Lottie is looking forward to spending time with her family this Christmas, but says one of the only ways she'll manage to get through it is by wearing her earplugs - especially during Christmas dinner. For the 23-year-old Christmas can be a particularly difficult time as the sounds of other people, chewing, slurping and sniffling make her feel extremely uncomfortable.
I am at my first of several doctors appointments intentionally scheduled during the winter holiday season. Not because I'm sick. Because it's the only week of the year when nothing work-related is fighting for my time. The office is closed. The investors aren't emailing. The product update notifications have stopped. For seven days I can put my body first. So I schedule the bloodwork.
Split by age group, there's a preference towards one's present where those in their 20s said their 20s, those in their 30s said their 30s, and so on. This recency lean appears to carry over to the older age groups, but subtract that, and you can see a second lean favoring three decades earlier. Those in their 50s favored their 20s. Those in their 60s favored their 30s.
[Narrator] Developing tools to overcome trauma. When we began to become confident that we really had identified something real, this resilience trajectory I've talked about, we've identified it in many studies at this point. It's been identified convincingly in the majority and over 100 research studies by other people than myself, lots of other people. So it's very much a real thing.
There is great irony in the fact that we tend to associate the winter holiday season with busyness, stress, and overwhelm. While we are rushing and doing, the natural world around us is in a completely oppositional state-resting, slowing down, cooling, hibernating, restoring itself.
In a small company, culture moves faster than policy. When new technology enters daily life, it doesn't wait for HR manuals to catch up. Employees bring habits into the workplace: how they communicate, how they vent, how they cope with stress, and how they use personal devices during breaks. AI companionship sits right at the intersection of mental health, privacy, and brand trust. And those are not abstract issues for SMEs:
In healthy relationships, people tend to feel safe and respected. You may argue, but you don't fight. A level of respect and care is maintained, and the past is not brought up as a weapon. Over time, your nervous system learns that this person is reliable. In unhealthy relationships, especially those involving emotional abuse, attachment works differently. Instead of safety, the bond forms around chaos and survival. This process is known as a trauma bond.
I heard her story during field conversations connected to research, education, and community accompaniment work in Medellín. She did not come to denounce anyone, nor did she ask for help. She came with a story already shaped by repetition, by hours that mattered too much, and by days that never fully ended. She spoke as someone whose life had learned to count time differently, not in weeks or months, but in what could still be protected until tomorrow.
Despite its real, devastating impacts across the United States, road rage is only explicitly penalized in a few states, like Utah. The scarcity of not only legal but also clinical treatment guidelines is unsurprising when research remains limited. As a psychiatrist, for example, I have met patients with histories of such behaviors, but not yet colleagues in my profession with expertise on this issue. One thing appears clear, however: Road rage is multifactorial and not traceable to any single cause or diagnosis.
The hotline is a public art project created by West Side Elementary, a K-6th public school in rural Healdsburg, California. It's called PEPTOC and you can give it a call for free by dialing 707-8PEPTOK (707-873-7862). The program was started in 2022 by two teaching artists at the school, Jessica Martin and Asherah Weiss. According to their website, they have received over 25 million calls since its creation and have a higher call volume than 911 calls to Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Miami combined.
When it came time to pack, I slowly deconstructed my apartment over the course of a month. I made endless trips to the thrift store, posted on Facebook Marketplace, and even hosted a move-out party where I made snacks for my friends while they raided my closet. After all that, I still found myself frantically sitting on my suitcase, trying to zip it right up until my ride to the airport arrived.
Although single-victim parricide by both adult and juvenile offenders has been studied, relatively little is known about the slaying of both mothers and fathers. One of the first systematic studies using a national database took place only 10 years ago (Fegadel & Heide, 2015), examining the characteristics of the offender, the victims, and the incidents themselves. In the period between 1991 and 2010, 45 incidents were identified, 35 of which were committed by offenders acting alone.
I was in kindergarten when the teacher asked us to rhyme something with the word 'hill.' Another girl and I raised our hands at the same time, but the teacher called on her. She said 'Bill' - which was exactly the word I was going to say - and I immediately burst into tears. I spent the rest of the day complaining that she had 'stolen' my word.
Susie Wiles has the gimlet eye of an alcoholic's daughter. She is always on edge, vigilant to the slightest movement, fearful of sudden danger, and has learned to withdraw herself from the chaos in order to survive. She is keenly observant, sees through people around her who are not drinkers to decipher their underlying motives that might flare into unexpected menace, and practiced in passive aggression of which her interview with Vanity Fair is a classic case study.
One of them handed Juan Giron a letter written by Kimberly, the trans woman he met when he was going to the bathroom and who called out to him, Hey, girl, pssst, hi. Now you might say that he and Kimberly are friends. He gave her a devotional scapular, and they get emotional when they see each other in the yard during the hour of sunlight they're allowed each day,
For many people, the holidays are described as joyful, festive, and full. For those in eating disorder recovery, they can also be complicated, emotionally charged, and exhausting. From Thanksgiving through New Year's Eve, food is everywhere, routines are disrupted, bodies are on display in photos, and cultural messages about indulgence and "starting over" grow louder by the day. Even when moments are meaningful or joyful, they can coexist with heightened anxiety, body image distress, and a sense of emotional overload.
Most people work to live, not live to work. But considering the amount of time most people spend in the workplace, over time, many employees come to value morale over money. Not surprisingly, job satisfaction is often directly tied to workplace culture: Employees survive and thrive when they feel supported, leave when they feel devalued. A main complaint from employees who have traded salary for satisfaction is not overt discrimination or harassment; it is incivility.
But what happens when the parent is the source of the fear? That's the paradox at the heart of disorganized attachment. The very person who should be a safe harbor becomes, unpredictably, a source of alarm. For example, a mother lost in her own grief for years, staring through her infant with a trance-like look. Or a father, struggling with depression, jerks away when his toddler reaches for a hug, because he has no energy for hugging.
"We can't receive from others what they were never taught to give." ~Unknown When I was younger, I believed that love meant being understood. I thought my parents would be there for me, emotionally and mentally. But love, I've learned, isn't always expressed in the ways we need, and not everyone has the tools to give what they never received.
Despite the headlines lambasting young employees as " lazy" and " entitled ", a Big Four consulting firm is taking matters into its own hands and offering training for recent grads. PwC will give its new young hires "resilience" training to toughen them up for careers as management consultants. The firm has introduced the initiative in the UK to help Gen Z brush up on their "human skills," including communication with clients and handling day-to-day work dynamics, like pressure or criticism.
She remembers a boy who dressed himself in three-piece suits, donated his allowance, and graduated high school at 16 with an academic scholarship and plans to join the military or start a business. Instead, Ferguson watched as her once bright-eyed, handsome son sank into disheveled psychosis, bouncing between family members' homes, homeless shelters, jails, clinics, emergency rooms and Ohio's regional psychiatric hospitals.
In 2019, TikTok announced a " formal relationship" with the National Parent Teacher Association, which describes itself as the largest child advocacy group in America. They published a TikTok Guide for Parents packed with instructions on " digital safety " and how to "decide the best experience for your family." What TikTok did not say, lawsuits filed against the company allege, was that internal documents had begun to reveal that the company knew its technology was harming kids-the short-form video app's target audience.
I've always been fascinated by India. It's my mum's favourite country and the house we share is full of treasures from her travels there, from peacock fans and silk scarves, to jewellery boxes carved from mango wood. I grew up hearing spellbinding tales of painted elephants and mirrored palaces, and India soon occupied a special place in my imagination. Having got to 42 without making it to the promised land,
In 2024, my niece Caroline received a Ph.D. in gravitational-wave physics. Her research interests include "the impact of model inaccuracies on biases in parameters recovered from gravitational wave data" and "Petrov type, principal null directions, and Killing tensors of slowly rotating black holes in quadratic gravity." I watched a little of her dissertation defense, on Zoom, and was lost as soon as she'd finished introducing herself. She and her husband now live in Italy, where she has a postdoctoral appointment.
The teasing was relentless. Nude images of a 13-year-old girl and her friends, generated by artificial intelligence, were circulating on social media and had become the talk of a Louisiana middle school. The girls begged for help, first from a school guidance counselor and then from a sheriff's deputy assigned to their school. But the images were shared on Snapchat, an app that deletes messages seconds after they're viewed, and the adults couldn't find them. The principal had doubts they even existed.
Music has long served as both a mirror and a refuge-reflecting private pain while offering language for experiences that feel unspeakable. Few songs have embodied this dual role as powerfully as Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful." Released in 2002, when mainstream pop rarely centered vulnerability or marginalized identities, the song and its music video offered something quietly radical: affirmation without conditions. Psychologically, representation matters because being seen supports emotional regulation and belonging.
At the start of this year, I went back to contracting, and then I learned I had prostate cancer. It was stage one, and I was on active monitoring for six months. I did some more contracting up until July, when I was told I needed to have treatment. So, I had treatment, and all the signs were good. In August, I thought, 'OK, I can start looking to go back to work.'
These moments can make the work more visible, but they are not the only times it shows up. Behind all this joy and love is a lot of work. That is why being open about what is required and asking for help can be important. You can still have things the way you want them; you do not, however, have to do them all on your own.
My grandmother strove for perfection, convinced that it was an attainable goal if only you worked hard enough. This meant eating less to lose weight. Food deprivation became a family bonding activity when my grandmother was on a diet. Diets lasted decades. We had marathon cleaning weekends while friends went to the mall. Play clothes were swapped out for school clothes for our rare trips to Burger King.
The last 30 years have seen heinous mass shootings of innocents become "ho-hum" events of everyday life - from Columbine (1999) to Sandy Hook (2012) schools; to just-engaged 20-year-old-Israelis walking (2025) in Washington, D.C.; to Laney college football coach John Beam (November 2025). Mental health issues do occur; 100 years ago, such shootings didn't. Grievances exist, but why think cold-blooded murder solves anything?
Leadership today demands more than vision and decisiveness. It requires staying emotionally steady, mentally flexible, and grounded-often while navigating constant pressure and competing demands. Yet many leaders operate in a near-constant state of stress without realizing how much it influences their reactions, decisions, and overall health. Burnout, irritability, poor sleep, and decision fatigue are often chalked up to time management or mindset issues.
But when Ko broke down wellness metrics, from if leaders felt anxious or depressed to mentally present at work, the results were starkly different: 48% of respondents reported being overwhelmed, and a quarter said they were feeling anxiety or depression. Moreover, 34% said they were mentally drained, and 40% reported being unable to be mentally present on the job. Half of the survey participants said they thought of stepping down from their positions.
I get a lot of calls for that topic at this time of year. Sadly, whichever way you cut the demographic mustard-men, women, younger, older, LGBTQ, BAME/BIPOC, neurodivergent, disabled-more and more people report feeling lonely some or most of the time. Sadly, those feelings can be compounded by Christmas, making the festive period difficult for many, for a variety of reasons. The solution lies in being more than a little self-indulgent. It's a call to be selfish, but with good reason.
