

Access All: Disability News and Mental Health
BBC Sounds
Weekly podcast about mental health, wellbeing and disabled people.
Life stories and solutions with a friendly touch – for listeners around the world.
Life stories and solutions with a friendly touch – for listeners around the world.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 25, 2014 • 53min
show 112: Green juice vs bacon rolls
On this month's show: The nutriciously popular blogger who swapped medication for a plant-based diet and how social media can help people with mental health difficulties.
Also: After the recent disability pride parade in Belfast, we ask can you be "proud" of being disabled? And a look at what's in Ouch's diary for the coming month.
Kate Monaghan and Rob Crossan present.

Aug 28, 2014 • 54min
show 111: Religion and politics
We look at Guide Gods, a show about how different faiths think about disability. And, with the Scottish referendum nearly on us, we ask two disabled Scots, one in the yes camp, one in the no, how independence might affect disabled people.
Also: Would you prefer a drug-dispensing microchip or a drug-dispensing testicle? Does the Ice Bucket Challenge bring awareness to Motor Neurone Disease as originally intended? Plus the monthly news quiz, music and plenty of disability talk.

Jul 17, 2014 • 53min
show 110: Being mean
Have you ever got mad with someone trying to help you? Comedian Laurence Clark has, his latest show is all about those moments of instant regret disabled people sometimes have. Also: Jess Thom - aka Tourettes Hero - talks about tics and theatre traumas, a blind man with a gun licence and a martial arts expert discuss self-defence for disabled people, and what problems arise when wheelchair users try to use the toilets on planes? With Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan.

Jun 19, 2014 • 49min
show 109: Tetra belly
Do disabled people have a ready-made excuse not to diet or exercise if they have limited movement? We talk to a mobility impaired woman who has lost 4 stone after changing her lifestyle. Also: Mental health made funny at London's Anxiety Festival, and the disabled woman behind the eagle story that went viral. Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan present.

May 23, 2014 • 58min
show 108: Adopt an activist
The disability protest group Direct Action Network (DAN) is 25 years old. One of its founders talks to us about the campaigns which brought it fame - and notoriety - in the 1990s.
Plus, we meet the single disabled woman who, despite relying on personal assistants herself, has recently adopted a 15-month-old disabled child.
Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan present.

Apr 14, 2014 • 52min
show 107: Mental vacuum
Meet The Vacuum Cleaner, also known as artist and activist James Leadbitter. He invites you to help him design the perfect asylum and talks about the time he wrote his own mental health act then sectioned himself under it.
Also: Mik Scarlet joins us for topical chat, a quiz, and three more citizen correspondents bring you their disability news.
Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan present.

Mar 11, 2014 • 52min
show 106: The care home crusader
The man in his 30s who lives in a care home and takes companies to task for disability discrimination. Why do some disabled people hate being called inspirational? Also, cooking with no sight, and why might you choose an assistance monkey over a dog? Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan present.

Feb 12, 2014 • 47min
show 105: Biswas not Tiswas
Our citizen journalists report on animals and cures. Meet the student whose path altered when she became disabled in the first week of her Dance A-level. Also, the alternative politics of Asperger comedian Don Biswas and the pending trial of paralympian Oscar Pistorius.
Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan present.

Jan 16, 2014 • 55min
show 104: Purple people
Heather Mills is out of the Winter Paralympics. Are The Undatables really undatable? What do you do when your care role ends? And why do we say the disability pound is purple?
Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan present

Dec 17, 2013 • 51min
show 103: Bah humbug
On this month's show: Three real life Grinches, Paralympian Hannah Cockroft talks about wheelchair dancing on Strictly, and are disabled people in need of better sex education?