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For Ellice Stevens, bipolar disorder is a constant, cyclical struggle that leaves her abruptly shifting between her ‘real’, rational self, her mania and her extreme depressive states. In her lowest periods, she’s unable to carry out even the most routine tasks, such as throwing away rubbish or picking up clothes off her floor. The London-based filmmaker Dorothy Allen-Pickard’s short The Mess uses interviews, disorienting figurative imagery and special effects to bring Stevens’s subjective experience of the complex and often debilitating disorder to life.
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Life stages
At 14, Asal is excited about her engagement. Her relatives all have their own opinions
33 minutes
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Metaphysics
Bertrand Russell wanted to kill off causation. Can contemporary philosophy rescue it?
8 minutes
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The future
What’s the healthiest way to handle a creeping feeling that the world is ending?
15 minutes
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Pondering the peculiar one-sided intimacy of the client-therapist relationship
3 minutes
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History of science
Bat-people on the Moon – what a famed 1835 hoax reveals about misinformation today
8 minutes
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Biotechnology
What it’s like to wear a prosthetic that ‘feels’
6 minutes
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Family life
Fifty years ago, a train collided with Jack and Betty’s car. Here’s how they remember it
9 minutes
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Chemistry
A square inch in a Petri dish becomes a grand stage for chemical transformations
4 minutes
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Medicine
What is it like to be a paramedic, navigating human emergency?
17 minutes