We are, if you believe the headlines, living in the midst of an unprecedented mental health crisis, exacerbated by the stress and isolation of the pandemic. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the end of …
The grubby truth about mental health memoirs
I don’t quite know what to do with mental illness memoirs. I’m naturally interested in their subject, as I suffer from bipolar disorder myself. And they fulfil an important social function: despite the rise of innumerable online voices yelling about …
Dreams can save us
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion. She was referring to our conscious selves, during waking hours, but our unconscious minds also tell us stories so that we can live. This involuntary, instinctive, subconscious storytelling occurs …
The curse of Miserable Older White Women
There is a corner of the internet that is obsessed with depressed middle-aged women. Or, specifically, is fixated on a four-year-old study, which suggested that 41% of Americans who use antidepressants are white, female and over 45. The obsession has …
Can depression be cured?
Was depression invented by the American elites in the Nineties? Since Prozac was introduced in 1987, it is true that the “major depressive disorder” — coined in the medical literature of the Eighties as a stop-gap measure — has taken …
The psychedelic utopia is a lie
“We are going to usher in a new day in the treatment of psychiatric diagnoses and brain health disorders.”
Rob Barrow is the CEO of MindMed: a leader in a new species of pharmaceutical firm. These companies, described as “corporadelic”, …
Mental illness doesn’t make you special
Marianne Eloise wants the world to know that she does not “have a regular brain at all”. That’s her declaration, on the very first page of her new memoir, Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking. The book catalogues her experience of a …
Time to put our Children First
Interview by Dan Gregory with PANDA’s Abir Ballan
Over the past year and more, we have watched as time and again the wellbeing and basic human rights of our children have simply dropped off the Covid response agenda. And not …
CDC: Over 25% of Young Americans Considered Suicide Due to the Pandemic
The US is going through a massive mental health crisis, according to a CDC study. Minority groups, caregivers, and essential workers are hit hardest.
Source: CDC: Over 25% of Young Americans Considered Suicide Due to the Pandemic…