Susie Orbach: ‘Body uniformity is out of control – there’s no right way to have labia!’

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

Top 10 medical memoirs … by patients

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

The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen review – when hope fails

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

The big idea: should doctors be able to prescribe psychedelics?

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

Friendaholic by Elizabeth Day review – friends with benefits

A candid examination of the difference between being good at friendships and being a good friend

Good Girls by Hadley Freeman review – anorexia from within

The journalist and former in-patient offers a clear-eyed view of a debilitating and misunderstood illness

‘We’re in a golden age for microbes’: the man rewriting history from the perspective of germs

Forget ‘great men’ – infection and disease are the really important forces in the development of humankind, believes public health specialist Jonathan Kennedy

Travellers to Unimaginable Lands by Dasha Kiper review – how dementia changes lives

A clinical psychologist turns the spotlight on caregivers in this profoundly compassionate study

The Art of the Straight Line review – how tai chi brought out Lou Reed’s mild side

The singer-songwriter transformed his later life practising the martial art, as this compilation of writing, edited by his widow Laurie Anderson, shows

Weathering by Arline Geronimus review – how discrimination makes you sick

A public health expert charts the cumulative effect of prejudice on peoples’ bodies, from heart disease to cancer