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Britain faces a growing mental health crisis, yet the narrative increasingly blames individuals rather than the conditions that shape their lives.

I will shift. Two teenagers scribbled this same line repeatedly in their journals. Both later died by suicide after extensive interactions with Character.AI chatbots

How nostalgia makes us yearn for our own memories. Time moves forward whether we follow it or not. Nostalgia, however, waits.It lingers in old songs, in familiar streets, in the scent of a season or a person we thought we had forgotten. And when it finally returns, it pulls us gently, and sometimes painfully, back into a moment we can no longer touch.

The first time I heard about circadian rhythms was in my high school biology class. I remember breezing past the term, memorising that “circadian rhythms = sleep-wake cycles,” and not thinking much more about it. That is, until I started to study them in graduate school.

I am a mental health researcher working on the HappyMums project, a European consortium that focuses on understanding depression in pregnancy. At King’s College London, we are leading a clinical study involving the use of a smartphone application, called the HappyMums App.  Since the start of our project, much of our discussions have been about privacy and data sharing. The idea of having a large-scale dataset encompassing a thousand participants, across seven different sites

When we think about individuals who are likely to consume alcohol in large quantities, we often think about college-aged students or middle-aged adults. However, one important age group is often overlooked: older adults. Alcohol consumption in this group, specifically among individuals aged 60 years and over, is increasing at a faster rate than previous generations, raising concerns about the health consequences of alcohol use in ageing populations.

There are two types of winter coats. One is light on the pocket but good for a fast-fashion spin. Then there’s the down-filled workhorse, puffed with promise and designed to last year after year. Standing in the ‘Winter Essentials’ aisle, I stared at both and bought neither. I wasn’t sure I was staying long enough to need either kind of warmth. 

It turns out ignorance really can feel like bliss, though I'm still deciding whether that makes me carefree or careless.  I’m Jessy, and five years ago I left my job and moved from London to Amsterdam. As a health and wellness writer with a background in broadcast journalism, I hadn’t realised how constant my exposure to news had become until I changed cities and, unintentionally, stepped away from the relentless churn of headlines.

Some things in life you never expect to lose. Your orgasm is one of them.

For Indian women, many expectations are placed upon us. Her hair, vaal , must be long and lustrous. She must have fair skin. Most importantly, she must bear children. The Omnipresent Evil Eye Infertility in South Asian families is considered a curse, that an evil eye  is cast upon the family. Evil eye, otherwise known as nazar , holds significant cultural and spiritual importance in South Asian culture. It stems from the idea that jealousy, envy, and negative thoughts can cau

I have to admit it: I was sceptical when the Netflix show Emily in Paris first came out, which is why I didn’t give it a chance until earlier this year. Surprisingly, that wait proved worthwhile: I binge-watched all four seasons in just a few weeks, and now I’m counting down the days until Season 5 premieres on Netflix on December 18th.  However, my enthusiasm is not widely shared, with many strongly dismissing the show for depicting an overly romanticised version of expat li

Casey Mattocks doesn’t remember the last time that her hands were clean, but she remembers the first time she told someone that they were dirty.

More than a century ago, psychiatrists spoke of ‘climacteric insanity’: the strange and sudden madness said to strike women at the end of their reproductive years. Physicians in the late 19th century described vivid delusions, sleeplessness, and emotional turmoil appearing ‘at the change of life’, when the female body ‘lost its balance’.

I am a psychiatrist with a long interest in researching topics like mental capacity, that lie in the borderlands between psychological medicine, ethics, and law. In this context, I do something unusual for a psychiatry professor: I teach psychiatry in a law school.

As I mother my own small children in the UK, I can’t help but think of mothers and children in Gaza. Like thousands of others worldwide, I have been watching the genocide in Gaza unfold over the last two years, literally live-streamed to us through civilians on the ground, from their phones to ours. Watching the most horrific war crimes in real time has been both deeply surreal and gut-wrenching. No human being should have to endure what the citizens of Gaza have, no matt

On 10th October, 2025, the Afghan Embassy hosted a forum with Afghanistan’s Foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in New Delhi, India. The embassy had invited over sixteen journalists, and not a single one of them was a woman, let alone a woman from intersectional identities. In the forum, it was observed by other journalists, how women and foreign media were turned away from the gate of the embassy, and has been widely discussed in the media.  As a young woman journalist, ba

My journey and why video games help My name is Michael. I am no stranger to adversity in life, as I suffer from mental illness. I have almost died from mental illness and addiction. Depression, anxiety, and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder have occupied big parts of my life for decades now. There are many ways, both good and bad, that I have found to cope with my illness. After decades of struggle and through trial and error, I am continuing to seek new ways to cope with depres

On a Sunday evening in August this year, I was on my first on-call shift as a trainee psychiatrist in a leafy psychiatric hospital. After a day of walking between old buildings which had been converted into wards, tending to patients’ mental and physical health needs, I decided to have dinner on the grounds.

Do you ever think about why you were born where you were born? I was born in France because a border opened. When France granted Tunisia independence in March of 1956, my father crossed the Mediterranean sea along with thousands of others, carrying with him a language, a faith, a culture, and a hope that the new world would be gentler. That decision between a man seeking opportunity and a nation opening its borders shaped my existence before I ever took my first breath.

And there we have it. As of October 2025, boyfriends have become embarrassing, according to Vogue.   An article published on 25th October talks about boyfriends being embarrassing, and about  women being uncool or losers because they have romantic partners. This controversial piece has been discussed all over social media, and on popular news outlets, with Instagram celebrities sharing their opinions, either agreeing, or disagreeing with the piece.     I came across the p

In mental health services, clinicians write thousands of notes every day. These records capture the details of people’s lives: how they feel, what they struggle with and how they respond to treatment. Hidden within these words is an enormous amount of knowledge about mental health but most of it has never been analysed in a systematic way.

I’m a Paris-based Russian reporter, and for more than three years I have been covering anti-war resistance in my country. At this point, I should be used to the war in Ukraine.   But when I recently met a Ukrainian artist at a party, something strange happened.   I introduced myself to him in English. But since many people from post-Soviet countries in the room were speaking Russian (which is our common language), he asked: “Do you speak Russian?”.   “Yes,” I responded.

Why Functioning Labels Are Harmful The discourse around autism tends to be typified by extremes. On one end is a child with severe social difficulties, sensory processing issues, and intellectual disability. On the other end of the spectrum is the popular conception of the eccentric savant. The person who —while odd, off-putting, and often seen as less than worthy— makes up for these perceived negative traits by being so good at one particular thing that their genius is seen

Depression is a complex condition. We know its symptoms well, but we still do not fully understand what happens in the body when someone is depressed. Also, not all individuals with depression are the same, and this diversity may arise from differences in biology – the many bodily processes that constantly shape the way we are and behave.