A big shift in our understanding of mood disorders is under way, with many depressed people now being reclassified as bipolar. But is trading antidepressant drugs for mood stabilisers a sign of progress, or just the latest diagnostic fad?

Far from it being the purpose of sleep to support and nourish life, the purpose of life is to sleep

The psychiatrist saw William just once. He'd been depressed, but now seemed better, so the psychiatrist sent him away. Then, five weeks later, he opened the local paper

We have always told tales about suffering and healing, yet our ideas of "medical narrative"—the kind of stories we tell about illness and treatment, and the stories our society constructs around medicine—are young and evolving. Here, Michael Blastland, Francesca Happé…

Reflecting the diversity of Wellcome Collection, Prospect asked a selection of experts to respond to individual objects they thought astonishing, intriguing or important within its two permanent galleries, Medicine Now and Medicine Man

Thanks to the new science of synthetic biology, it will soon be possible to create living cells in a laboratory. This could bring big benefits—from medicine to combating global warming—but potential dangers too. I went to Greenland to find out…

Alternative medicine is bunk, but makes good use of the placebo effect. Orthodox practitioners should be allowed to do the same

The chairman of Nice—the body that decides which drugs the NHS can afford—on the Herceptin row, how Nice calculates the value of a human life and the pharmaceutical industry's expensive drugs crisis

While we destroy Afghan poppies, the world is short of opiates. The solution is clear

Sussex's chemistry department has been spared the axe, but others have been shut. Is this the twilight of British chemistry? Plus, a new vaccine for bird flu

Psychiatric drugs restored Nia's sanity and destroyed her beauty, and she doesn't mind

The GMC's striking-off of Roy Meadow from the medical register is a travesty of justice