Mental health

Mental health

How would a school shooting affect your employees? It's something that most employers never want to think about, but it's a horrifyingly real threat to any community-and the companies and organizations that do business there. Following the death of my youngest son, Dylan, in the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting, I can tell you first-hand about the lasting trauma that occurs when your child is injured or killed in this type of tragedy-and how that ripples through the entire community.

We get increased heart rates, and then the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline get released, and they flood our bodies. This causes physical symptoms, such as headaches or issues with the digestive system, and then there is the emotional aspect: You might notice that you're feeling irritable, anxious, you've got low mood, lack of motivation: these are key signs that you are under a lot of stress.

Ask any sleep expert, and they'll say the ideal bedtime routine should be cozy and calming. It's why everyone's out here making cups of tea, reading books, taking baths, and dutifully putting their phone away with the hope of getting a good night's sleep. But sometimes, it still isn't enough. On TikTok, creator @banjolord99 shared a genius idea for those who can't seem to sleep: 15 minutes of evil time.

This wasn't a struggling junior employee; this was a leader at the pinnacle of his career, shouldering the same gnawing doubt we often relegate to the inexperienced. For decades, we've called this "impostor syndrome," treating it as a personal flaw to be fixed. But groundbreaking research reveals we've been thinking about it all wrong-and in correcting our misunderstanding, we find not just relief but unexpected advantage.

Electroconvulsive therapy could be causing a wider range of adverse effects when used to treat depression than previously understood, according to a paper that calls for the practice to be suspended pending more robust research. Although short- and long-term memory loss is widely known to result from ECT, the research identified 25 further concerning side effects, which included cardiovascular problems, fatigue and emotional blunting.

Clinical guidelines should no longer recommend Prozac for children, according to experts, after research showed it had no clinical benefit for treating depression in children and adolescents. Globally one in seven 10-19 year olds have a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization. In the UK, about a quarter of older teenagers and up to a fifth of younger children have anxiety, depression or other mental health problems.

The holiday season can stir up a complex blend of excitement and dread, especially for people in eating disorder recovery. Food-centered gatherings, shifting routines, unsolicited comments about bodies, and long-standing family dynamics can activate anxiety even when your recovery feels steady. Being anxious does not mean you are failing. It means you are human. Recovery is hard work on an ordinary day. It takes effort, attention, and support even when life is calm.

Let's start with a confession: I've never been fully authentic for a single day in my life. Neither have you. I don't mean this as an accusation. I see it as fact. The relentless cultural message telling us to "be ourselves" might be the cruelest advice we've ever collectively accepted. It promises liberation but brings anxiety. Because here's what nobody mentions when they sell you authenticity as the path to enlightenment: being your full, unfiltered self would make you unemployable, unfriendable

For many challenged by struggles and mental health issues, days may feel oddly distant from any sense of well-being, as languishing, depression, sadness, or falling back into unhealthy addictive propensities begin to emerge. These thoughts may even encourage maladaptive behaviors or the temptation to roll back into unhealthy habits, relinquishing control to "feeling processes" that have hijacked logic. People may express these moments in terms of feeling "off" or "not fully present."

In my last post, we explored why you may be too tired to parent the way you want-to the knowledge-capacity gap that leaves even well-informed parents unable to use the tools they know when they're depleted. We talked about how chronic stress limits access to the parts of your brain responsible for self-control and empathy. Today, I'm sharing seven practical steps that actually help when you're too exhausted to parent the way you want.

The trend involves men calling their male friends to wish them goodnight, often capturing their surprised, confused, or awkward reactions. These interactions break traditional masculine communication norms, which typically discourage emotional expression between male friends. The humor often masks a deeper psychological need for connection that has been suppressed by conventional masculine ideals. Here is some context as the trend emerges within a broader acknowledgment of increasing male social isolation.

You open Instagram to grab a trending audio for a reel. Just one quick thing. Two hours later, you're still scrolling. You haven't created anything. You haven't even saved the audio you meant to find. And now it's 10 p.m., and you're mentally exhausted - and a little sad, tbh - from consuming content instead of making it. (Seriously, why is Instagram's search function on the Explore page?) Oh, wait, that was me. Hi. 👋

Like clockwork, 5 p.m. on a Sunday, flashes of unread emails and notifications for tomorrow's upcoming meetings start. Your shoulders tense, your stomach knots. You have a case of the Sunday scaries. This unsettling feeling is a form of anticipatory anxiety that creeps in as the weekend draws to a close and Monday looms with the responsibilities of the week ahead.

My sister and I went on a joint diet. She stopped and I didn't. I'm 18. And I'm dragged from school to the hospital. And I'm made to look at myself. [MUSIC PLAYING] I weigh 56 pounds. Do you find you're too skinny? Yes, I am too skinny. But what does it matter? I had turned my body into a project, a revolt against nature Mother nature, my mother. A revolt against womanhood, adulthood. My biggest enemy? Time.

But you know what memory I don't have? My mother eating. She cooked. She served. She made sure everyone had seconds and thirds. She cleaned. She packed plates for folks to take home to their loved ones. She stood in that kitchen for hours (sometimes, days), making magic happen for anyone that she could. But I cannot recall a single moment when she sat down with a full plate of her own, enjoying the meal she had poured herself into.

Simon and I couldn't be more different. When we met, I was 38, he was 54, and his unabashed zest for life broke through my complicated caution. I knew I was in love when, after a lazy summer evening together, I lay on the stone beside a Trafalgar Square fountain and felt joy seep through my skin. I moved in with him, his rural 15th-century cottage becoming our home, workplace (me in medicine, he in shipping), and where I discovered previously unknown contentment.

When Charlie Service came home from Vietnam, he tried to leave the war behind. "In Vietnam, it was definitely combat," he said. "And there was a lot of things in there that we did that we shouldn't do, or things that I don't even talk about today." The retired Army veteran earned three Purple Hearts for his service. But medals didn't ease the invisible wounds he carried - flashbacks, anger and sleepless nights that would last decades.

When I rather nervously shared a personal post about dealing with brain fog at work on the social network LinkedIn last week, I had no idea that it would have such an enormous impact. It's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Women have stopped me on the street to talk to me about it. I've been overwhelmed by hundreds of messages from people sharing support and their own experiences of it. Usually I cover technology news. But given the response, it felt important to talk about this as well.

Sleep has become a public culture priority. The sleep industry now exceeds $68 billion. Nearly half of adults report insomnia symptoms at some point. Chronic insomnia means difficulty falling or staying asleep at least three nights per week for at least three months, with daytime consequences and/or significant distress. About 1 in 3 Americans uses a wearable device to track sleep, suggesting the public truly values sleep.

It's two years since Isiah found himself on the roof of a south London shopping centre, about to jump. I was very done, he says of that night in November 2023. It felt there was no other route or option. First, I did a walk around everywhere important to me: primary school, secondary, college. Then he headed to Lewisham shopping centre. I remember my head was telling me: You're probably better off doing this.' He was exhausted by his paranoia,

Depression, that is, "major" or "clinical" depression, is so prevalent that many mental-health authorities call it "the common cold of mental illness." Depression has a host of known risk factors: female gender, family history, distorted thinking patterns, medication side effects, adverse life events ( divorce, financial reverses, the death of loved ones), and chronic illnesses (diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's diseases, and hormonal disorders).

Normally, a person goes about their life, making meaning of everything that happens to them, slotting it into a world that makes sense. Psychologist Bessel van der Kolk explains that a traumatic event short circuits this process. Trauma overwhelms a person, rendering them unable, in the moment, to integrate the event into their lives. In the context of spirituality, trauma is a hand grenade, exploding two of spirituality's primary functions: to help a person make meaning and feel at home in the universe.

Young man's parents say he was in the midst of mental health crisis at time of incident - and is now in legal limbo