Meeting will hear how exposure to verbal abuse leads to biological changes and can make mental ill-health likelier
Being shouted at by their parents reshapes children’s brains and makes them more likely to have mental ill-health and struggle to maintain friendships, MPs will hear on Monday.
Verbal abuse by adults can leave children unable to enjoy pleasure and seeing the world as threatening, experts in child development and mental health will tell a meeting at Westminster.
Continue reading...Spravato, derived from a popular club drug and also known as esketamine, offers hope to tens of thousands of Australians living with chronic mental illness
A medication chemically similar to ketamine will be made cheaper to improve the lives of Australians suffering from treatment-resistant depression.
The drug, which comes in the form of a nasal spray, is a chemical cousin of ketamine, used for decades as a powerful anaesthetic before it was adopted as a party drug in underground rave culture.
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Continue reading...Ebow Graham died after falling out of a third-storey window in east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode
An ambulance service and an NHS trust have admitted breaching their duty of care over the death of Ebow Graham, a founding member of the hip-hop group Foreign Beggars.
Graham, 40, died after falling out of a third-storey window in Clapton, east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode. Hours earlier London ambulance paramedics had dismissed his friends’ concerns about his behaviour. And a crisis call handler from East London NHS trust also failed to properly assess his risk or arrange an urgent mental health assessment within the recommended time.
Continue reading...Ebow Graham died after falling out of a third-storey window in east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode
An ambulance service and an NHS trust have admitted breaching their duty of care over the death of Ebow Graham, a founding member of the hip-hop group Foreign Beggars.
Graham, 40, died after falling out of a third-storey window in Clapton, east London in April 2020 following a psychotic episode. Hours earlier London ambulance paramedics had dismissed his friends’ concerns about his behaviour. And a crisis call handler from East London NHS trust also failed to properly assess his risk or arrange an urgent mental health assessment within the recommended time.
Continue reading...Reform UK leader claims he is ‘not being heartless, I’m being frank’ as he states rising number of diagnoses is a ‘massive problem’
John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, is attending the funeral of the Pope on Saturday, the Scottish government has announced. In a statement Swinney said:
His Holiness Pope Francis was a voice for peace, tolerance and reconciliation who had a natural ability to connect with people of all ages, nationalities and beliefs.
On behalf of the people of Scotland, I am deeply honoured to attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome to express my sorrow, thanks and deep respect for the compassion, assurance and hope that he brought to so many.
Eating the Tories for breakfast. @Keir_Starmer
Continue reading...Pop star posts on Instagram about his fright and ‘discomfort’ when asked for photos and autographs
Robbie Williams has spoken of the “discomfort” and “panic” he feels when he is approached for photos and autographs by fans.
In a post on Instagram, the pop star said he was able to “mask” the reality that social interactions frighten him.
Continue reading...Mental Health Foundation says civil unrest last summer left many fearful of attacks by far-right protesters
Last summer’s riots, which took place after the murder of three girls at a Southport dance class, led to a deterioration in the mental health of asylum seekers, with many becoming fearful of walking down the street in case they were targeted by far-right protesters, according to a report.
The report from the Mental Health Foundation, published on Tuesday, identified a decline in the mental health of asylum seekers as a result of the civil unrest and attacks on hotels, compared with the state of their mental health when they published a similar report in February 2024.
Continue reading...Specialists at Ramsay Clinic Thirroul have reportedly resigned against backdrop of larger shortage of psychiatrists across state
In 2022 Ramsay Healthcare opened Australia’s first women’s-only hospital “dedicated” to trauma-related mental health issues in Wollongong.
Ramsay Clinic Thirroul was supposed to be a “gamechanger” designed specifically to provide women – often survivors of family and sexual violence – the safe environment needed to be able to escape the flight or fight stress response and begin to recover through a program of therapies.
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Former staff tell Guardian Australia some HIV patients have since required acute mental health care, as hospital also loses specialist pain and eating disorder support staff
The resignation of psychiatrists from Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred hospital has led to the closure of an HIV psychiatry clinic with 200 patients, as well as a loss of specialist psychiatrist services for patients in the pain clinic and the most unwell eating disorder patients.
Minutes from a Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) and Balmain hospital medical staff council on 10 February, seen by Guardian Australia, also contain slides from a presentation about psychiatrist resignations that state “there is no HIV psychiatry clinic”.
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Continue reading...Former talkshow host takes public her battle to remove her guardian, ordered by a court due to dementia and aphasia
The note dropped from the upper floor window of an assisted living facility in New York on the morning of 10 March contained a simple message: “Help! Wendy!!” it read.
For any patient inside, it would have been tragic. But, astonishingly, the writer of this note was Wendy Williams, a trailblazing television talkshow host and once one of the most recognisble daytime TV faces in America.
Continue reading...One of those waiting for Labour’s announcement explains why he depends on personal independence payments
Adam Gabsi is unequivocal on the subject of his personal independence payment: “It really is an essential lifeline. I don’t feel that I would be able to function without it.”
Gabsi receives his Pip disability benefit for multiple sclerosis, with which he was diagnosed 18 years ago, when he was 21.
Continue reading...Psychiatrist describes the detained woman at Thomas Embling hospital as one of the most unwell patients in the state
One of the most mentally unwell patients in Victoria will deteriorate further if she continues to be held in solitary confinement, where she has been detained for almost a decade, a court has heard.
Victorian county court judge Nola Karapanagiotidis heard a major review on Wednesday of the detention of the woman under the Crimes (Mental Impairment and Unfitness to be Tried) Act.
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Continue reading...UN-commissioned study in UK, US, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand finds satisfaction rises with age
For more than half a century, the midlife crisis has been a feature of western society. Fast cars, impulsive decisions, and peak misery between the age of 40 and 50. But all that is changing, according to experts.
In a new paper commissioned by the UN, the leading academics Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower warn that a burgeoning youth mental health crisis in six English-speaking countries worldwide is upending the traditional pattern of happiness across our lifetimes.
Continue reading...Visceral videos of people playing with slime or braiding hair soothe those who feel overwhelmed by in-person contact
Younger adults are increasingly overwhelmed by in-person interaction and soothing themselves instead with sensory online content, according to a report on the wildly popular online content known as ASMR.
ASMR – autonomous sensory meridian response – describes a particular sensory phenomenon that is triggered by specific sights or sounds, which usually begins with a tingling sensation across the scalp and results in feelings of deep calm and relaxation.
47% of those aged 25-34 said they felt overwhelmed in noisy or busy places such as shopping centres or train stations, compared with 35% of those aged 55-64.
39% of those aged 18-24 felt the need to shut out noise, for example using noise-cancelling headphones in public, compared with only 21% of those age 45-54.
Younger age groups were also more likely to prefer chatting to people online rather than face to face and to prefer to work alone rather than around other people.
Continue reading...Soon we can all read the late author’s private notes about her therapy. But should we?
In 1998, the late journalist Joan Didion wrote a scathing essay about the posthumous publication of True at First Light, a travel journal and fictional memoir by Ernest Hemingway, 38 years after the author killed himself. “This is a man to whom words mattered. He worked at them, he understood them, he got inside them,” Didion wrote. “His wish to be survived by only the words he determined fit for publication would have seemed clear enough.”
Just over a year later, in December 1999, Didion began writing her own journal about her sessions with a psychiatrist. She addressed these notes – detailing her struggles with alcoholism, anxiety, guilt and depression, a sometimes fraught relationship with her adopted daughter Quintana and reflections on her childhood and legacy – to her husband, John Gregory Dunne.
Continue reading...Andrew Buen found guilty of homicide in death of Christian Glass, 22, who showed signs of mental health crisis at scene
A former Colorado sheriff’s deputy was convicted Thursday in the shooting death of a 22-year-old man in distress who called 911 for help after his car got stuck in a small mountain community.
Jurors found Andrew Buen guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the June 2022 death of Christian Glass, whose death drew national attention and led to changes in how officers are trained to respond to people in mental health crises under a $19m settlement with his family.
Continue reading...Patient care compromised by closing beds and shifting workload to less qualified staff, motion claims
The New South Wales Labor government is seeking to “redesign” the state’s mental health system without psychiatrists, despite the risks to patient care, its political rivals claim.
In a NSW legislative council meeting on Wednesday, the shadow assistant minister Susan Carter and the Greens’ health spokesperson, Dr Amanda Cohn, lambasted the Minns government’s handling of psychiatrists’ mass resignations, with Carter accusing the responsible ministers of having “sought to redesign our mental health system to work without specialist psychiatrists”.
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Continue reading...Research shows happiness levels have bounced back post-Covid, although depression also remains more common
People 50 and over in England have greater life satisfaction and sense life is more worthwhile than before the Covid pandemic, although depression is more common, researchers have found.
Prof Paola Zaninotto, first author of the research from University College London, said the study showed wellbeing and mental health worsened between the early stages of the pandemic and later in 2020, contrary to some reports. However, this situation subsequently improved.
Continue reading...Local authorities urged to intervene earlier and charity preparing to launch dedicated support group
“I don’t remember ever having had a home-cooked meal,” says Richard, crunching over the food wrappers and crushed cardboard boxes that cover his mother’s kitchen floor.
He glances at the broken cooker, cracked microwave and windows blocked by piles of unwashed mugs, some inexplicably tightly wrapped in cellophane. There are no clear surfaces. Blackened, disintegrating cabinets sag under yet more wreckage. Not an inch of floor can be seen.
Continue reading...Figures show practice continues eight years after pledge to end it, potentially impeding young people’s recovery
Children and young people in England with serious mental health problems are still being sent for treatment many miles away from their homes because bed shortages in some areas remain so severe, despite a pledge to end such practices eight years ago.
NHS England promised in 2017 to stop forcing highly troubled under-18s to leave family and friends after some received care more than 300 miles from where they lived.
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