This loneliness epidemic isn't another headline we can shrug off - it's a direct threat to our fundamental need to belong, which is hardwired into us for survival. For nearly 300,000 years, the human species survived in tight-knit tribes - small groups where people had each other's backs. Being cast out wasn't awkward; it was a death sentence. Those exact same associations remain in our brains today: Disconnection = danger. Belonging = safety. So, when we lose meaningful connection, our bodies respond as if something is terribly wrong. Stress rises, well-being declines, and both mental and physical health suffer.
Every few months, she tries out a different diet or fad to try to Emma never parades her new diets around or tries to shame anyone about what they're eating, but she'll usually explain why she's not partaking in team lunches, office snacks, and so on. It's never meant as anything but idle small talk, but it tends to spark long conversations
So, on the foundation of anxiety and depression, fear of the unknown, need for control and stability, avoidant tendencies, competitiveness, perfectionism (i.e., needing to know everything to feel secure), and the obsession with discovering root causes (or essences), gifted children are often fixated on life's deeper questions.
The increase in reported mental health problems and neurodevelopmental diagnoses, and services not keeping pace, reflect what many clinicians see every day people are in more distress and unable to access support. The suffering is not fake, nor is it a case of gen Z malingering. Patients are struggling with what were once ordinary demands of life: school, work, relationships and family, complicated by the aftermath of Covid, with blurred boundaries between home and work, and life lived increasingly on screens.
If you feel that you're not good enough, you're not alone. Research has shown how many successful people suffer from imposter syndrome, believing that they're not good enough (Bravata et al., 2020). A recent international review revealed the prevalence of inferiority feelings in people around the world (Amani & Taqiyah, 2024). I've been there too. I was a shy child who loved books, while my brother was a charming extrovert and my mother's favorite.
We're sensitive organisms, far more than we may realize. And the holidays can be a mini- trauma for the body and mind. We all have different traditions, but let's imagine a fairly typical holiday: a long drive or a day spent in air-travel purgatory, followed by cookies, the world's saltiest gravy, and drinks out with the old crew. Or maybe your evening is more focused on reminding the kids that Grandma's porcelain clown collection is not toys while you sip rosé from a box, prep potatoes, and consume 30 or 40 black olives.
The holidays seem to get mixed reviews depending on the family that raised you. Some families appear to display the traditional Norman Rockwell image of the perfect gathering that most people still yearn for, but we all know there is no perfect family. Families consist of imperfect human beings, and everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, even if they don't acknowledge that.
Around the same time, he was turning 40, so I called to wish him a happy birthday. While we were catching up, he mentioned that he'd been eating healthier and working out consistently. Then he said something that surprised me: "I had a salad for lunch today." My brother has hunted since he was a teenager. Salad was never exactly his go-to meal.
After exhausting nearly every traditional option, she turned to OnlyFans, focusing on niche fetish content that doesn't involve nudity. The early grind was intense. "I worked 14-hour days, every single day, for years to get to this point," she said. Now, she makes over $130,000 annually and lives comfortably for the first time in her life. But the toll of the job is starting to catch up with her.
Despite little to no daylight-plus months of frigid temperatures-people who live in northern Europe and above the Arctic Circle have learned how to cope mentally and physically with the annual onset of the winter blues, which can begin as early as October and last into April for some. The winter solstice will occur Dec. 21, marking the shortest day and longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. While sunlight increases daily after that, winter won't be over for a while yet.
At the core of OCPD is a pervasive preoccupation with order, control, and perfectionism, governed by a strict set of internal rules about how things should be done. These rules are not seen as preferences but as objective truths.· Non-conformists directly violate these rules. Their behavior signals that the OCPD individual's "correct" way is not the only way, which can feel destabilizing and threatening to their entire worldview.
In doing so, they absorb her individual pain and transform it into a communal experience, a shared catharsis. In real life, the closest thing to this experience is scream clubs, a new wellness trend that brings together hundreds of people to scream together in a public space. It's a free therapy that requires nothing more than pent-up frustration. The dynamic is simple: people gather, set an intention for the scream, breathe, scream, release, and the body resets...
Peter and I began by examining the gap between his fantasy of how Christmas should be celebrated and the reality of his actual Christmas celebrations in years past. Part of Peter's fantasy was that everyone in his family would get along well and have fun together on Christmas Day. The reality, however, was that his family invariably pick fights with each other, especially a few drinks in, and find fault with his cooking, his home and the way he is raising his young kids.
I stumbled upon the recent production of Merrily We Roll Along with Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe and like most of the internet, I became obsessed. Afterwards, I went down a Groff rabbit hole tracking down interviews and cast recordings. I was drawn to how bubbly he was, how smiley he was. Groff had a joyous energy that was infectious. His voice was like melted chocolate. I both loved and envied his calmness and his openness to the world.
That's why it's so worrisome that we're inadvertently subjecting a large group of these children to an epic amount of internet brain rot that's disrupting that crucial period, according to an analytical report from researchers at the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a British policy group focused on people in poverty - a state of affairs that's likely resulting in sprawling deleterious outcomes.
For most people, the word psychosis evokes images of permanent decline. A person with lived experience is imagined as someone whose future has been irreversibly damaged, whose mind can never be trusted again, and whose life will shrink to something small, unsteady, and disconnected. We are taught to believe that a psychotic episode destroys a person's capacity to think clearly, work meaningfully, contribute to society, love deeply, or live fully.
'Tis the season, they say. But the season seems to be changing. Did you notice that Black Friday started before Thanksgiving this year? Cyber Monday crept right into the holiday week. Gift guides are everywhere; increasing the pressure to find the "perfect" gift, often with financing options right at checkout. The underlying message seems to be: buy now, think about it later.
Close to one-in-six American adults is currently prescribed an antidepressant. A serotonin, or "chemical," imbalance hypothesis remains one of the key justifications for antidepressant use. But many are now rejecting the term chemical imbalance and embracing the the identity of having a mental health condition. They're also asking whether antidepressants resolve a chemical imbalance or risk creating one. I recently spoke to Joanna Moncrieff, author of Chemically Imbalanced, about avoiding neuro-reductionism and thinking about mental states in ways that aren't disempowering.
I gave a simple answer, that yes, I did think there was overdiagnosis, that too many people were being written off, and too many people weren't getting the support they needed. I was then deluged with messages and emails of both enthusiastic agreement and visceral disagreement including from mental health clinicians on both sides of the argument. One angry patient messaged to say: Far from overdiagnosis, I can't even get an appointment to get a diagnosis.
