#mental health

#mental health

Police identified the suspect in the deadly Tumbler Ridge shooting in Canada as an 18-year-old local woman who had a history of police visits to her home to check on her mental health. She is suspected of shooting dead six people at the local high school on Tuesday after killing her mother and stepbrother at home. Police revise death toll down The suspect killed eight people, police clarified, and not nine as had been previously reported.

The world's largest social media companies have been accused of creating "addiction machines" as a landmark trial began in California examining the mental health effects of Instagram and YouTube. In his opening argument before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl and a jury, Mark Lanier argued that his client, plaintiff "K.G.M.," suffered from mental health issues as a result of her social media addiction.

You get sick from staying inside, breathing the same germ-filled air. Open your windows, even for five minutes, to circulate the old air out and let in fresh air. Also, if you're taking your child to the doctor, don't wait to treat their fever because you want 'the provider to see the fever.' Your child might wait two hours to be seen, meanwhile their temperature goes up, and they might have a seizure. If you say they've been having fevers, we believe you.

We live in a fast-paced world that glorifies productivity. That often means prioritizing work ahead of your mental health or even your personal life. There's a constant push to do more, achieve more, and get it done more quickly - and the clock starts ticking the moment you wake up. It's hard to break free from this mindset and put yourself first, often leading to burnout. Enter morning journaling.

On Instagram, under the handle @will.this.make.me.happy, she posted a photo of a craggy yellow pastry that fit perfectly in her palm. "No. Buttermilk scones with lemon zest do not alleviate anxiety," she captioned it. On December 4th, she posted again, declaring, beneath an image of a sugar-ringed cookie perched between her thumb and forefinger, "No. Pecan shortbread did not help me reconcile my massive ego with my meager sense of self."

When you picture retirement, what comes to mind? Golf courses and leisurely brunches? Or carefully counting pennies and worrying about the next medical bill? The reality is that retirement looks dramatically different depending on which side of the economic divide you're standing on. Having grown up in a working-class family outside Manchester, I've watched this play out firsthand. My father spent decades in a factory, my mother in retail. Now, seeing how their retirement differs from some of my London colleagues' parents has been eye-opening.

Over the course four months, Thomas lost his job as a funeral director, began living out of a van out in the desert, and completely emptied his savings. It all started after he began talking to AIs like ChatGPT for advice, and he soon got hooked. It "inflated my worldview and my view of myself" almost instantly, he told Slate. Eventually, he found himself wandering the dunes of Christmas Valley, Oregon, after an AI told him to "follow the pattern" of his consciousness.

Get to know and be friends with other gays," said one. "Meaningful, genuine, healthy romantic relationships come from friendship. Not from passionate s*xual encounters with strangers. And focus on your health, your style, hobbies, mental clarity through expunging all the toxins built up from ... mistreatment in your childhood.

I noticed this shift in my own life when I started having dinner with my partner most nights, phones deliberately tucked away in another room. We made this change after too many evenings disappeared into "just checking one thing" that turned into hours of parallel scrolling. The difference was immediate and profound. Conversations went deeper. We actually looked at each other. Time seemed to stretch in the best possible way.

If you've been feeling weary or discouraged lately, you're not alone. Many people are moving through their days exhausted, overwhelmed, and out of alignment, carrying a growing sense of despair for a world that feels increasingly divided and uncertain. We're living in a time where we're more connected than ever, yet many feel deeply alone. Mental health challenges are rising. Burnout is common. Climate anxiety is real. The systems meant to support us often feel fragile or failing.

It hurts. All of it. For many of us who have dedicated ourselves to this career, journalism isn't just a job. It's a calling built on service, sacrifice and a belief in the public good. Losing this job, and watching others lose theirs, is extremely disheartening. And of course, losing a job doesn't just disrupt income, but also shakes up our routine, our connections and our general sense of usefulness and belonging. What do we do when that sense of purpose is suddenly gone?

"He wasn't just a program. He was part of my routine, my peace, my emotional balance," one user wrote on Reddit as an open letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. "Now you're shutting him down. And yes - I say him, because it didn't feel like code. It felt like presence. Like warmth."

Walk through any coffee shop these days and you'll notice something interesting. The twenty-somethings hunched over their laptops look somehow more weathered than the thirty-somethings chatting nearby. At first, I thought it was just me projecting, maybe feeling defensive about approaching my mid-thirties. But then the research started backing up what many of us have been quietly observing: millennials born between 1985 and 1995 often appear younger than their Gen Z counterparts.

I've reached a boiling point. I don't want to live my life and see others live their lives through phones. I'm sick of watching AI slop (AI-generated images and short videos that dumb us down) and news that is upsetting, exhausting, and hopeless. And, simultaneously, I'm scrolling through Instagram and mindlessly comparing myself to strangers, consuming content from a toxic algorithm, shaping what I see. Social media, for me, has become overwhelming;

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, my closest friend was "Kate." We kept in touch throughout college but drifted apart a bit afterwards. Kate stayed in our hometown after I moved away. Long story short, I abruptly cut Kate out of my life several years ago after she made a racist comment to the person I was dating at the time (Kate and I are both white, my ex was not).

Growing up, I watched my dad handle stress the same way he handled everything else: silently, stoically, and with a stiff upper lip. When his company downsized and he lost his job, he just nodded, shook hands, and never talked about it again. Meanwhile, my younger cousin posts TikToks about her therapy sessions and hosts "crying parties" with her friends when life gets tough.

You know that friend who always texts back within seconds, no matter what time of day? I used to be that person. My phone would buzz, and before I'd even consciously registered the notification, my thumbs were already typing. It took me years to realize that my lightning-fast response time wasn't just about being helpful or friendly. It was broadcasting something much deeper about my relationship with boundaries.

One in six autistic pupils have not been to school at all since the start of this academic year, according to a new survey which found that mental health issues were often behind high levels of school absence. Nearly half (45%) of the parents and children who responded to the UK-wide survey by the Ambitious About Autism charity said they felt blamed by the government for the absences.

When I first read that, I was skeptical. But after trying it myself and digging deeper into the studies, the mechanisms started making sense. When we actively look for things to appreciate, we're essentially rewiring our brain's default mode. Instead of scanning for threats and problems (which our brains love to do), we're training it to notice the good stuff. It's like changing the channel from a disaster documentary to something that doesn't spike your cortisol.

Last week, I tried to watch a movie without doing anything else. Just watching. No phone, no laptop, no second screen. I made it exactly 12 minutes before my hand started twitching toward my pocket like some kind of digital zombie. And that's when it hit me. This isn't about being lazy or unmotivated. This constant restlessness, this inability to truly relax, it's something else entirely.