A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
In an interview earlier this month, the stars of BBC drama series, Age Before Beauty, criticised programs such as Love island for promoting unrealistic beauty expectations and plastic surgery among younger people. One of the stars of the show, Lisa Riley, expressed concerns that reality TV risked being "treacherous" to young people over body image. [...]
The media frenzy is starting to settle after the tragic suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Some of the coverage, I was happy to see, was sensitive and compassionate, while some was just plain irresponsible, sensationalistic, and full of specific details - all of which can put vulnerable people at risk, and perpetuate misinformation. [...]
Psychiatrists have issued a warning over the link between depression and video game addiction, after MRI scans revealed for the first time the potential damage caused to young brains. The images showed the signals between the different parts of gaming addicts’ brains were disrupted, driving them to continue playing but also worsening their depression. The “emotional” [...]
With the spread of photo-editing technology through applications like Snapchat and Facetune, the level of physical "perfection" previously seen only on celebrity or beauty magazines is now all over social media. As these images become the norm, people's perceptions of beauty worldwide are changing, which can take a toll on a person's self-esteem and can [...]
Are you afraid of spiders? You aren't alone. (Well, except when it's just you and the spider.) Across the world, somewhere between 3% and 15% of the population is afraid of something. That's the headline finding in a new review published in The Lancet Psychiatry. But they found so much more. The authors, led by [...]
It happens to the best of us: an inability to concentrate at work, panic in traffic, or thoughts that are too scattered or busy to let us fall asleep. But for others, constant racing thoughts can become an uncomfortable, but consistent, part of everyday life. And mental health professionals want people to know the difference. [...]
Research has long associated poor sleep with an increased risk of depression, but scientists have just identified the neural mechanism responsible for this link – a discovery that could lead to better treatments in the future. Researchers found a strong connection between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (responsible for short-term memory), the precuneus (linked with ideas [...]
The number of antidepressants prescribed to children in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland has risen over the past three years, figures obtained by BBC's File on 4 reveal. In England, there was a 15% rise. Scotland saw a 10% increase. And in Northern Ireland the number rose by 6%. In total, there were 950,000 prescriptions [...]
Four out of five teenage girls who have been sexually assaulted are suffering from crippling mental health problems months after their attack, new research has found. Victims were found to have anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other serious conditions four to five months after being assaulted. Experts said the findings confirmed that becoming a [...]
When her daughter Abbey began suffering severe mental health issues at the age of 14, Pippa Beveridge desperately sought help from Western Australia's mental health system. As she found out over the next two years, that support was not easy to come by. "We would go to [Princess Margaret Hospital] and wait for hours," Ms [...]
