healthcare is the least citizens should expect. To make the NHS better for patients, politicians, press and public alike need to cultivate a healthly scepticism towards it, not give it unlimited adulation.

New Statesman
By Phil McCarvill - 10 February 12:44

There are interesting parallels between the Francis report and the Macpherson inquiry report into the death of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

New Statesman
By Caroline Crampton - 06 February 15:04

Hospital staff and managers should be prosecuted if patients are harmed as a result of poor care, inquiry finds.

The divided self: "Portrait in Ruby and Blue" (2012) by Daniel Gordon.
By Julia Copus - 31 January 9:00

The creative power of illness.

A sign in a Lewisham window. Photo by @Brixtonite
By Brixtonite - 27 January 19:50

. . . and the Jeremy Hunt coconut shy went down a storm.

Photograph: Getty Images
By Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch - 24 January 16:44

Existing policy in the UK is rooted in the false assumption that if you make something illegal, people will stop doing it.

A porter pushes resuscitation equipment down a corridor at Lewisham Hospital
By Rowenna Davis - 21 January 17:14

To cut this well-performing hospital would be to reward failure and punish success.

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