Allergic by Theresa MacPhail review – in canaries the coal mine

Is environmental change behind the mysterious rise in allergies, from asthma to anaphylaxis?

Matrescence by Lucy Jones review – smashing motherhood myths

A thrilling examination of what it means to become a mother challenges assumptions in bravura fashion

Authors, critics and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

Humphry Davy on laughing gas, Sigmund Freud on cocaine … how self-experimentation shaped science and art

In this extract from her new book, the comedian and writer gives a Zoom talk about depression from her hospital room

Research supports the benefits of ‘expressive writing’ – but what makes it so cathartic?

The psychotherapist on body hatred, what’s changed since she wrote Fat Is a Feminist Issue – and the smell of her clients

Medical practitioners are not the only experts in the field of disease and injury, as these personal stories of trauma and recovery show

A remarkable meditation on friendship, success, madness and violence that refuses to oversimplify

A move to allow Australian psychiatrists to treat depression with psilocybin may herald a new era