“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.

I once spent three hours describing a tasting menu built around fermented citrus and smoked seafood while secretly feeling nauseous and craving plain buttered toast. That contradiction defined both my career and my life. I was living with undiagnosed conditions that affected everything, even if I did not yet have the language to understand them. For years, I had built my reputation as a food writer.

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

I am 66 years old. I have had bipolar since the age of 21. (Bipolar is a condition where a person’s mood may go high or low). I have written three times before on this platform: about diagnostic overshadowing, about mixed affective states, and about living with a serious mental health condition. As well as bipolar, I have developed several physical health conditions. I have ulcerative colitis (an inflammatory bowel disease). I have also experienced two lymphomas.

People are often surprised when I tell them that writing became one of the healthiest things in my life. From the outside, I have always seemed like someone doing okay. I joke a lot, laugh easily, and rarely let uncomfortable emotions sit visibly on my face for too long. Humour became my survival tool long before writing did. Whenever friends tried checking in on me emotionally, I usually brushed it off with jokes.

I left an abusive marriage. Four turbulent years later, their father abducted them, taking them out of the country and out of my reach for more than two years. When they finally came home, we were no longer the same people. In the aftermath, I began writing our story in the margins of my life, after work, before school events, and between counselling sessions, trying to make sense of what had happened to us.

I was called a survivor before I understood the word, and styled as a victim long after I stopped recognising myself in it. I am Srijani, a writer, poet and educator based in India. Being a neurodivergent survivor myself, I have expressed my thoughts on victimhood and the perspectives on it in my article. I hope this helps you understand and navigate what victimhood is and how it stands in the socio-cultural, emotional and psychological contexts we live in.

Israel did not allow foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip as it carried out its genocide. In their absence, every person with internet access became a war correspondent. Civilians filmed their ruined homes; fathers stood for photos holding plastic bags containing the remains of their children. A little girl named Renad shared Instagram Reels of recipes made from the rations received in aid packages.

Many of us would like to think that we always believe the survivors first. That we sympathise with them. But often, what we really believe in is the idea of the “perfect victim.” Victimhood, at least publicly, sometimes comes with unwritten rules. There are expectations people place upon survivors, things they expect to see that qualify someone as believable. You are expected to be visibly hurt, emotionally open and undeniably vulnerable. Your pain has to look recognisable bu

On a spring day in 2023, I was subbed on at half-time in a rugby game between my university team and the British Army. Two minutes into the second half, I clashed heads with a teammate and briefly lost consciousness. When I came to, I realised something felt very wrong. My first thought was about the exams I had in two months. In the end, the exams went smoothly, and I returned to rugby within 2 months.

Lifestyle advice has become almost inseparable from conversations about mental health. Open a newspaper, scroll through social media, or visit a health website, and the message is strikingly consistent: exercise regularly, eat well, sleep properly, reduce alcohol, stay connected. These recommendations are usually well-intentioned and evidence-based. Yet for people living with severe mental illness (SMI), they can feel strangely out of reach.

Amidst growing discourse surrounding mental health, there is one condition that, I feel, has been left out. That condition is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The condition has been discussed previously on Inspire The Mind, both in regard to avoidance and reproductive care and first-hand, lived experience. I strongly recommend reading these pieces to get a fuller understanding of the condition.

I want to ask you a question. How many close friends do you have? And I mean close friends - friends you could call at 11pm in an emergency and they’d pick-up the phone. Friends who know the things about you which you don’t post on social media. My name is Tom Stroud, and I’m the co-founder of the Shoulder to Shoulder men’s community. In this article, I talk about why feeling connected to others is the most important factor in long-term health and happiness.

Just a few weeks ago, before speaking on a panel for Black Inclusion Week, I suffered a major panic attack. From the outside, nobody would have known. The “Mental Health Jedi” public persona still worked perfectly well. But internally, I felt completely drained — anxious, overwhelmed, and emotionally flat. Not dramatic, not visibly distressed, just… absent. The strange thing is, that feeling wasn’t new to me. Over the years, I’ve become particularly good at performing while e

I’m eight years old and I receive my first phone. I am discovering social media, there is COVID, and I experience bursts of happiness in doing TikTok dances. Overthinking every comment and every “like”. “Will I get 100 likes today?” This dance, that routine, the lip sync, the newest trend. I am 10 years old, and I love seeing older girls posting makeup and hair tutorials. “I want to grow up to be just like them”. Looking at videos about beauty makes me curious and excited.

I was four years old when I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder (a mental health condition characterised by anxiety about many different day-to-day situations). As an anxious kid, I became very good at performing competence, earning the “gifted kid” label. I was often bullied by my peers, so I found comfort in books, where I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I put all my efforts into academics and prided myself on being the one who always knew the answer.

With men combating loneliness, suicide and the rise of the manosphere, Men’s groups are providing an opportunity to explore masculinity and the pressure they feel. From prison support groups to men-only hikes in nature, from dad clubs to celebrity circles, men are turning to a growing number of communities and brotherhoods to explore their identity, connect with their emotions, and voice their concerns.

I am writing this piece as I believe that navigating addiction within a family is a unique experience that only those who have lived through it can truly understand. I hope these reflections offer some hope to others walking the same path. If anyone came across my family now, you would never be able to tell what we have been through. And although our bond is so unique and tight, our past cannot go unnoticed. In my case, things were different from the beginning. Even though, a

My name is Liam Virgo, and I am an advocate for functional neurological disorder (FND), pushing to raise awareness for this life-changing condition. For the past ten years, I have been fighting a quiet, gruelling war to reclaim my body and my identity after a sudden illness turned my teenage world upside down. While the physical realities of severe FND are devastating, the profound mental health struggles, emotional scars.

I’ve noticed something weird, the last few years: people think I’m friendly. I’m referred to as outgoing, and even, occasionally, extroverted. It feels like I’ve pulled off some magnificent con–because for much of my childhood, I was deeply lonely, and through my adolescence, that loneliness gave me terrible anxiety. This is a story of growth before it is anything else–mostly because I started, socially, around rock bottom.

No matter what, at least I have control. Or that’s what I used to think…When I was 14, I was admitted into hospital with an eating disorder; I left my home, my family, and my community all behind. Not knowing how long it would be until I was able to go home, I was scared and very alone.

Loneliness is sometimes sad and uncomfortable, and I think we like to pretend it isn’t happening when it is. We hide the feeling from people we know, like saying it out loud means something is wrong. I now reject this and would like to say: I need social connection, and I’m not afraid to say it anymore!

Overnight, at the age of nine, I went from an energetic, sociable child to housebound and isolated as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) and other comorbidities shrunk my world to my bedroom. ME is a chronic, fluctuating disease that causes symptoms such as severe fatigue, post-exertional malaise, pain, sleep problems, and brain fog. It can leave people bed or housebound, and there is currently no cure. As the years passed, I tried every form of low‐energy activity that I cou

Ever heard of picture perfect? Clicking posts, attracting attention, wanting to feel validated. Validated. Something so many teenage girls, like me, crave the feeling of. Ever looked at yourself in the mirror and not seen your true potential? All you see is what others want of you. All you see is a dysmorphic image of who you seem to be, a monster to you, and a so-called ‘perfect girl’ to others. My name is Joana.

Every year during Men’s Health Week, we see more conversations around mental health, wellbeing, cancer awareness and the importance of speaking up - which of course, should absolutely be applauded. But there’s still a long way to go when it comes to helping men feel genuinely comfortable talking about their health. This is especially true when it comes to topics that feel personal, embarrassing or vulnerable - like testicular cancer.

A perfect column of khaki moves across the concrete. 300 pairs of legs marching in unison, with military precision. If not for the basketball hoops on either end of our parade square, we would be indistinguishable from professional soldiers. The occasional adolescent voice crack of the parade sergeant not withstanding, we were that good, or at least so we all believed. I am right in the centre, where everyone can see.