As a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, I spend a lot of time teaching students about child development, mental health, and the evidence surrounding digital technology use. Recently, proposals to ban social media access for under-16s have gained increasing political support in the UK. The idea is simple and appealing: if social media is harming young people's mental health, remove access and the problem will improve. The ban was put into

Racing heart, sweaty palms, feelings faint, and nausea are just some of the physiological manifestations of dental anxiety experienced by patients and witnessed by dental professionals every day. Working in a general dental practice, I have encountered countless individuals who begin their appointment by declaring, "I hate the dentist," before anything else is said. For many, these feelings extend far beyond simple nervousness.

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’ve always been fascinated by the gap between what people know they should do and what they actually do. Why do some people ignore health advice, while others make lasting changes to improve their wellbeing? As a lecturer in health psychology, I spend most of the academic year teaching and supervising research on health promotion and behaviour change. We explore why people smoke, struggle to exercise regularly, attend screening appointments, or take medication as prescribed.

Eric Kandel, Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist in Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, argues that our brain is not a camera that simply replicates an image. It is a creativity machine that takes incomplete information from the outside world and makes it complete. This means when you stand before a masterpiece, you're not passively observing, you're actively creating meaning. In The Age of Insight, Kandel calls this the beholder's share: a concept rooted in art history and

As my friends and I approach our 25th birthdays, we have been apprehensively awaiting the arrival of our text messages from the NHS inviting us to our first cervical screenings. These screenings, previously referred to as smear tests, are offered every 5 years to people with a cervix aged 25 to 64 to check cervical health and help prevent cervical cancer. During the appointment, a tube-shaped tool called a speculum is inserted into the vagina and a sample of cells is taken fo

Have you ever found yourself staring out of the window on a train and suddenly realised you had no idea how many stops had passed? Most of us know what it’s like to experience these mild and temporary mental “check-outs” from time to time but might not realise that these sorts of feelings or experiences exist on the spectrum of dissociation, a term used to describe a range of experiences involving a disrupted or altered sense of connection to thoughts, memories, emotions, the

My name is Nina, and I am a Senior Research Fellow at the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice. This year, on the occasion of Men’s Health Week, I wanted to share how co-producing research and working alongside young men can help us understand and address the crisis in men’s mental health, drawing on my experience leading the Men Minds project as Principal Investigator.