If This Was My Daughter . . .

Letting my daughter go.

I always knew Daisy would die before reaching adulthood. She was my fourth child, born prematurely in December 2004 with a severe form of rare genetic condition called Costello syndrome. Daisy required complex care, but every decision about her care was made on the basis of improving the quality of her life, which meant helping her do the things she loved, such as being at home with her family,...

An open letter to my daughter.

The author writes a poignant "open" letter to her daughter about her experience with breast cancer, the family legacy of breast cancer, and the impact of learning there is a BRCA1 mutation in the family.

This Stranger, My Son

This is the story of how a conventional middle-class American household?a surgeon, his wife and three normal children?had first to recognise, then to cope with and, finally, to exclude, an abnormal family member. Tony was a beautiful child, the eldest, and apart from long hours of screaming for no apparent reason, he seemed a normal baby. His intellectual and motor development was average, but ...

Margaret McCartney: If this was cancer there'd be an outcry-but it's mental health.

A million British volunteers will learn skills in mental health first aid, at a cost of £15m. The government, which is funding the exercise, says that this will improve “personal resilience” and “help people recognise and respond effectively to signs of mental illness in others.” This will include an online learning module “based on what has been shown to work, so that we can all be better at s...

How my genome was hacked