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Who are the Psych Stars?
Selected by The Royal College of Psychiatrists, Psych Star ambassadors are a group of final year medical students awarded for their particular interest and commitment to psychiatry. During the year-long scheme as Psych Stars, students are nurtured in their interest in psychiatry through the assignment of mentors, by gaining access to learning resources and events, and by becoming part of a network of like-minded students.
We have decided to invite each of the Psych Stars to write a blog on how they envision the future of mental health by choosing an area in which they are passionate. We have decided to run the series as a celebration of these student’s success and to provide an outlook for each of the awardees to share their passion.
Steps Towards Eating Disorder Recovery: Real-Life Snakes and Ladders
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.
Lydia Eriksson
24 hours ago5 min read
Angel of My Dreams: My Love-Hate Take on the Victoria’s Secret Show
I will unashamedly admit that I have watched the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show every year since I was 14. I remember visiting the flagship store in New York City, proudly standing in front of their display of Kendall Jenner’s debut outfit, as an eager 16-year-old waiting to post this onto my Instagram feed. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realise how conflicted this show makes me feel. The nuances beneath the wings, the glitz, the glimmer, and the seemingly perfect, ye
Riddhi Laijawala
2 days ago5 min read
Beyond Postnatal Depression
Maternal mental health is often framed through a single question: does postnatal depression affect the baby? And intuitively, this makes sense. It seems obvious that experiencing poor mental health while caring for a newborn could have negative impacts on the baby. But emerging evidence suggests this framing is too narrow. It may not simply be the presence of symptoms after birth that matters, but when they occur - and what they reflect about longer-term vulnerability.
Sorcha Alford
3 days ago6 min read
A Young Man Dies. Trump Makes It a Joke.
Last Saturday (11 October 2026), a young man with mental illness, William Chapman, died in horrific circumstances at Yorkshire Wildlife Park here in the UK. His family were left to face an unimaginable loss. The President of the United States shared footage of the attack and then circulated an AI-generated version in which he, Trump, became the star. We find it difficult to imagine a more grotesque response from someone entrusted with public office.
Inspire the Mind
4 days ago5 min read
Verity: The Trouble with Being Certain
In Verity, Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to continue the successful novel series of Verity Crawford, played by Anne Hathaway, after a serious accident leaves her apparently unable to work. Moving into the Crawford family home, Lowen discovers a manuscript that appears to reveal disturbing truths about Verity’s life. Her growing attraction to Verity’s husband, Jeremy, makes the task of deciding whom to believe even more complicated. Directed by
Tony Woods
5 days ago5 min read
The Victors Write History: How Title IX Gives Perpetrators the Last Word
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
Anonymous
Oct 166 min read
Living In-Between: What Recurrent Loss Taught Me About Carrying Grief
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
Tassia O'Callaghan
Oct 155 min read
The Cornell 7: Shocking, Disturbing, Yet All Too Familiar
As a mental health research assistant, writer and editor for Inspire the Mind, this is not the first time I have written about sexual violence, and I fear it will not be the last. Sexual violence is not new, nor is the outrage that follows it. For decades, women have shared their stories, challenged harmful attitudes and demanded greater accountability. Yet, despite these efforts, allegations of sexual violence continue to emerge, each a painful reminder of how much remains u
Camila Ribeiro
Oct 145 min read
Can Hypnosis Help Actors Become Their Characters?
At first glance, acting and hypnosis may seem like very different worlds. But both raise a surprisingly similar question: how can the mind make an imagined reality feel real enough to change what we experience? This question has followed me for years. My name is Tiago Garcia, and my background in Film Studies first made me interested in how actors build characters.
Tiago Garcia
Oct 135 min read
Idling High: Anxiety, Obsession, and Persistence
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.
John Sergio
Oct 125 min read
When My Son Ran Away, My Boyfriend’s Daughter Mended My Broken Heart
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.
Samantha Ortega
Oct 95 min read
Reimagining Our Understanding of Self-Harm in Young People
I am currently a visiting researcher at Imperial College London as part of the Mood Instability Research group. I am particularly interested in applying computational approaches, such as machine learning to complex data, to better understand mental health. Machine learning is a computational approach that can examine multiple factors simultaneously and identify patterns in data sets, that may not be apparent when using traditional statistical approaches.
Elixandra Dawa
Oct 85 min read
The Village We Lost: Parenting, Isolation in a Mobile World
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).
Robyn Doolan
Oct 74 min read
14 Months on a Sub-Antarctic Island: A Laboratory for Earth and Mind
Imagine sailing through the most chaotic latitudes of Earth: the so-called Roaring 40s and furious 50’s, uncharted southern seas where your ship, the Marion Dufresne II, is the sole vessel carving a path through these distant waves. After 20 days, you reach a remote island where you’ll spend a whole year with 28 strangers, surrounded by albatrosses, subantarctic fur seals, southern elephant seals, orcas, and penguins. 29 humans. No one else.
Virgile Legendre
Oct 65 min read
What Resident Evil Reveals About Fear, Avoidance, and Courage
When we first meet Bryan, the main character of the new movie Resident Evil, his biggest problems have nothing to do with zombies. He’s a regular guy, working as a medical courier, rushing to finish his final delivery of the night so he can finally go home.
Melisa Kose
Oct 56 min read
Shadowed — A Short Story
My street is dirty and chaotic, and it does not end. It just goes on and on and on, feeding into other roads and other streets that all look the same. They wrap themselves around this island, squeezing it, constricting it – sucking the life out of it.
Robert Monk
Oct 27 min read
Can Treating Psychosis Reduce Motivation and Pleasure?
I am Martin Osugo, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist working to improve the lives of people with schizophrenia through both clinical practice and research. I first became deeply interested in schizophrenia in my first year of medical school. That interest eventually led me to a PhD at King’s College London’s Department of Psychosis Studies, two years after I qualified as a doctor. I have cared for people with psychosis in my community and inpatient settings.
Martin Osugo
Oct 15 min read
When 'No' Is a Good Outcome: Redefining Success in Cancer Research
At the core of any healthcare or science degree, students learn the importance of numbers. Specifically, “bigger” is often synonymous with “success”. It has been viscerally etched into my brain since my undergraduate Psychology research methods and statistics courses: a larger sample size, meaning more individuals enrolled in a study, increases statistical power and overall confidence in the findings.
Valentina Muñoz
Sep 304 min read
From Barriers to Better Research
What does it take to conduct biological mental health research with young people, and what can get in the way? My name is Camila, and I’m a Research Assistant at the Stress Psychiatry and Immunology Lab at King’s College London. Around three years ago, I first joined the team during my undergraduate placement year, working primarily on the CELEBRATE project.
Camila Ribeiro
Sep 296 min read
The Whitening of the Nation: Erasing Identity in South America
Passionate about history and the lasting impacts of colonisation, I never imagined I’d one day be able to connect it to football, or the World Cup. Yet the 2026 World Cup final made it impossible to ignore the link. The World Cup final between Spain and Argentina was a legendary match for many fans. One that I managed to tune in to watch live. Many saw this as the Lamine Yamal vs Lionel Messi match. One to solidify the legacy of future football.
Suvi Pushpakanthan
Sep 285 min read
Why Has Male Fertility Been Ignored for Over 2,000 Years?
I study sperm for a living, so I am used to the giggles and raised eyebrows. But here is the fact that surprises almost everyone: we understood the female reproductive system in reasonable scientific detail well before we understood the male one — and in some ways, we are still catching up. This is not an abstract interest for me. As a young and inquisitive scientist, I quickly realised how little knowledge existed around male reproductive health, which pushed me to pursue a
Daniel Marcu
Sep 255 min read
The iDoctor Revolution: Could Your Smartphone Replace Your Therapist?
The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just spread loneliness and hopelessness - it pushed the already-stretched mental health services past breaking point. Mental health disorders rose by 25% in the pandemic’s first year alone. Traditional, in-person care couldn’t keep up. So, healthcare systems turned to digital interventions delivered through a patient’s phone. 85% of NHS trusts in England now offer digital mental health interventions to adult patients.
Maddalena Cipriani
Sep 246 min read
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