According to the Canadian psychologist Ami Rokach who has long studied it, “acute loneliness is a terrorising pain, an agonising and frightening experience that leaves a person vulnerable, shaken, and […]
Columnists
Desmond O’Neill: Older drivers and medical fitness to drive
Does life really imitate art, or is it the other way round? Listening to an exhilarating live performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra of Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, the droll tone […]
Richard Smith: Would you like to die at 75 or 150?
“Sex and death are the only things that can interest a serious mind,” said W B Yeats, so, although more of a flippant than a serious mind, I return to […]
William Cayley: “Enjoy in struggling”
“Struggling is the meaning of life. Victory and defeat are in the hands of God, so one must enjoy in struggling.” The saying above the doorway caught my attention as […]
Sandra Lako: The impact of Ebola in Sierra Leone
Today is the 228th day of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. A year ago I would not have believed anyone who told me that I would be in the […]
The BMJ Today: Getting to grips with research and research papers
The BMJ Today blogs this week are all written by research editors, who handle original research manuscripts from submission up to eventual acceptance (even though that only applies to a […]
David Oliver: Discharging patients from overcrowded hospitals—fewer “progress chasers” and more “doers” please
This year, urgent activity in English NHS hospitals has reportedly hit a record high. Officially reported “delayed transfers of care” (inpatients medically fit to leave, but awaiting community health and […]
The death debate: a response from Richard Smith
I’m sorry that I’ve upset many people who have cancer or who have had a bad experience of somebody dying of cancer [see previous blog]. That wasn’t my intention. I […]
Billy Boland: Some New Year’s resolutions
Earlier this week, I saw someone put up their New Year’s resolutions from last year (NYE 2013) on social media to evaluate what they had achieved. It was, in fact, rather […]
Richard Smith: Dying of cancer is the best death
Luis Buñuel, filmmaker, surrealist, iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary, thought a lot about death. “Sometimes,” he wrote in 1982, a year before he died at 83, “I think the quicker the […]