Six personal health zines that might change your life

Personal zines put health conditions back in the hands of the people who experience them. Here are six that Wellcome Collection staff love.

Rag mags and monthly issues: Five period zines to stop you seeing red

Using humour, personal experience and political activism to explore the bloody reality of menstruation.

What are zines doing in a museum

On the face of it, zines and museums are not a good fit, but Lea Cooper argues, they have a lot to offer each other.

Quaranzines

Researcher and zine-maker Lea Cooper explores pandemic zines made by people who were often familiar with “staying at home” because of disability or chronic illness.

Neuroqueering comics

Researcher and zine-maker Lea Cooper considers how comic-zines use the distinctive qualities of zines to explore some of the complex connections between memory, autobiography, disability, neurodivergence and queer identity.

Zines from the in-between

Zines, because they are messy, unconventional and personal, are the ideal vehicle for describing the in-between, liminal parts of life. Lea Cooper is a researcher and zine-maker who has been delving into Wellcome’s zines collection.

Picking my skin solves my problems

Cartoonist Mads Horwath has lived with dermatillomania since childhood. In these drawings they use humour to try to reduce the shame of the condition.

Beauty boardroom

Clarice Tudor lifts the lid on a morally bankrupt CEO and his team of minions as they decide which body insecurity to sell next. Because beauty lies in the eye of the shareholder.

Dissonance

Andrew Field’s webcomic follows his journey through a psychotic episode, from the isolation and pain of delusion to rediscovering reality and the joy of a shared experience.

No Ordinary Deaths

A People’s History of Mortality

Immaculate Forms

Uncovering the History of Women’s Bodies

Nine Minds

Inner Lives on the Spectrum

Ballet, beauty, and the joy of wheelchair dance

Since childhood, Kate Stanforth has danced whenever and wherever she could. The only difference now is her wheelchair.

What are zines doing in a museum

On the face of it, zines and museums are not a good fit, but Lea Cooper argues, they have a lot to offer each other.

Left behind by workplace wellbeing

Having experienced bouts of serious mental illness, Caroline Butterwick discovers that the new world of workplace wellbeing schemes fails to mitigate discrimination against people like her.

Cola’s complicated roots

How one of the most famous soda drinks in the world got its name from a traditional West African delicacy.

Nothing without kola

Yaw Afrim Gyebi travels through Ghana to meet the people who grow and use kola nut for its many practical and symbolic purposes.

Kola nuts, close up

Yaw Afrim Gyebi explores the physical characteristics of the kola nut and its medicinal properties, which evolve throughout its life cycle.