That’s what one German billionaire says. But it’s not why the Aztecs and the hippies were such fans
Name: The shroom boom.
Age: Ancient rock art in Castilla-La Mancha in Spain suggests that Psilocybe hispanica, one of the mushrooms that contains the psychoactive compound psilocybin, was taken in religious ceremonies as long as 6,000 years ago.
Continue reading...During the pandemic, I have gone from uttering a few words of encouragement to myself to full-blown arguments. I’m not the only one. I asked psychologists what purpose this serves
“We should probably go out now,” I say to Danny as I vegetate in front of the TV. “Yeah, we should, but I can’t be arsed,” Danny replies, sitting in an identical pose. “C’mon, we need the exercise; can’t sit here all day,” I insist. “Well, we can ’cause that’s what we did yesterday and the day before,” he answers. “Exactly! That’s why we have to go. C’mon!” I yell. “God! Fine, then!” he shouts back.
So we get up from our pit and head into the crisp morning air for a much needed dose of fresh air and exercise. Only there is no we. There’s only me. I’ve had a shouting match with myself pretty much every day since Covid came along and changed everything.
Continue reading...Survey reveals remote consultations often felt inadequate and may have made symptoms worse
Mental health patients found their conditions deteriorated during the pandemic because the NHS switched from in-person help to support by telephone, video and text messages, new research reveals.
Many reported a lower quality of care, according to a study by University College London; others had trouble accessing medication, had appointments cancelled or felt the loss of face-to-face help meant they “were missing out on care”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: compulsive hygiene habits and fear of public places could remain for some after lockdown lifted, researchers say
Scientists have expressed concern that residual anxiety over coronavirus may have led some people to develop compulsive hygiene habits that could prevent them from reintegrating into the outside world, even though Covid hospitalisations and deaths in the UK are coming down.
The concept of “Covid anxiety syndrome” was first theorised by professors last year, when Ana Nikčević, of Kingston University, and Marcantonio Spada, at London South Bank University, noticed people were developing a particular set of traits in response to Covid.
Continue reading...In the wake of the pandemic, mental ill health is on the rise, putting more pressure on what some say is an already broken system. Editor-in-chief Lenore Taylor and associate editor Lucy Clark speak to Gabrielle Jackson about what’s causing Australia’s mental health crisis, and how to fix it
Check out the full Australia’s mental health crisis series here.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue can be reached on 1300 22 4636. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
Continue reading...If the pandemic has left you devoid of promise, purpose and delight, sociologists have the perfect term to describe it
Name: Languishing.
Age: At least as old as the chaise longue.
Continue reading...UCL data of 10,000 volunteers shows cases 30% higher among those who slept poorly in their 50s, 60s and 70s
People who regularly sleep for six hours or less each night in middle age are more likely to develop dementia than those who routinely manage seven hours, according to a major study into the disease.
Researchers found a 30% greater risk of dementia in those who during their 50s, 60s and 70s consistently had a short night’s sleep, regardless of other risk factors such as heart and metabolic conditions and poor mental health.
Continue reading...A month after the birth of her son, the writer, poet and illustrator was on suicide watch in a psychiatric ward, experiencing severe delusions. Now her podcast is raising awareness of a condition that affects one in a thousand new mothers
Laura Dockrill told herself she was the worst case the psychiatric hospital had ever seen, and was untreatable. But that was only one of her delusions. Dockrill thought her father-in-law had hypnotised her. She would stalk the hospital corridors, feeling “like this badass”, as if she were a trained assassin. The reality was painfully different, but in Dockrill’s words it comes coloured with a comic touch.
“I was frumpy, quiet, wore my sister’s cupcake socks and a pink T-shirt with breast milk blooming over my boobs,” she says, smiling, her neon pink lipstick beaming through my laptop screen. There were times when she was on to her partner’s devious “plan” to take their newborn baby away from her, but would act like some kind of femme fatale, convinced he couldn’t resist her dangerous sexiness. He would play along – Dockrill’s psychiatrist had advised him not to try to reason with her – while gently reminding her that she would get better.
Continue reading...Countless inquiries have found the same problems afflicting the mental health system, but cost and access barriers still leave those seeking and providing care in despair
Many Australians experience the country’s mental health system as inadequate, dangerous and financially punishing, saying they often feel unsafe in hospitals, are dismissed by health professionals and are hit with prohibitive costs that government subsidies do not come close to covering.
And practitioners in turn have spoken of burnout and their frustration with misplaced funding, inadequate quick fixes, overmedication of patients and inconsistencies and duplication in the system, while acknowledging that many seeking help find the system “deeply traumatic”.
Continue reading...From relaxing baths to seaside swims, water can be a balm in difficult times. Catherine Kelly, the author of a new book on blue spaces, shares her tips
It was after her mother died that Catherine Kelly learned the healing power of water. Following instincts that she did not yet understand, she moved to live alone by the sea in County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland, and over the next few years began to heal. “It’s an ebb and flow that water gives us that allows us to connect with ourselves. It’s an allowing,” she says.
After eight years studying the therapeutic effects of nature, she has written a book called Blue Spaces, packed with ideas about how to make the most of being in or near water. You don’t have to live near the coast to benefit. “There’s being in it, being next to it, thinking about it,” she says. Nor does it matter how much water is available. From raindrops to the ocean, urban fountains to canals and fast-moving rivers, there is a blue space for everyone. And although the phrase “blue space” typically refers to natural waters, Kelly says the possibilities for meaningful connection are the same whether it is the sea or your shower.
Continue reading...It’s OK not to take his call, says Annalisa Barbieri. You are not responsible for his happiness
I am 22 and my brother is 24. I am married with a child; he is single. We grew up in a rocky family situation and were removed from our parents’ care and placed in a children’s home when I was five and he was seven. I don’t remember much before that, but he bullied me a lot growing up. For a while now I’ve been dealing with anxiety related to him – every time I see his name pop up over text, I freak out. I hate it when he calls or visits and I feel drained afterwards. He doesn’t deal with rejection well, so I feel I have to take the call. Deep down he’s a good guy who has issues, but I really want to figure out why I have this anxiety with him; I don’t have this issue with anyone else. I can’t afford therapy but I’m trying my best to work this out.
It sounds as if you and your brother are dealing with trauma connected with your childhood. “Freaking out” when you see someone or their name pops up on a phone is a sign of this, and bullying is a trauma, quite aside from everything else you both suffered as children.
Continue reading...Coroner rules seriousness of Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus’s illness went unrecognised
A teenage refugee killed himself after the serious nature of his mental illness was not recognised, a coroner has concluded.
Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus, 19, was the fourth from his friendship group of Eritrean refugees to take his own life within a 16-month period after arriving in the UK.
Continue reading...First figures available for Jacinda Ardern’s term in office reveal inadequate government response despite huge boost in funding
New Zealand’s mental health system is “in crisis” and in worse shape now than four years ago, practitioners say – despite much-heralded government efforts to reform it and prioritise national wellbeing.
A commitment to improving New Zealand’s mental health record has been at the heart of the progressive, Jacinda Ardern-led Labour government. The country has enduring challenges with mental health, including the highest rate of youth suicide in the developed world. When Ardern was leading her first election campaign in 2017, she made it a central election issue.
Continue reading...After my first boyfriend died, Elverum’s Microphones and Mount Eerie helped me make sense of a bleak world
I first encountered the music of Phil Elverum in August 2010, a month after the death of my first boyfriend. That summer I spent hours sitting numbly in the park with my headphones on, listening to Elverum describe a landscape without colour or movement: “no black or white, no change in the light, no night, no golden sun”. That dissonance between internal and external worlds made sense to me as I watched children play and rollerbladers pass by in the sunshine as if everything was normal.
I listened over and over again to his album The Glow Pt 2, released in 2001 under the name the Microphones, trying to make sense of the previous six months. I met Marc in my first year at university: a pretty, hyperactive French boy who shimmered into my life at a club night in Birmingham. I fell in love with his perfect sweep of sandy blond hair, the way he played piano with the exaggerated melodrama of his beloved symphonic metal and video game soundtracks and his habit of wrapping a USB cable around his neck like a protective amulet.
Continue reading...Stuck container ship triggered people with fear of ships and sea wreckage and megalophobia, the fear of large objects
When Grace Gibson was texted a picture of the giant container ship Ever Given stuck in the Suez canal, she clenched.
The image – of the gargantuan vessel wedged sideways into the canal – and the lone excavator working to free it – struck most as absurd. Against the massive underbelly of the ship, the equipment looked tiny. But for Gibson, a 26-year old Angeleno, it immediately evoked discomfort.
Continue reading...The monotony of lockdown life has starved us of spontaneity and serendipity, which enhance learning and memory
I hit a wall in late February and felt that life had taken on a quality of stultifying sameness. Was it Wednesday or Sunday? I couldn’t really tell: every day of the week felt identical because there was nothing to distinguish them. Work, read, exercise, eat, repeat. Like nearly everyone I know, I have settled into a state of dreary uniformity.
The pandemic has been a vast uncontrolled experiment – not just in social isolation, which is bad enough, but in the deprivation of novelty. Overnight we were stripped of our ability to roam around our world the way we usually do. Gone were the chance encounters with other people and the experience of new things and places: no travel, no adventures, no restaurants, no theatres, no crowds. We weren’t just quarantined from Covid: we were cut off from the ubiquitous stimulation of the unfamiliar and new.
Continue reading...A documentary series about Demi Lovato shows how brutally controlled the singer’s diet once was, and, as other pop performers attest, it’s control that underpins damaging behaviour
For eight years of her life, Demi Lovato was served a watermelon cake for her birthday. This wasn’t a watermelon-flavoured version of a proper cake with all the good stuff like butter, sugar and flour, but rather an actual watermelon with some icing on top.
The reason for this was that her team at the time were “trying to keep her weight down”, according to Lovato’s best friend Matthew Scott Montgomery, who is interviewed as part of Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, the YouTube documentary series premiering this week. Her team would police what she ate, he says, and those she was with were also required to eat only when Lovato ate, with no snacking outside of meals, in an attempt to “keep her well” and avoid triggering a relapse into the restrictive eating disorders she struggled with as a teenager.
Continue reading...Duke of Sussex’s first formal role since ending royal duties involves ‘meaty role’ as chief impact officer at BetterUp
Prince Harry has been given a job by a $1bn (£730m) Silicon Valley startup which provides professional coaching, mental health advice and “immersive learning” as its chief impact officer.
The Duke of Sussex said he hoped to be able to use his own experiences using the “the power of transforming pain into purpose” to help BetterUp’s clients with “proactive coaching” for personal development, as well as achieve “an all-round better life”.
Continue reading...After a year of Zoom calls and social distancing, we will soon be able to start mingling with friends and work colleagues again. Experts reveal what to do if the very idea brings you out in a cold sweat
If the limit of your conversational prowess this past year has been to grunt through Zoom meetings, discuss dinner plans with your flatmate, nag your children or make passive-aggressive comments to the cat, you may feel out of practice now that large gatherings look tantalisingly within reach. Perhaps you’ve quite enjoyed this period of government-mandated introversion, and dread the idea that you may be expected to socialise. Either way, if all goes according to plan, this era of social distancing may be starting to close. For those feeling a little daunted, here’s how to ease yourself back in.
Continue reading...This week sees the opening of the first UK high-street clinic offering psychedelic-assisted therapy. Could popping psilocybin be the future of mental healthcare?
In the summer of 1981, when he was 13, Grant crashed a trail motorbike into a wall at his parents’ house in Cambridgeshire. He’d been hiding it in the shed, but “it was far too powerful for me, and on my very first time starting it in the garden, I smashed it into a wall”. His mother came outside to find the skinny teenager in a heap next to the crumpled motorbike. “I was in a lot of trouble.”
Grant hadn’t given this childhood memory much thought in the intervening years, but one hot August day in 2019, it came back to him with such clarity that, at 53, now a stocky father of two, he suddenly understood it as a clue to his dangerously unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
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