Hope is indispensable. But when false hope blinds us to reality, a short bout of despair might be the antidote we need ...

Hard-to-diagnose illnesses aren’t ‘all in the mind’. But recognising their links to mental health can help reduce the pain ...

AI could satisfy our deeply held desire to talk to other creatures. But the potential for harm might outweigh the benefits ...

We’re told that facing our fears can help us overcome them – but this misses the other intoxicating part of the equation ...

The early Chinese philosophers knew that a healthy mind comes from a harmonious community, not a matter for individuals alone Mental illness is often thought to be a matter of individual disorder.

Modern life demands constant decision-making, which can be exhausting and costly. Here’s how to manage your budget ...

Research on frightening but fun experiences offers some encouragement for those of us who prefer to know what’s ahead ...

Studies of longterm friends offer surprising insights as to whether friends who are more or less alike tend to endure Bring to mind the friendships in your life: what do you think makes some of them ...

A few years before he died in exile from Nazism, the Austrian novelist Robert Musil delivered a lecture in Vienna, ‘On Stupidity’ (1937). At its heart was the idea that stupidity was not mere ...

A criminal investigation is a complex, multifaceted problem-solving challenge. Detectives must make critical decisions rapidly – sometimes involving life and death, based on limited information in a ...

As a schoolboy in Soviet Russia in the 1960s, my hands were almost never clean. Don’t get me wrong – I washed them as much as anyone else. But the school rules made us practise our penmanship in ink, ...

Humans have consumed substances with consciousness-altering properties for millennia. Traditional societies used them in healing rituals, initiation ceremonies and to make contact with the gods and ...