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Nightmares are a common part of our childhoods that usually subside as we reach adulthood. But if you’re like me, those nightmares may have taken ahold of you, well into your adult life. I have always been pulled towards anything spooky. As a young girl, I had my head stuck in books about ghosts. Now, as an adult and creative writer, I choose to write about distressing subjects like true crime and the paranormal.

In 1989, the reign of Romania’s Communist leader came to a sudden, brutal end when Nicolae Ceauşescu was executed by firing squad on live television. In the revolution that followed, an intrigued Western world rushed into a nation long sealed off from view – only to discover nearly 170,000 abandoned children being raised in warehouse-like orphanages.

When I was a child, I used to get ill quite often. On those days, while my friends were at school, I stayed at my grandparents’ house, wrapped in blankets, watching TV, feeling miserable in that specific way only children with a fever can. But I was never alone: My grandparents’ dog, Flora, would quietly sit beside me, her head resting on my lap as if she understood exactly what I needed. Somehow, I always felt better.

Most of us have felt “lost for words” – during moments of heartbreak, awe, or pure surprise. But under the influence of psychedelics like psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, this experience can go much further. People often describe a strange silence within their minds. Words slip away. Sentences dissolve. Even the very sense of I begins to fade. As someone who has just completed a PhD in neuroscience, my research has focused on how the brain’s wiring support

A typical workday brings many common thoughts and emotions for an adult. Sometimes, you’ll think ungenerous, intrusive thoughts about the people you interact with. Sometimes, random waves of anxiety will attack you when you’re just performing an everyday task. And you are always, always fatigued, by your professional work and by societal changes outside of your control. My Teacher is an ordinary adult just trying to get through the day.

While ongoing research continues to sound alarm bells that mental health diagnoses are consistently and dependably rising in the UK, this does not seem to have translated into panic and action, and one could be forgiven for thinking it has fallen on deaf ears. In the last 10 years there has been a 20% increase in the number of adults being clinically assessed to have a common mental health condition; in young adults the increase is even more stark, at 47% within the same peri

Everyone has had one of those nights where they feel overwhelmingly Lonely. Lonely within your body, heart, and mind—all at once. It’s a feeling similar to living unexplainably separate from yourself. You hope it won’t revisit as often as it does. The Loneliness lingers, almost long enough to graduate into its mentor, Depression. Loneliness tries to impress its more overpowering sibling until, finally, Depression allows Loneliness to take shelter under its wing.

Community building has become something of a trend, especially over the past year. The more I scroll through social media, the more events I see. While I enjoy seeing people come together, it can also feel overwhelming to be flooded with Instagram posts and WhatsApp groups promoting countless events and gatherings. Traditionally, communities are formed by groups of people connected through shared spaces or common interests, religion, culture, ethnicity, or values.

As a researcher working at the intersection of digital technologies and women’s health, it is always so empowering to see the latest advancements in FemTech (tech-driven products like apps and wearable devices to address female health, like pregnancy and menopause) such as menstrual blood being discovered as a valuable biomarker, and wearable products for menopause detection. It empowers me, as a South Asian woman in science, to do the work I do.

With every burst of laughter I drew from the crowd, the loneliness behind my makeup grew a little deeper. My name is Shopia Green. I am a circus clown, and the image of my red nose, abandoned on the dressing room table, is the most honest photograph of my life. It is not just a prop; it is a portal. On one side, the vibrant world of the spectacle, where I am the embodiment of joy. On the other, the silence that consumes me when the last spotlight on the ring fades.

When treating patients, we often focus primarily on improving their clinical outcomes, and as such inadvertently overlook their broader care needs. These include their perceived problems across health, social, service, and daily functioning areas. Individuals with psychosis, a mental condition characterized by a distortion of reality, often experience poor overall functioning, meaning a difficulty in managing everyday activities, including self-care, social relationships, an

In an era where we are often bombarded with seemingly glamorous and smooth transitions into parenthood, the movie Die, my love shows viewers the other end of the spectrum. Based on the novel of the same name by Ariana Harwicz, Die, my love follows aspiring novelist Grace, played by Jennifer Lawrence, and her boyfriend Jackson, played by Robert Pattinson, as they leave their life in New York City for a small farmhouse in rural Montana. We first meet the couple while they are

When I was studying in high school, I came across a quote by Karl Popper, a philosopher and academic, that really caught my attention. He once said: “Avoiding mistakes is a narrow-minded ideal. If we don’t dare face those challenges that are so difficult as to make the error almost inevitable, knowledge will not be developed. It is from our more daring theories, including those that are wrong, that we learn the most. No one can avoid making mistakes, but the important thing i

Breastfeeding wasn’t widely discussed in my family and not many of my friends had children when I fell pregnant with my child in 2021. I’m not sure exactly where the passion for breastfeeding came from, but it was certainly there long before I got the obligatory ‘breast is best’ leaflet from the NHS midwife. I was blessed with a healthy, textbook pregnancy at the tail end of the Covid-19 restrictions in the UK.

A few years ago, I went through a traumatic event, the repercussions of which rippled out into what I hope to call the worst year of my life. And while that time is now behind me, and life has once again gone back to normal, there is one side effect that still casts a shadow over my life. It feels like I hear people talking about triggers all the time, about being aware and sensitive. But I rarely see anything that resembles an understanding of what I experience when I say I

I've been curious all my life—from collecting samples for my microscope as a kid to investigating psychiatric biomarkers as a PhD student now—but for me, this curiosity didn't belong in the same box as dresses and pink. I was never girly. I put up a fight against my mother whenever she tried to put me in dresses when I was a toddler. Throughout my childhood, my wardrobe mostly consisted of my brother’s hand-me-downs, and even now in my late twenties, it’s a sea of black, blu

Heartbreak is a common experience, often understood as a time of emotional crisis which can be resolved with feeling-based healing. Some typical advice you may have heard (or given) is: “the feeling will pass, you’ll get over it”, or “sit with your emotions”. But this advice feeds into the stigma that heartbreak is solely an emotional experience and pays no mind to all the physiological impacts. I am a student on the MSc Psychology and Neuroscience of Mind-Body Interface.

I never had to think when I switched between speaking Tamil and English, it was second nature to me. I spoke Tamil at home and English at school, sometimes mixing the two without realising I did. I had never given much thought to the role of an interpreter. I had always translated for my parents during appointments and considered it normal. It wasn’t until I began observing GP appointments as a student that I realised how many details were overlooked.

After struggling with mental health challenges since my teenage years, I was diagnosed with cyclothymia at the beginning of 2025. But what is cyclothymia? Looking back, I realise that this lesser-known mood disorder has impacted my relationships, work, and social life, even if I did not know that at the time. Getting this diagnosis at 43 was not something I had foreseen.

Celine’s day was the same, come rain or shine. It helped that she never really knew what the weather was, but that was beside the point. As soon as she got her heart to stop palpitating after her alarm clock woke her up, she got up, brushed her hair, cleaned her teeth, got dressed nicely, just in case she met somebody new or got hit by a car, and then sat in her living room. She managed to ignore the postman’s knocking by keeping her curtains closed.

I was born on December 3rd, 1993, in Caracas’ busiest hospital. I spent my early years in a high-rise apartment at the top of a mountain in Manzanares, living a quiet, ordinary life. Everything changed when Hugo Chávez, once the face of a failed coup, rose to power. My dad saw what was coming, and we eventually left for the United States. Looking back, it's painful to see how the Venezuelan diaspora, my family included, was shaped by those decisions.

Severe acne may seem only skin deep, but its effects on mental health can be devastating. I’m Anna, a primary school teacher and writer who has struggled with acne since my late teens. I have been through almost every treatment imaginable, and have suffered the consequences of this visual, mental, and medical condition for over six years. Acne is a term most people are familiar with, whether from their own hidden school photos or the plague of teen movies that overuse it as

Eight years ago, I went to a friend of mine in distress. I had a lump or a bump or a cough or a premonition. “I am dying,” I told her. I was certain of it. “Or are you just about to put an album out?” she asked. My name is Charlee, and for the better part of twelve years, I’ve been a willing participant in the love-hate relationship most artists have with the music industry. The music industry is a peculiar trigger in my life. Anytime I move forward, I backwards dance into

It’s time to accept it, Stranger Things is finished. We have all become a little bit more adult since Episode 8, which aired on New Year’s Eve. Why is it so difficult to accept that it is over? This is not a rhetorical question. Thousands of fans online have, for weeks, argued that Episode 8 was not the end. According to the viral “Conformity Gate” theory, fans believed that there should have been a new episode coming out on January 7th.