‘I live in a little cloud’
When Christine Bryden was diagnosed with dementia she was told she would be dead within eight years - that was 10 years ago. Here she tells Juliet Rix how she has survived.
Healing verses
After a bout of depression, Sarah Wheeler found inspiration in a poem by Ben Okri. Now she's helping others cope through poetry. Katharine Quarmby meets her.
A boy like Dan
Danny Mardell's world was turned upside down when his first son was born with Down's syndrome. But, as his ghost writer Sally Weale records in Danny's Challenge, published tomorrow, the shock and shame of those first few months gradually gave way to acceptance - and love.
Measure happiness? It’s not that simple
David Aaronovitch:In Richard (Lord) Layard's much-discussed new book Happiness, Lessons from a New Science, it transpires that happiness is as measurable as lentils.
Warning: food can make you fat
Lucy Mangan is glutted with dietary advice from Carole Caplin, Mireille Guiliano and Nigel Denby.
Seeing double
As a boy in London, Oliver Sacks helped his surgeon mother do dissections at home. He later qualified as a neurologist and moved to the US. A friend of the poets Thom Gunn and WH Auden, he began to write himself, and his stories - describing the often bizarre case histories of patients suffering from brain disorders - have been acclaimed bestsellers.
Take a sane check
Child psychologist Adam Phillips takes a bracing and provocative approach to sanity in Going Sane, says Adam Mars-Jones.
The sheep of reason
Adam Phillips examines the opposite of madness in Going Sane. Lisa Appignanesi on an inspiring treatment of an elusive subject.
Why ruin your life?
Lionel Shriver, author of US bestseller We Need To Talk About Kevin, on why she believes motherhood isn't all it's cracked up to be.
That way sanity lies
A psychoanalyst who hates the 'intrusiveness' of therapy, a rigorous sceptic whose brilliant books have tackled despair, disillusionment, boredom and ... tickling. Now, Adam Phillips has turned his focus on the elusive concept of Being Sane. Here, he talks to Sean O'Hagan about the madness at the heart of modern life