Category Archives: Mental health

Doctors fear new child mental health crisis in UK, made worse by Covid

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Surge in cases expected as schools reopen and charities report 70% rise in demand for services

A surge in child mental health cases is expected to emerge as schools reopen next week, amid warnings of a “crisis on top of a crisis” hitting vulnerable children during the pandemic.

Paediatricians, psychologists and charitable groups providing mental health support all told the Observer they were seeing increasing demand and warned of another surge as lockdown is lifted. Several reported longer waiting lists for young people in need of help.

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The UK couples breaking Covid lockdown to avoid breaking up

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Compliance with lockdown is proving increasingly hard for people in relationships who don’t live together

Since most of the UK went back into lockdown on 5 January, people have once again been forced to “stay at home, save lives”. But with “pandemic burnout” on the rise many say compliance is proving increasingly difficult.

People in relationships who do not live with their partner have been in a tough position throughout the pandemic. Faced with the prospect of breaking lockdown or breaking up, many couples have opted for the former.

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‘The clouds cleared’: what terminal lucidity teaches us about life, death and dementia

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Just before Alex Godfrey’s grandmother died from dementia, she snapped back to lucidity and regaled him with stories of her youth. Could moments like this teach us more about the workings of the brain?

It was the red jelly that did it. It was Christmas 1999 in Rapid City, South Dakota, and Ward Porterfield, 83, was in a nursing home. He had been diagnosed with dementia three years earlier; he was confused and disoriented and eventually he no longer recognised his daughter, Kay. “When I went in,” she says of her later visits, “he didn’t know me at all.” That Christmas, he refused to eat. “Finally I just told them: ‘Bring him jello, he likes jello. Red jello.’ And he looked at me, really deeply, and said: ‘So. I suppose the jello’s gonna be my last meal. You’re gonna try to starve me, eh?’ That was like: ‘What’s going on here?’”

Her surprise wasn’t just at his coherence, but that the tone of this reply was undeniably her father’s dry humour. Later that night, nurses told Kay, when children visited to sing carols, tears streamed down Ward’s face. Kay becomes emotional recounting it. “Don’t cry,” a nurse told him. Ward looked at her. “If you were in my position, you’d cry too,” he said. “These are the last Christmas carols I’ll ever hear.”

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‘Painted by a madman’: The Scream graffiti reveals Munch’s state of mind

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Inscription on painting that has been subject of debate has been reattributed to the artist himself

It is an image that has intrigued the art world for more than a century and become synonymous with existential angst, and recently inspired its own emoji, but now some graffiti has added a new layer to the story of Edvard Munch’s most iconic painting, The Scream.

A tiny pencil inscription in the top left corner of one of the four versions of the painting, which reads, “Can only have been painted by a madman”, has been the subject of debate over who wrote it – it was originally thought to be by Munch, but was later attributed to a vandal – but new analysis by experts at the National Museum of Norway suggests it is indeed in the hand of the artist.

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Britney Spears: another pop princess trapped in a man-made fairytale

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One contributor is notably absent from the new film about Britney: herself. But from Rihanna to Beyoncé to Taylor Swift, female stars have always struggled to tell their stories

In the closing song of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, we are invited to ponder the question: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” It is a powerful message about legacy and ownership, as relevant to any modern public figure as it is about one of America’s founding fathers.

I think about this lyric whenever my mind strays to Britney Spears, who has found her life back under the microscope following the release of the documentary Framing Britney Spears. The story the film chooses to tell is contextualised by what we now understand as the rampant misogyny of the mid-to-late 00s, painting an empathic portrait of a woman who had not previously found much sympathy in the mainstream.

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Pakistan ends death penalty for prisoners with severe mental health problems

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Supreme court ruling welcomed by rights activists who say it opens the way to broader prison reforms

In a landmark decision, Pakistan’s supreme court ruled this week that prisoners with serious mental health problems cannot be executed for their crimes.

The verdict was hailed by rights activists, who said it laid the groundwork for broader prison reforms in the country.

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Doctors warn of ‘tsunami’ of pandemic eating disorders

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Covid-19 isolation blamed as number of children with anorexia and bulimia in England soars amid fears for similar rise among adults

Psychiatrists have warned of a “tsunami” of eating disorder patients amid data showing soaring numbers of people experiencing anorexia and bulimia in England during the pandemic.

Dr Agnes Ayton, the chair of the Eating Disorder Faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said the number of people experiencing problems had risen sharply with conditions such as anorexia thriving in the isolation of lockdown.

She said: “We expect the tsunami [of patients] is still coming. We don’t think it has been and gone.”

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Close-ups, cats and clutter: what the online yoga teacher saw

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Teaching via Instagram and Zoom is both more and less intimate than a real-life class

Fifteen people lie down in rectangles on my screen. I am telling them to relax their jaws and soften the muscles around their eyes. I am also having a silent, hand gesture-based conversation with a five-year-old girl in one of the rectangles. This morning the girl’s mother sent me an email that read: “I’m going to attempt as much of the class as she will allow me to do – sometimes she is fine with it, and sometimes not.” In the next box, a cat strolls into view and settles down on its owner’s back as they rest in the child’s pose. Elsewhere, a dog is causing chaos at the back of someone’s mat. This is what I’ve learned from teaching Zoom yoga; mostly, small children and pets rule a household.

I’ve observed couples having conversations in class, giving me a delicious feeling of embarrassment and curiosity

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‘My personal lockdown has been much longer’: on chronic illness, before and after Covid

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Life before was a little different, but not a lot. Now I feel a new resilience and hope

Read more: Laura Barton on how a daily call to California got her through lockdown and Elle Hunt on moving to the other side of the world and the pandemic

I’ve been inside my cramped terrace house for nearly a year now. There haven’t been walks outside, or trips to the shops. Every morning, I wake into a day the same as yesterday. I reach out a hand to the cat who I know will be curled by my right side, listen for the creak of my son climbing down from his bunk bed. He will come and bundle himself under my covers, and we will begin again, another day juggling his schoolwork and my writing work, all conducted mostly from my bed.

I remember, dream-like, two weeks in the summer last year when it felt safe enough for my partner to fly over from Denmark, after six months apart. We drove to quiet places and he pushed me in my wheelchair. I wept, happy to see him and the green trees, and to eat picnics on the warm ground, a family again. It has been six months since then, and so we sit each day in front of iPads, touching fingers to the screen, baffled and smiling to still be in this strange, unforeseen predicament – falling in love, still, because distance does nothing to halt that. My life is one of pain, fatigue, activity, laughter.

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‘They are scared to try new things’: how is home school impacting young children?

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After nearly a year of disrupted learning, primary school children in the UK have missed key milestones - as well as their friends. What will be the long term cost?

• In pictures: pets, plants and cuddly toys: a child’s eye view of home schooling

It is fair to say that Wells, eight, does not enjoy remote learning. “It’s horrible,” he tells a group of fellow year 4 children over a video call. “I can see my friends, but I can’t talk to them.” Emily, nine, finds home schooling tough, too: “It’s really, really boring. I’m sad. But I like being able to play with my guinea pigs.” Flora, also nine, agrees lockdown learning isn’t all bad: “It’s fun solving maths problems with my granny on Skype, and I get to have yummy snacks, like chocolate biscuits, all day.”

But they would all prefer to be at school. “There’s less distraction,” says Betty, who has two younger siblings and is expected to work independently in the afternoons. “When you’re in class, you can talk to your teacher and ask for help,” Ainhoa says. “Privately,” Wells adds. “You get their individual attention.” The children talk about feeling frustrated, stressed and even exhausted at the end of the school day. “Sometimes I just want to scrunch up the paper into pieces,” Ainhoa admits. “I really miss playing with my friends in the playground,” Flora says.

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‘It is only now I realise the toll the pandemic has taken’: a letter from the other side of Covid

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I moved from London to New Zealand, where the sense of normality is surreal

Read more: Laura Barton on how a daily call to California got her through lockdown

New Zealand doesn’t exist. So goes the meme, an internet in-joke arising from the frequency with which the island nation is left off world maps, and amplified by the whimsical news stories that often emerge there. For instance: a city road was recently closed for an entire month to allow safe crossing for a family of sea lions. How is New Zealand even real? As a citizen, with a black-and-silver passport to prove it, I have caught myself asking that question since I arrived back here from London a month ago. How can this place – where you can hug your parents, go to bars with your friends, and live life more or less like it’s 2019 – be only a flight away from the one I left behind?

I left London, where I’d been living since 2017, a few days before Christmas, just as coronavirus cases started rising again rapidly, and the government braced, too late, for another lengthy lockdown. “Getting out, are you,” a man had said, eyeing my bags on the bus to the Piccadilly line. At each stop on my journey to Auckland, totalling three planes over nearly 24 hours, my phone had lit up with news of the rapidly deteriorating situation I’d just fled. Two weeks later, I was released from my government-managed quarantine hotel into New Zealand, where there had been no local transmission of coronavirus since November. It felt as if I had slipped into another world through the back of my hotel wardrobe.

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‘Pandemic burnout’ on rise as latest Covid lockdowns take toll

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Increasing number of people report feeling worn out and unable to cope due to period of sustained stress

Psychologists are reporting a rise in “pandemic burnout” as many people find the current phase of lockdowns harder, with an increasing number feeling worn out and unable to cope.

They warn that many are finding the latest lockdown more difficult because of a realisation that coronavirus will be around longer than expected, dashed hopes about an easing of restrictions, and a period of sustained stress similar to overwork, which has prompted symptoms such as fatigue.

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Coronavirus is an existential crisis that comes from an awareness of your own freedoms | Dr Sarb Johal

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Book extract: A lot of things will change as a result of this pandemic and it’s clear the recovery won’t be marked by a discrete event

In 1844, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “Whoever has learnt to be anxious in the right way, has learnt the ultimate.”

I’m no Kierkegaard, but I think he may have been on to something. The anxiety we may be experiencing in these coronavirus times might be something that feels different, deeper, and beyond perhaps your usual fear or anxiety about day-to-day troubles. This feels more existential.

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Lockdown cabin fever? 56 tried, tested and terrific ways to beat the boredom

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Shaun Ryder keeps chickens, while Mel Giedroyc organises chutney tastings. These small, affordable suggestions won’t end lockdown misery – but they might help

If you live with someone else, draw each other. My boyfriend, a professional artist, has a gross advantage – so I hold the most atrocious pose possible to challenge him. Then I challenge the foundations of our relationship by trying to depict him in a fashion that won’t result in him dumping me. Our relationship survived the last time, although we almost died laughing. Laura Snapes, Guardian deputy music editor

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Covid linked to risk of mental illness and brain disorder, study suggests

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One in eight people who get coronavirus also have first psychiatric or neurological illness within six months, research finds

One in eight people who have had Covid-19 are diagnosed with their first psychiatric or neurological illness within six months of testing positive for the virus, a new analysis suggests, adding heft to an emerging body of evidence that stresses the toll of the virus on mental health and brain disorders cannot be ignored.

The analysis – which is still to be peer-reviewed – also found that those figures rose to one in three when patients with a previous history of psychiatric or neurological illnesses were included.

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Teenagers can ‘catch’ moods from friends, study finds

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UK study investigates impact of individuals’ moods within shared social network

Teenagers can “catch” moods from their friends and negative moods appear to be more contagious than positive, a study has found.

The study by Oxford and Birmingham universities investigates “emotional contagion” among teenagers, to see the impact of individuals’ moods within a shared social network.

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I thought my eating disorder was my protector, but I have been anorexia’s prey | Melis Layik

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With university online and no job to go to thanks to Covid, it has become easier to spend hours in front of the mirror berating my appearance

Name: Melis Layik

Age: 21

I increased my dosage of antidepressants today. With the loosening of Victoria’s Covid restrictions and the surge of New Year’s weight loss marketing, my eating disorder has once again overwhelmed me with feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing.

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Covid restrictions on visits to detained children and parents are ‘cruel’, MPs told

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Prison, care home and mental health institution visit limitations failing to consider impact on family life, campaigners say

Children with parents in prison have been forgotten during lockdown, campaigners have told MPs.

The cross-party human rights committee is looking at the impact on the right to family life, with a focus on people in institutional settings including prisons, care homes and mental health facilities.

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Authorities had four warnings about Reading attacker’s mental health

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Refugee support chief warned of Khairi Saadallah carrying out ‘London Bridge-type scenario’

• Reading attacker Khairi Saadallah given whole-life prison sentence

Repeated warnings were given that Khairi Saadallah, who murdered three men in a Reading park last summer, could carry out a “London Bridge-type scenario” shortly before the killings took place, the Guardian has learned.

Documents reveal that Nick Harborne, chief executive of the Reading Refugee Support Group (RRSG), who had had dealings with Saadallah since 2016, made four specific warnings to health and probation professionals between 4 December 2019 and 12 June 2020 that Saadallah could commit a violent crime if he did not receive appropriate support.

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Why it’s time to stop pursuing happiness

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Positive thinking and visualising success can be counterproductive – happily, other strategies for fulfilment are available

Like many teenagers, I was once plagued with angst and dissatisfaction – feelings that my parents often met with bemusement rather than sympathy. They were already in their 50s, and, having grown up in postwar Britain, they struggled to understand the sources of my discontentment at the turn of the 21st century.

“The problem with your generation is that you always expect to be happy,” my mother once said. I was baffled. Surely happiness was the purpose of living, and we should strive to achieve it at every opportunity? I simply wasn’t prepared to accept my melancholy as something that was beyond my control.

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