If you search for “Rebecca Front illness,” a search engine will subtly suggest darker things, such as weight gain, a mystery in 2025, or something the general public is unable to identify. Before anyone freaks out, it’s important to state clearly that there isn’t a serious physical illness present. The actress who is best known for portraying the gloriously inept Member of Parliament Nicola Murray has never disclosed a serious medical condition. For the majority of her life, she has carried a less obvious burden. Fear. claustrophobia. The panic that strikes without warning. She dates it back to her early…
Author: Jack Ward
It is difficult to look away from a picture from May 17 that has been quietly making the rounds in Norway. With her husband and son nearby, Mette-Marit sat on a little stool outside Skaugum with a thin nasal cannula running across her face. The masses were waving. She was responding with a wave. However, anyone who has observed her over the years could see the effort in it—the pauses, the deliberate breathing, the coat in place of the customary bunad. The majority of people were unaware of the illness’s name until recently. fibrosis of the lungs. After her diagnosis…
Of all places, it began in front of the TV. While watching hospital dramas, such as Holby City, ER, and the typical evening fare, Diane Hastings noticed that something in her hand and something on screen matched. A tiny shudder. She had been silently ignoring a flicker. By most people’s standards, she was far too young—39 at the time—to be considering a condition that is typically associated with old age. However, the suspicion grew, and when medical professionals verified it in 2003, the diagnosis came with the ruthless indifference these things always seem to carry. Her husband, Gavin, was in…
The patient is twenty-four years old. She settles in, says she’s fairly certain she has ADHD, and opens her phone before she’s completely seated. It’s with her partner. She has been reading. This sentence has become a sort of opening ritual for the clinician across from her, who has heard it so often that it hardly registers as new information. The important thing to note is that the discussion that ensues is no longer a diagnosis. A negotiation is taking place. Even though that shift is tiny, it completely alters the hour. For the majority of the modern history of…
Almost no one discussed having a private assessment a few years ago. You held off. You added your name to a list, eventually received a letter, and the entire process took place gradually within the public system, as these things were meant to. That has changed, and since there was no announcement, it has changed in a way that is simple to overlook. It gradually spread, one person at a time, until all of a sudden half of the people you know appear to have either paid for an evaluation or are secretly considering it. The figures that support this…
When a patient describes feeling everything too much, a certain expression appears on a clinician’s face. The eyes tightened a little. The next question is followed by a pause. Sometimes, during that pause, a quiet decision is made that the patient won’t find out about for weeks, if at all. The term “borderline” is recorded. Additionally, once a word appears in a chart, it usually stays there. These days, it’s difficult to ignore how frequently this occurs. You can find waiting rooms full of people who have been told at some point that their emotions indicate a personality disorder if…
On weekends, a certain type of fatigue persists. At eight in the morning, you can see it in coffee shops with laptops open, AirPods in, and a half-eaten oat-milk muffin left on the side. During the third Zoom of the morning, you can see it in a colleague’s somewhat dazed expression. It’s a fatigue that lurks behind the eyes, and it’s starting to affect a whole generation of workers informally. The so-called “hustle culture” did not appear out of nowhere. We bought it. Productivity was first marketed as a virtue, then as an identity, and finally as something akin to…
I first became aware of it at a small clinic in a peaceful area of north London, where a therapist casually mentioned that three of her new clients that month had come in discussing wildfires they had never seen firsthand. not a loss. not a divorce. not at work. fires. Speaking with clinicians these days gives me the impression that the types of distress that patients present with have changed. It’s difficult to diagnose climate anxiety, or eco-anxiety, as some still refer to it. The DSM does not include it. However, therapists in North America and Europe consistently report the…