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My brother was my best friend before he was anything else. Not just family, not just the person I happened to grow up next to, but the person I called first, the person who knew which version of a story I was telling and which version was true. My name is Israel Temmie. I am a freelance writer, and much of what I do now involves trying to make sense of experiences by putting them into words.

When I was fourteen, I was often pitted against my six-year-old sister. “Look at her, how much she cares about her father”, they would remark as my sister would watch my father take off his shoes, pick them up and keep them in their designated place. She was applauded for her work and hailed as the ‘domestic princess’, and her actions were construed as an act of love towards our father, leading to approval and validation.

There is a growing interest in hiking amongst young people being driven by a desire for stronger real-life connection and a dissatisfaction with online socialising. Could this trend be an encouraging symptom of increasing mental-health awareness, in a generation deeply affected by pandemic-era loneliness and chronic screen use? The media often sees young people as the generation most addicted to the digital world.

My name is Meera. I recently graduated from King’s College London with a bachelor’s degree in English. Since graduating, the search for employment has been a demoralising process wherein most of my applications are met with no response and each vague rejection seems to pose more questions than answers.

Two steps forward and one step back can be a good way to describe the process of recovering from an eating disorder. The journey is not linear. Some weeks you make massive amounts of progress, while some days you feel as though you are going backwards. A key part of recovery is to process setbacks: noticing what didn’t go to plan and learning from it. So, the next time you are faced with a similar situation, you can make pro-recovery decisions.

Writing is a privilege, not a punishment. Prose, essays, and stories are vehicles for truth and influence–reflecting a means to bridge individuals and contribute our voice to the vast human experience. Despite the responsibility of academic institutions to uphold the legacy of the written word, Title IX allows American Universities to dole out disciplinary actions in the form of a three-page essay in exchange for a clean slate, demonstrating just how much American universitie

When I first wrote about losing our baby in October 2024, I thought the hardest part would be the miscarriage itself. In many ways, it was. At the time, grief felt enormous. Overwhelming. It filled every room, every conversation, every quiet moment. But it wasn’t always going to stay that way. It might not disappear, but it changes shape, and settles into the everyday. That kind of grief becomes something I carry in my bones alongside everything else — work, relationships, bi

This is how I think about myself today: I’m a retired 63-year-old man, happily married, in excellent health, very comfortable. And yet, I idle high. I just accept that this is part of my makeup. I have brown eyes; I’m 5’- 9”; I weigh 170 pounds. I idle high. Idling high is not a clinical term and it won’t be found in any psychology context of which I am aware. It is just the way I have come to identify with certain characteristics of my life.

It happened out of nowhere, on a Tuesday night. My firstborn, "my sunshine," as I always called him, was making me proud...or so I thought. My son had difficulty with impulse control in the past, but he was in counselling and seemed to be on the right track. At 17, he had secured a well-paying job and planned diligently for his future. He had always been a bright child, excelling in school, so I had high hopes that he would go to college and secure a successful career.

Close your eyes. Imagine you could live anywhere in the world. Money isn’t a consideration, logistics? No problem. Whatever you fancy is available… Got it? Let me guess what you got… a golden sandy beach? Sun rays warming your face? A sangria in one hand with a cabana boy fanning you from the side? Bingo. This is what I envisioned when I decided to move to the South of France with my, at the time, 9-month-old bundle of joy (baby, not a puppy, just to clarify).

When we imagine our lives through the years, it might be easier to imagine a linear, gradual transformation. We were children, now we're adults, and the story continues across a medium of existence, too flux and too holistic for singularities. But when we tell our stories, we often refer to these singularities: moments that became dividing lines between older and newer versions of ourselves. In fact, research shows that people often define their lives around turning points an

Like many researchers, my journey into Parkinson’s disease began with a personal connection. Growing up with a father with Parkinson’s, I learned early that a diagnosis is only the beginning of the story.

ADHD diagnoses in England have risen sharply since 2020, though diagnosis still lags behind estimated prevalence. But for many, diagnosis is just the beginning. While finally having an explanation for years of challenges can bring relief, a new question follows: What now? Understanding you have ADHD is one thing; learning how to manage it is another. I’m a therapist for ADHD, with ADHD. Before specialising in ADHD therapy, I experienced many of the challenges I now help clie

In the villages and towns of Indian-administered Kashmir, mental illness often arrives disguised as something else. People complain of racing heartbeats, chest pain, breathlessness, dizziness, stomach discomfort, and fear. Many spend months, and sometimes years, visiting hospitals convinced they are suffering from heart disease or another physical illness. They undergo repeated tests, collect folders full of prescriptions, and move from one doctor to another in search of ans

I learned to live two lives before I learned much else. My mother had schizophrenia. I was a child and did not know what the word meant. What I knew was that some months she did not get out of bed, and I fed myself. My dad drank his sorrows away. I remember him coming home drunk, and my brothers and I learning to disappear. In that house, invisibility was how you stayed safe. That was the first life.

This piece was written by researchers at University College London (Havovi Khareghat and Eva Sprecher) and lived-experience advisors (Clo H, Valerie, Ace Garmodon & Alfie-James Waring) from the ReThink programme. ReThink is a UKRI-funded research project that explored what makes a difference to the mental health of care-experienced young people (who have grown up in ‘state care’ e.g., foster care or children’s homes) moving through early and late adolescence.

I'm Adam, a 28-year-old lad from Nottingham, and I'm the founder of Kick The Stigma — a male grooming brand on a mission to support men's mental health. That sentence probably sounds a bit unusual: a hair product brand and mental health support in the same breath. But stick with me, because the two are more connected than you might think. My journey didn’t start with products. Growing up, I was fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of love, joy and support.

“Drama Queen” “Forever a victim”“She’s doing the ‘woe is me’ act again” “She’s having another hissy fit." These were just some of the things I grew up hearing about myself – and continue to. In hindsight, remarks like these were thinly veiled commentary that people saw me as too sensitive, too emotional, too moody - and too easily hurt by the things they did or said.

“If you’ve spoken to me for even 5 minutes, you know I stammer. What you don’t know, unless you stammer too, is what I’ve undergone in the 5 decades I’ve been a stammerer”. This was how I started the message I sent to friends and family when sharing my recent ITM article, Stammering: An Invisible Handicap. In the piece, I shared my lifelong experience as a stammerer and spoke about ways in which those who stammer can be treated with more acceptance and compassion.

The first thing most people learn about me is my résumé. As a professor with a decent public profile, I’m easy to Google. What most people don’t know is that I’m quite overwhelmed. It’s not the job that does it. It’s the mental health condition I’ve been living with since 1997: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Oh, and there’s also my eating disorder. OCD brings unwanted, cycling thoughts that counter my values and invites compulsive mental/physical behaviours.

Growing up in a three-generation South Asian household alongside my paternal grandparents, parents, and siblings, I recognise many of these fragments reflected in our interactions, patterns of thinking, values, and behaviours: a difficulty communicating openly, discomfort with emotional expression, a reluctance to accept help during times of struggle, a desire to control the uncontrollable, and a tendency towards chronic people-pleasing.

"But doctor, that's not what it says on the internet." This is something a patient being treated for bipolar disorder told my colleague Juan during a routine consultation. She wasn't challenging his advice; she was telling him what she had read on social media and asking how it fit with his recommendations. That one sentence stayed with him since and sent us both down a rabbit hole.

“I don’t understand why I have to put a stole to cover myself up,” I said, horrified. I was fourteen, with simmering teenage anger, making sense of the world and not liking the position Muslim women were often put into. I had clarity; if you want to wear something, you wear it, whether Hijab or dresses, and if you don’t like something you don’t wear it. But my extended family was insistent that it was the ‘right’ age for me to start covering up, a narrative common for many Mu

Growing up, I thought Dad was stoic. He always managed to keep his emotions in check, even when he was diagnosed with Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy, alongside my uncle and aunt. Even as he watched them pass away and felt his own muscles atrophy until he couldn’t leave the house anymore, he kept a stiff upper lip like the British men of his generation had been taught to do by their fathers. When Dad died in 2025, I thought about his stoicism and how I was going to cope with the