Experts warn of higher suicide rates as self-harm rises across both sexes and all age groups
So many young people are self-harming that it risks becoming normalised and increasing the number who commit suicide when they are older, a study reveals.
One in five girls and young women in England aged 16 to 24 have cut, burned or poisoned themselves, according to research that mental health experts said was “very worrying”.
Continue reading...In America, men are 3.5 times more likely to die from suicide than women, and many experts say it’s because they’re told not to express emotions
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Continue reading...Suspects interviewed without appropriate adult present in over 100,000 cases in England and Wales, charity says
Police officers detained and interviewed vulnerable suspects without an appropriate adult present more than 100,000 times last year in England and Wales, according to a charity report.
The failure by officers to provide assistance, chiefly to those with mental illness, autism or learning disabilities, leaves them at risk of miscarriages of justice, the National Appropriate Adult Network (Naan) has warned.
Continue reading...Behavioural scientist Paul Dolan says traditional markers of success no longer apply
We may have suspected it already, but now the science backs it up: unmarried and childless women are the happiest sub-group in the population. And they are more likely to live longer than their married and child-rearing peers, according to a leading expert in happiness.
Speaking at the Hay festival on Saturday, Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, said the latest evidence showed that the traditional markers used to measure success did not correlate with happiness – particularly marriage and raising children.
Continue reading...Women who tried to kill themselves were charged this year after causing traffic jams
A police force has defended its decision to prosecute two mentally ill women who were charged after they caused traffic jams when trying to kill themselves.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) charged the two this year following the incidents. The force said it would review both cases and stressed prosecution was “rarely a course of action for someone with a mental health condition”.
Continue reading...WHO research highlights lifestyle factors linked to increased risk of disease
Taking better care of ourselves could be the best long-term strategy to tackling the growing problem of dementia, according to a new report.
Research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found dementia affects 50 million people worldwide, costs $818bn (£632bn) annually to treat, and diagnoses are likely to triple by 2050.
Continue reading...In a world in which populists whip up anger that spreads on social media, it’s easy to conclude we have never been more furious
It’s a standard observation that the world is getting angrier – but the truth is that taking the emotional temperature of an entire era is a mug’s game. For one thing, it’s almost impossible to get the necessary historical perspective: road rage, for example, feels like a modern phenomenon, until you learn that in 1817, Lord Byron was reported to the police for delivering a “swinging box on the ear” to “a fellow in a carriage, who was impudent to my horse”. It’s also easy to overlook the ways you’ve changed as an individual: I certainly remember life in the early 80s as less frustrating, but that’s surely just because I lived a child’s life of leisure, all expenses paid.
Still, the best data we have suggests that, overall, we are indeed getting angrier. Last year, 22% of respondents around the world told the Gallup organisation they felt angry, a record since the question was first asked in 2006. And something else, even harder to measure, feels like it’s different as well: it’s as though our anger has curdled, gone rancid. As a society, we seem not to express it and move on, but to stew in it – until, at the extremes, it hardens into violence and hate.
Continue reading...Students at UC Berkeley have an unusual way to take the edge off before final exams. The Guardian was granted exclusive access to a petting session
Final exams are approaching at one of America’s elite universities, and the atmosphere might be tense – if it weren’t for eight hairy campus visitors.
On Friday, students flocked to UC Berkeley’s Memorial Glade for Llamapalooza, a human-llama social occasion on a sunny campus lawn. The eight animals were scattered throughout the crowd, munching grass while the adoring masses petted, fed and photographed them under the supervision of trained student volunteers.
Continue reading...From bike sharing to green energy, cities are often better at driving change than national governments
Who has the answers? The UN? Scientists? Entrepreneurs? Nation states? “Ordinary” people?
There is another subset of power, agency, ideas and progress that often gets overlooked in the search for solutions to the world’s problems.
Continue reading...One of the world’s foremost authorities on child mental health today warns that technology is threatening child development by disrupting the crucial learning relationship between adults and children.
Peter Fonagy, professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science at UCL, who has published more than 500 scientific papers and 19 books, warns that the digital world is reducing contact time between the generations – a development with potentially damaging consequences.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Prisoners are being left awaiting adequate treatment for up to half a year
Prisoners with severe mental health problems are waiting up to six months to be transferred to hospital to get treatment, a Guardian investigation has found.
Government guidelines in England and Wales stipulate that prisoners who are acutely mentally ill should be transferred to a hospital within 14 days of the first medical recommendation. But according to an analysis of Ministry of Justice data, hundreds of prisoners a year are being left awaiting adequate treatment.
Continue reading...Even light exertions can slow down ageing of the brain, activity-tracker data indicates
Even light activity such as household chores might help to keep the brain young, researchers say, adding to a growing body of evidence that, when it comes to exercise, every little helps.
The findings mirror upcoming guidance from the UK chief medical officers, and existing US guidelines, which say light activity or very short bouts of exercise are beneficial to health – even if it is just a minute or two at a time – countering the previous view that there was a threshold that must be reached before there were significant benefits.
Continue reading...Experts say Alesha’s killer, Aaron Campbell, is ‘not a one-off’ – and more can be done to prevent similar crimes
Since Aaron Campbell received a life sentence last month for the brutal rape and murder of six-year-old Alesha MacPhail, the reverberations from his crimes have continued as the public and professionals struggle to come to terms with what the trial judge, Lord Matthews, described as “some of the wickedest, most evil crimes this court has ever heard”.
Related: Why was Alesha MacPhail killed? Perhaps we should stop asking | Libby Brooks
Continue reading...Many people receiving compulsory mental health treatment are not even aware the advocacy service exists
An advocacy service for people who have been involuntarily detained in mental health wards should be expanded to an opt-out model so patients do not slip through the cracks, an independent evaluation has found.
The Independent Mental Health Advocacy service (IMHA) was established in 2015 to support people receiving compulsory mental health treatment in Victoria and ensure they are aware of their right to object to treatment.
Continue reading...Toronto researchers believe the drug can also help those with depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s
An experimental drug that bolsters ailing brain cells has raised hopes of a treatment for memory loss, poor decision making and other mental impairments that often strike in old age.
The drug could be taken as a daily pill by over-55s if clinical trials, which are expected to start within two years, show that the medicine is safe and effective at preventing memory lapses.
Continue reading...Call for more government funding as survey finds 80% of officers felt stress in past year
Police officers have reported being driven to breaking point by the dual pressures of staffing cuts and rising demands, with a survey finding eight out of 10 had felt stressed in the past year.
The survey by the Police Federation is part of a campaign to pressure the government to fund more officers on the beat after years of cuts.
Continue reading...Every life stage brings its own pressures, from worrying about exams to juggling the needs of family. Here are the best coping tactics for each generation
Triggers
“Children are really the canaries in the mineshaft of human society. They are the individuals within our cultures that are the most sensitive to the difficulties – and stresses – that societies experience,” Tom Boyce tells me. Professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of California, he specialises in the treatment of three- to eight-year-olds. Major stressors in this age group include marital conflict, violence in the home, violence in the community, problems with parental mental health – a mum or dad who is depressed – maltreatment and disciplinary behaviours that become punitive.
Dread and despair have been a part of my life since childhood – and then I started writing about politics ...
The anxiety is ever-present. Sometimes only as a form of background noise; a voice that tells me I’ve failed at the day before it’s even begun. At other times it’s more insistent. An almost physical presence. A heart-pounding feeling of dread that makes it a struggle to get out of bed. A longed for desire to go back to sleep, to rewind the clock, in the desperate hope that I could start the day again.
I stare at the clock, calculating how long I can leave it before I have to get out of bed and engage with the day. Another 10 minutes maybe? Twenty if I choose to skip breakfast. Hoping that the anxiety will have passed by the time I do get up, while knowing that every delay merely makes it worse. I know it’s a kind of madness. But it’s one to which I invariably succumb.
Continue reading...Friends cite lack of support in university town for those with mental health and addiction problems
A spate of deaths has rocked the homeless community in Oxford, sparking warnings that a lack of housing and support for people with mental health and addiction problems in one of Britain’s most affluent cities is contributing to fatalities.
Bereaved friends of four men and a woman who have died suddenly in the university city since November said the losses are the worst they have known. They fear further deaths among rough sleepers amid freezing temperatures.
Continue reading...Research suggests link between social media use and depressive symptoms was stronger for girls compared with boys
Girls’ much-higher rate of depression than boys is closely linked to the greater time they spend on social media, and online bullying and poor sleep are the main culprits for their low mood, new research reveals.
As many as three-quarters of 14-year-old girls who suffer from depression also have low self-esteem, are unhappy with how they look and sleep for seven hours or less each night, the study found.
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