In late 1960s London, famed psychoanalyst R.D. Laing created a radical asylum—one with no doctors, no locks, and no limits.

The answer to the disparity in death rates has everything to do with the lived experience of being a black woman in America.

It’s much less scientific—and more prone to gratuitous procedures—than you may think.

After two months in the hospital, a mother finally got to take her premature baby home. Then she spent five years trying to convince him to eat.

Millions of Americans have taken antidepressants for many years. What happens when it’s time to stop?

The U.S. government claimed that turning American medical charts into electronic records would make health care better, safer, and cheaper. Ten years and $36 billion later, the system is an unholy mess.

Cancer surgery for $700, a heart bypass for $2,000. Pretty good, but under India’s new health-care system, it’s not good enough.

Debra Koosed was diagnosed with dementia at 65. That’s when she decided she no longer wanted to live.

A surgeon tastes viral fame via Twitter and then things get really weird.

Being pregnant again means being willing to end it.

Inside the Rio Grande Valley’s amputation crisis.

How rehab recruiters are luring recovering opioid addicts into a deadly cycle.

Everything seemed routine. The technician finished up and left the room. The soundtrack of our baby’s heartbeat played an upbeat tempo in the background. A few minutes went by and the technician came back, letting us know she would take a few more pictures of his head for a clearer look. That sounded reasonable. She left again, this time for longer, and when she returned a doctor wearing a white lab coat walked in behind her looking very serious and shut the door.

Veterans are taking their own lives on VA hospital campuses, a desperate form of protest against a system that they feel hasn’t helped them.

The story of Edward Averill, a blind man with one foot who robbed a bank in Austin, Texas.

Why one physician took the risk of becoming an F.B.I. informant to expose alleged Medicare fraud.

Activities include: getting his own stem cells injected into his body every six months, taking 100 supplements a day, following a strict diet, bathing in infrared light, hanging out in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and wearing yellow-lensed glasses every time he gets on an airplane.

I went through puberty at age 2.

An investigation into the bad medical advice women are given about their bodies.

Steven Tyler, Julien Baker, Ben Harper, Jason Isbell, Joe Walsh, and other sober musicians on how to thrive creatively without drugs or booze.

The birthing of a conspiracy theory that the record holder for oldest person, Jeanne Calment, was actually her daughter Yvonne, who had “stolen her deceased mother’s identity to avoid paying inheritance taxes,”

They listened to the radio until there was nothing more to do. Philip went into the house and retrieved a container of Kraft vanilla pudding, which he’d mixed with all the drugs he could find in the house—Valium, Klonopin, Percocet, and so on. He opened the passenger-­side door and knelt beside Becky. He held a spoon, and she guided it to her mouth. When Becky had eaten all the pudding, he got back into the driver’s seat and swallowed a handful of pills. Philip asked her how the pudding tasted. “Like freedom,” she said. As they lost consciousness, the winter chill seeped into their clothes and skin.

What it’s like to be too big in America.

The agonies of being overweight—or running a diet company—in a culture that likes to pretend it only cares about health, not size.