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I am at Week 10 of my training plan for the 2025 London Marathon. My first  marathon.   I know running is good for my mental health , but this is when I aimlessly go for a run on a beautiful day and run until I feel like it – not  when I have a busy schedule of increasingly longer runs and progressively more tiring weeks of intense physical activity, all while the deadline is approaching of an enormous effort that I may never finish.   So yes, I am stressed about it. And what do I do to cope with stress? I study the topic, as an academic question. And this piece is the results of my studies.   Having spent countless hours reading blogs, scrolling through runners’ social media accounts, listening to podcasts, and talking with marathoner friends, in this piece, I have summarised the things that I have learned about training for a marathon that are endorsed by so many sources that they must be true. This knowledge is keeping my stress at manageable levels and it is protecting my mental health. I hope it can help other fellow runners training for the London Marathon or any other in the next few months.   I am broadly following the TCS Improver Training Plan  by the organisers of the London Marathon. In my usual grandiosity, I have chosen the plan for “runners who may have already completed a marathon and are looking to improve on a previous performance” – despite the fact I’ve never run one. Surely running five half-marathons is just the same, right?   Unsurprisingly, you do need to run a lot  to train for a marathon. What I’ve come to realise is that it’s not just about running long distances. You need to be training at a variety of speeds, both below and above your target speed for the race.   Surprisingly, the most difficult part of the training is running slower than you think, in the so called “Heart Zone 2”. Zone 2 is the easy-level running in which you are able to have a conversation or sing your favourite song aloud, albeit with some effort. For me, it would be a recent Italian trashy song, a so called “tormentone”.   Running in Zone 2, the theory goes, improves muscles’ ability of creating energy by increasing the amount of blood vessels and of mitochondria - the cellular organs responsible for energy production - in the muscles. Indeed, a recent analysis of scientific literature  in this field confirms this. Above Zone 2 (in “Zone 3”), you start producing lactic acid, which is the breakdown product when blood sugar is used to give energy to the muscles.   Your easy runs should be long – really long and getting longer. Last Sunday mine was 25.6km, in two weeks it will be 29km. The longest will be 30-32km, and you should never run for longer than this until you are in the race . The crowd will lift you and carry you for the last 10-12 km of the marathon, even if you have never run it before – or so everybody says.   However, because it’s so slow, this training alone will not allow you to run at a fast pace on the day of the marathon, it will only help you to run for a long period of time. So, you also need “interval training” - you run fast (reaching the top 10-20% of your maximum heart rate) for a few minutes, then recover with jogging, then repeat. This high-speed interval training will allow you to improve your speed and performance on the day of the race. The problem is, running is not enough. Everybody says that you must do physical exercise other than running, and I really agree. Weightlifting, cross-training, anaerobic exercise, biking, find what you like and get your legs strong and your core tight, to prevent injuries and reduce fatigability.   As I discussed in ITM before, I am a Kung Fu martial artist  and as such I have a routine of 2 hours of Tai Chi and 4 hours of Kung Fu per week, plus a whole-day training camp every 3-4 months. In addition, I do 2 hours of cross-fit. When I decided to train for the marathon, I also decided that my routine would not change – because it is  really important for my mental health. So, I added my running to this routine.   I started out thinking that marathon training was going to help me lose weight. Not so. You need to eat a lot , especially before, during and after the long runs. Before the long run you should have a big breakfast 2 hours before beginning, or a small one 30-45 minutes before, plus 30-60 mg of carbohydrates (sugar) per hour of running . This is the equivalent of 2-3 bananas or 75-150 raisins per hour ! And then you need a second breakfast, within one hour of finishing the run, or half an hour if you are a woman, with both carbohydrates and proteins, for repairing muscle stress and replenish energy storage.   Of course, most of the carbohydrates during the long runs will not come from food but will come from sport gels. There are so many and there are many reviews online, but, basically, try as many types/brands as possible when you train, so that you know which one you like and will work on the day of the marathon.   Also, do not forget to drink water and  sport/electrolyte drinks, before, during and after a run. Drink a lot, like, really a lot, especially if it is hot outside. Dehydration is a serious, life-threatening problem, especially during long runs, and hydration before you start is crucial: unless your urine is clear or a very pale yellow, don’t go on a long run. Talk about anxiety-provoking knowledge.   It's important to remember that after a run you must force  yourself to eat and drink, even if you will not be feeling hungry or thirsty. The run activates our body stress response, and this will shut down our sensations of hunger and thirst as it prioritises our “flight or fight” response. So, tell your body that there are no lions in the room and that instead you need to eat and drink.   Alcohol: you are not supposed to drink it during training, but I am ignoring this. Well, I have decreased it but not stopped it. I think this is also helping with my stress levels. Drinking less, I mean.   One thing that is certainly helping my mental health since I began training is to sleep more . I made only one new year’s resolution coming into 2025 which was to improve my sleeping habits.   Professional runners sleep 12 hours a day when they train – 10 hours at night plus a nap of 2 hours. While admittedly most of us cannot do this, I have been trying to maximise my healthy level of sleep. I’ve started organising dinners with friends earlier than usual, and when at home I force myself to stop watching TV. One suggestion I heard, and really liked, is that you should not  wake up early just to run. Sleep it’s such a priority that you must shuffle your engagements and find another time of the day to run, but must not sacrifice your sleep.   Is this knowledge helping me?   There is a risk that so many online recommendations and opinions activate the obsessive academic in me, so at some point I had to stop reading and focussing on what I knew – and I have summarised here.   Remember, there is only one way to enjoy the marathon : train, train, train. The harder you train, the easier the race day will be.   Or so I am hoping and praying.   I am running the marathon to support the Psychiatry Research Trust , a charity that promotes research and education in mental health (please support me here ).

A hard pill to swallow Upon being confirmed to have cancer, you realise that so much of it is physical. Which is a hard pill to swallow, because you’d battled so much of it in private before reaching the point of diagnosis. Maybe you’d batted off your symptoms, blaming them on your young age or other easily explainable factors, be it a winter virus or the menopause. Maybe you’d battled to be taken seriously by doctors, who wouldn’t scan you until you’d come back time and time again. Or maybe you suffered in silence, so sure that your problem would amount to nothing, until it became obvious to everyone that it wouldn’t. Image Source: Netflix So, this sharp juxtaposition forms an even harder pill to swallow, but one of many that you’ll have no choice to. It’s made even more painful when you discover that there are people out there who act like they not only sympathise with this plight – but are going through it too. The key word being ‘act’ – as neither now nor ever did they really have cancer too. This kind of forgery is an abstract, invisible concept, but one that leaves a physical, emotional, and very real path of disruption and mistrust in its wake. Although faking a diagnosis is rare, it happens, and one example re-establishing base in everyone’s mind at present is that of Belle Gibson. Gibson is a former wellness influencer, so prolific that she broke the boundaries of just one means of business reach.  From 2012, she enjoyed a significant presence that developed from an Australian Instagram account into a booming global empire, The Whole Pantry. This took Gibson to the US and beyond, with her book held physically on shelves and in eager hands across these countries, and app soon associated with big-name brands and the phone habits of keen consumers. On the face of it, this sounds admirable. Back before Instagram’s power exploded, let alone influencer culture, it sounds impressive for a woman in her early twenties, particularly one who didn’t come from a family with industry connections, to have built such a kingdom. But, of course, Gibson gained her keys to hers from a trail of lies – most prolifically, that all of this was born from an undesirable prognosis of terminal brain cancer. She went onto commit a series of further unethical practices, including falsely claiming to have donated to charities and ill children. Back in viewers’ consciences You may well be familiar with Netflix’s retelling of this sorry saga. Apple Cider Vinegar hit the screens last month, reopening the decade-old dialogue of derision that soon came to swirl around Gibson when she was caught by journalists in her native Australia. My fellow Inspire the Mind writer Courtney Worrell has already recapped this so eloquently. But what I’m interested in after joining the show’s legions of viewers is how this feels for genuine young cancer survivors. As I recently wrote for Inspire the Mind, I too, was diagnosed with blood cancer at 15. Although I got through treatment and have lived in remission since, I’m still passionate about the effects of such an experience, which transcend the physicality it’s so immediately associated with. I’m interested in the psychological impacts that sometimes only emerge years down the line, so took the opportunity to speak to those in this field to gauge their reactions to the situation Gibson engineered for herself. A still from the show's trailer via Netflix Shawna Tarant is PhD researcher in Health Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, focusing on decision-making around the fertility of young cancer patients. I agree this is another gruelling yet overlooked element of the process genuine cancer patients have to face. She told me: "Within the cancer community, patients and survivors often seek hope and rely on others' experiences for guidance and support. This betrayal of trust highlights the need for caution when engaging with online cancer communities. While they can be valuable and supportive, it’s also essential to seek information from healthcare professionals who are directly involved in patient care." Shawna is right. I remember trying to absorb as much often-limited information as I could when I heard my diagnosis. This came just a year before Gibson began her public lies – and while I didn’t stumble across these as I began to adapt to a post-treatment reality, I so easily could have, as many other young patients around the world did. When you’re feeling so vulnerable and isolated, it’s easy to believe the reassuring words of others, whether you choose to take them as gospel or simply for some comfort. At this age, it’s unlikely that your existing friends, or maybe even family, have also experienced cancer, so it’s tempting to trial online communities and support networks. Of course, these are almost always genuine and helpful, but Gibson’s case doubles as a stark alert that much can be masked behind the screens. Doesn’t represent our realities I also wanted to explore how teenage cancer survivors like me feel about Gibson’s claims. Beckii, who is in remission from ovarian cancer, said: “It’s sad to see how desperate people are for fame and attention. The Fault in our Stars romanticised cancer and made it seem like a dramatic love story when the reality is so far from the truth. The fact is, cancer is an awful group of diseases that rob people of their ability to be themselves. It tears families apart, separates loved ones, and in some cases, takes your life altogether. Why you would want to pretend to be sick with such a disease type, is beyond me. Your claim to fame has nothing on my story. You didn’t live it. It’s an insult to all survivors and those who lost their lives to even attempt to claim that you did.” An element of poor mental health must propel individuals like Gibson to initiate and then maintain such sweeping lies, not backing out either in an admission of guilt, or panic, but instead investing more fully in the deceit once it starts to gain momentum. And the occurrence of Munchausen syndrome , a ‘psychological condition where someone pretends to be ill or deliberately produces symptoms of illness in themselves’ according to the NHS, is well-documented. So, maybe in some cases, society could extend some degree of empathy for individuals whose relationship with reality is distorted. But for many young cancer survivors, those who practice in the industry, and even just innocent and interested observers to the cancer community, Gibson’s story – in every sense of the word – is met with outrage. The wellness industry, often with pure intentions, has grown exponentially in the past decade. It can bring good, and not every member should be tarred with the same brush, of course. Although few figures in it will ever be as extreme in any mode as Gibson, we should continue to heed the warnings of her case. The adage used to be: ‘don’t believe everything you read in the paper’, but now it too has grown, to include everything you see on your apps, hear through your podcasts and watch via your video streaming, too. Image source: Author's own.

As a plant biologist at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University, I am passionate about sustainable food security and resilience. I truly believe that we can have a better food system that promotes planetary health — a wholesome food system that considers both the environmental impact and the health impact on the consumers, including mental health. Broad beans are usually blanched after shelling from the pods but they can be cooked in so many ways!. Image courtesy of Gilmerdiaz Estela from Pexels Currently, I am developing a new plant biotechnology technique that accelerates the improvement of our food crops to make them climate-resilient and produce valuable compounds for health improvement — ultimately, making functional food more accessible to everyone, not just the privileged few. Considering the increasing mental health challenges globally and the lack of innovation in our food systems, I believe we must leverage the food we eat — particularly those we can grow locally — to buffer the waiting period for treatments or even prevent the onset of mental health issues. Most importantly, the people who are growing our food, the farmers, are increasingly affected by mental health issues due to extreme weather changes that affect crop production. Hence, the same food crop that can improve mental health should also be accessible to these growers for their own use.   One such food crop that fits the bill is the humble broad bean or fava bean. The broad bean, like most species in the bean family (Fabaceae), can fix nitrogen from the air with the help of symbiotic soil bacteria. This means that we can grow broad beans and enrich the soil without using nitrogen fertilisers, that can otherwise cause various adverse environmental effects. On the mental health side, broad beans contain uniquely high levels of L-DOPA, a precursor of dopamine, the “happy molecule”. L-DOPA is well known to be used in treatments of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, but not many people are aware that it was first isolated from broad beans around 1910-1913 due to its effects on Parkinson’s disease patients!   The broad bean has a long history of being traditionally grown in the UK since the Iron Age. These beans have also been dubbed “Celtic beans” by archaeologists due to their discovery in ancient archaeological sites across Britain. Despite being consumed for centuries, they are considered a neglected crop and not widely recognised for their functional food properties. Recent studies on how the dopaminergic pathway could alleviate depression bring new opportunities to bring broad beans, with their unique property of high L-DOPA, back into the food system as an accessible functional food for better mental health. Flowers of the broad bean plants are usually white with a purple patch but occasionally can also be red crimson colour. Image courtesy of Magda Ehlers from Pexels Of interest is a study from Emory University that showed L-DOPA administration to patients with depression displaying high levels of inflammation can improve one major symptom of depression: anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure). With the recent identification of six biological types of depression and anxiety , it is promising that L-DOPA could alleviate the symptoms of anhedonia. Therefore, foods with high L-DOPA such as broad beans provide an accessible functional food that can be consumed to improve mental health.   While broad beans themselves have not yet been clinically tested for alleviating anhedonia and depressive symptoms (thought we're currently seeking funding for this!), several clinical cases and studies have shown significant improvements in Parkinson’s patients due to the bean’s L-DOPA content. Additionally, L-DOPA treatment on mice also showed reduced Alzheimer’s symptoms and improved memory. However, L-DOPA levels can vary significantly among different bean varieties , hence the difficulty in determining the exact dosage required for effective treatment. Some varieties also contain vicine and convicine — compounds that can cause favism , a potentially fatal genetic condition affecting a small portion of the population (famously including Pythagoras).   Beyond L-DOPA, broad beans also contribute to better mental health through other mechanisms. As seen with other pulses (which refers to dried beans from legume crops), broad beans contain high amounts of fibers and high amounts of antioxidants that promote a healthy gut microbiome that affects the gut-brain axis, which is important for mental well-being. When fermented or germinated (as bean sprouts or microgreens), broad beans can also produce GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) , another chemical that can promote relaxation and reduce anxiety.   Therefore, to raise awareness of the mental health benefits of broad beans, I have initiated a small campaign called “ Broad’n Mind ”. This initiative aims to provide resources and information about broad beans and how they can improve mental health, versatile recipes to incorporate these beans in delicious meals, and how we can improve these beans further for better nutritional value.   Broad bean or fava bean is only one of the many unique plants that can promote better mental health. Plant biotechnology should go beyond simply boosting crop yields — it should also focus on improving the nutritional quality of our food to support overall health, including mental health.   With a bit of creativity, we can develop crops that are both highly nutritious and climate-resilient. By harnessing the power of innovation, we can create accessible, functional foods that nourish the mind while advancing sustainable agriculture.

My parents never went to college. As a result, the expectations placed on me as a child were high—so much so that those same expectations directly contributed to my failure to meet them.   These days, I work as a freelance writer, author, and game developer. But, this wasn’t the path that was plotted out for me as a child, irrespective of the struggles that I was facing at the time and to this day. Like most autistic women, I was not diagnosed as a child. Unfortunately, this is true for far too many of us, with a whopping 80% of women and girls with autism going undiagnosed before the age of 18 . The diagnostic criteria for autism were designed with the needs and behaviours of young boys in mind , not taking into account that women sometimes present differently, and are also expected to act differently as well. Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels I was always told that I was a smart kid. And boy did it show. By the age of two, I was reading and, in kindergarten, I would awkwardly approach my peers to lecture them at length, not letting anyone else get a word in, about what I read, whether they cared about what I had to say or not. I would walk on my toes, flap my hands, and twirl my hair obsessively. When others yelled at me for this behaviour, I would get so stressed out that I’d do it even more. I now know that this was, and is, stimming and a common autistic behavioural profile.   In a girl, this behaviour is seen at best as “quirky”, and at worst annoying and something to target for bullying. In a boy, while it may have caused bullying as well, it also would have been taken more seriously as a warning sign to follow up with a paediatrician.   I did not have an easy time in primary or high school so I threw myself into my special interests as a way to cope. Unfortunately for me, one of my special interests was medicine. It was decided for me that I would therefore pursue medicine as an adult, starting with nursing school, so that I could work while achieving a “real” goal. My other interests were seen as unworthy of even consideration for a career.   A disaster waiting to happen Looking back, having a passion for my special interest alone was never going to be enough. Knowing what I do now, it was almost comical to send someone with the clear social deficits that I have into one of the most socially and emotionally demanding fields in the entire healthcare industry. And truth be told, my heart was never in it. I bore an intellectual interest in the subject, but I had little to no desire to interact with actual people – a key aspect of any role in medicine that didn’t involve confinement to a lab.   I remember joking at the time that I would be much happier as a lab technician if I had to go into healthcare at all, but all those around me wouldn't have it. I was either to become a nurse and then a physician, or nothing at all. It was presented to me as a dichotomy, one that with my more rigid ways of thinking I was unable to find any way out of.   The trouble began for me almost immediately. Nursing is a socially demanding profession. You need to connect with patients from all walks of life, deal with an ever-changing and high-stress environment, and demonstrate an ability to bounce back from setbacks of all kinds. These are all things that most autistic people struggle with . It's even worse when you walk into that situation, as many women do, without knowing that you're autistic.   Much like in my childhood, the difficulties I experienced in nursing school weren't seen as understandable aspects of my neurodevelopmental condition, but as personal moral failings. Even though my grades were fine, I found everything to be an uphill battle. I didn't understand why practical instructors would get upset with me seemingly at random, though I didn't believe I was doing anything offensive. At one point, an angry instructor even asked me point blank if I had a mental health condition or autism. I answered no, at the time. After all, no one had ever diagnosed me with one.   It's often said that autistic women mask better  than autistic men. I don't believe that to be true. I think it's more so that we're expected to mask more than autistic men are, so we're treated much more harshly when we don't. Instead of something innate, I believe that it’s a result of female vs male socialisation and expectations. It's a big contributor to why autistic women experience more depression, anxiety, and internalising behaviours than autistic males .   Photo by Leeloo The First from Pexels Unlike regular classes, clinical rotations are pass or fail. And whether or not you make the cut depends largely on the discretion of your instructor. Your ability to connect with your patients, navigate challenging situations, and understand subtext, plays a large role in whether or not you make the cut. And because of issues that I didn't even understand at the time, I ultimately did not. Failing a clinical rotation, even if your grades in the course overall were exemplary, results in a failure of the course and the semester as a whole. Even after an appeal, there was nothing that I could have done to absolve the social deficits I displayed in my rotation or progress in the program.   For a long time after I left nursing school, I struggled with my failure. I couldn't understand why, no matter what I did and for my entire life, people just didn't like me. I couldn't help but blame myself for it. After all, everyone else seemed to.   Reflecting on experience led to answers Some parents weigh the pros and cons  of getting their child assessed while they're young, not wanting to slap them with a “label” that will affect the course of their development and follow them for life. There is a certain logic to that. But it's based on false assumptions. Like any late-diagnosed autistic person will tell you, not receiving the “label” in childhood doesn't make you less autistic . It simply deprives you of necessary support. It leaves you feeling like your struggles with social connections are because you're inherently a bad person, rather than because of a difference in the way your brain is wired.   I don't know if my childhood would have been that different if I'd been diagnosed young. I probably still would have been bullied without mercy. But I do know that I would have had the self-knowledge to choose a field that was better suited to me. I would likely have had better coping skills to manage the demands of a college degree as well. When I was 25 years old, more out of fractured self-esteem than anything else, I decided to pursue higher education once again. This time, after self-reflection and being free of my family, I chose something with far fewer social demands: software development. It wasn’t my first choice; I wanted to go into graphic design to supplement my interest in web development. However, the chance to add application development to my freelance skills repertoire made it appealing. All the same, I soon noticed some of the same struggles yet again, namely difficulties communicating with my instructors and classmates. By that point, I suspected that I may be autistic due to long-standing social and sensory issues, along with others in my life pointing out the possibility, and within a year, I sought out an assessment as an adult. Photo by Polina from Pexels   In the words of my diagnostician, you “could have seen it from space”. The power of the right supports Some will say that there's little benefit to pursuing an autism diagnosis in adulthood. I disagree. Not only did it put a concrete word to a lifetime of struggles, but it also opened some doors. With the correct disability accommodations, I was able to get needed additional time on tests. My instructors were aware of the reason for my communication difficulties, and we were able to work around them with more patience and understanding. My differences were taken into account, not as something I was doing to make others angry, but simply as a difference in my brain that we needed to work with, and not against.   There's a certain grief to late diagnosis. It's a grieving of the life that you could have lived differently, had you only known why you felt so different to everyone else around you. Had you only known why what works for others didn't work for you, no matter how hard you tried.   But, it's sometimes better late than never at all. If I hadn't sought out a diagnosis, I don't doubt that I would have burned out on my second attempt at a degree out of frustration. With it, I was able to achieve my goal of higher education and feel better about who I am as a person.

For a moment, I stop taking notes. My office melts away in my periphery and the participant’s voice echoes in my head. This is the last question of the interview. The entire call has been difficult, there is nothing light-hearted about discussing trauma, but I didn’t expect things to take such a turn right before we finished. I cannot stop them from talking, but the more I listen, the more images from my own life flash across my eyes. I cannot block them out. Later, I will be glad we record each interview because the notes page in front of me is completely empty. The participant finishes recounting and I force myself to nod and speak. “I see, thank you so much for sharing this with me. I am sorry, this must have been very hard for you to experience. Would you like a minute before we move towards closing the interview?” That may have been a selfish ask and I am disappointed when they decline. “That is fine. We can close now. Thank you again for your time today. This has been very helpful. I will be in touch later today with the voucher code. Goodbye.” My smile drops the second I click ‘Leave’. With the day I have been having so far, the back-to-back meetings, research methods seminars, proofreading sessions, and the impending doom of unopened and unanswered emails, the interview has really left its mark. Tea. I need tea before I even attempt to write up my notes. The kitchenette is empty. I boil the kettle, and as I wait, I dissociate from everything around me, only to be jolted back to the present by my colleague’s alarmed voice. They have taken the kettle from my hand and are asking if I am okay. I look down and see the teacup overflowing with boiling water, running down the sides onto my hand. I scream.  Photo by Photo by saeed basseri on Pexels Being a researcher is not easy. It comes with unique stressors that can make accomplishing day-to-day tasks challenging. I am an early-career researcher, working as a Research Assistant on the MRC-funded U-Belong project , and I want to use this space to reflect on my experiences and observations of the research process, as well as ways in which I believe we can navigate the high-pressure environment of our work. I have only recently graduated from university, and I can already feel the immovable force of burnout that researchers and academics experience. There are grants to write, papers to submit for publishing in high-impact journals, classes to teach and assignments to mark, several research projects to carry out, and an infinite number of emails to answer. The work never seems to end. There isn’t even any space to engage in extracurricular activities. Then the research aspect itself can be very emotionally demanding, especially if the researcher is studying phenomena they have experienced themself. Be objective, driven, motivated, and always on the move. It is not nearly as simple, nor is it a reasonable demand. Career progression and promotions are often entirely dependent on publications in high-impact journals, presentations in international conferences, and procuring large amounts of funding for  “groundbreaking” research. There is also a circular argument here, wherein being able to acquire funding requires previous demonstration of quality research, but funding is necessary to conduct said research. This creates such enormous pressure on researchers to keep working without stopping to evaluate how their work is making them feel and the effect this pressure is having on them.  Clearly, structural changes to the ways that universities and funding bodies function are necessary and long due to relieve the pressure on researchers. Photo by Tara Winstead on Pixels While we continue to advocate for this, there are things researchers can do to manage their wellbeing to prevent things from boiling over to the point of disillusionment. If you think about it, our work and our (emotional, physical and mental) capacity are like a teacup brimming with hot liquid. And no matter how excited we are to drink it, things can go wrong. As we keep this analogy in mind, let’s explore some problems and solutions. Overfilled Teacup Sometimes there are miscalculations and the tea overflows. Similarly, sometimes we get engaged in work beyond our capacity, and this can have spillover effects on other things we are doing. If this was just tea, how would you prevent the leak from spreading too far? And if it already has, how would you manage the mess? A saucer/plate and a tissue, perhaps? In the workplace, this translates to coworkers you are close to. When things become overwhelming, it can help to just talk to someone about it, who can help absorb the negative feelings you are experiencing and be a safety net to fall back on. I do it, and it helps tremendously. Scalding Hot My tea is often too hot to drink. My first reaction is always dismay at ruining the drink. But actually, when I take a step back from it and let it cool, it reaches the perfect state. Work can also be like that, appearing too unapproachable and difficult to conquer. This can be because it objectively is so, or because you don’t feel prepared to start for the time being. A step back can do wonders in giving you the space to really introspect and become ready for it. Flavour Trouble Taking time away is not always possible, though. What if the tea is just inherently too sweet, bitter, or diluted? For me, this is the perfect excuse to have snacks and balance out the taste of the tea. What snack I choose depends on what is wrong with the tea, but it always helps. If work is too monotonous and it drops your motivation, consider listening to an audiobook or some music alongside to make it more enjoyable. Similarly, if it is too emotionally or mentally demanding, do it in shorter bursts and alternate with something that is less so. Miscalculating Cool-Off Period Have you ever added hot water to a half-drunk cup of tea and then burnt yourself because it is hotter than you had expected? This happens because the tea inside the cup is not completely cool, and the heat compounds. Our threshold for burnout works similarly. The first time you experience it, it takes a long time and a significant amount of work to reach the point of exhaustion. Then, you take a short break and go back, and this time, it takes less time and work to relapse, because you haven’t fully recovered. The more this happens, the quicker you reach burnout. So, taking meaningful breaks can make a real difference to your wellbeing. Intermittent Heating Waiting for the tea to completely cool down is ideal, but that too may not always be possible; sometimes you just don’t have the time. Therefore, you would want to keep checking your cup of tea as you add hot water to it to see when it reaches the right temperature, instead of waiting for it to burn you. Your wellbeing should be no different. You should not wait to burn out to take a break. You should introspect and check up on yourself from time to time to evaluate if you need to slow down, erring on the side of caution.   Researchers form the fabric of innovation. You and your expertise are integral to your work, but your achievements will be limited if you are not doing okay. If there is one thing you take away from this article, other than a strong craving for tea, it is that prioritising your wellbeing is necessary. Next time you drink tea, I hope you will be prompted to think about your wellbeing. And hey, who am I to tell anyone how to take their tea, but a biscuit (or three) with tea would only make it more enjoyable. Writers own graphic

Imagine watching your favourite film and feeling emotionally disconnected, as if your brain was struggling to engage with what’s on the screen. I am a postdoctoral research associate at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), and this is what I found in our new study exploring how adolescents with depression process emotional information encountered in everyday life, such as during movie watching. Using novel Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) methods (brain scans) to track brain activity in real-time as the scenes unfolded, our study uncovered key differences in how the brains of depressed and non-depressed adolescents engage with movie content. And the surprising tool for this discovery? A ten-minute clip from the animated film ‘Despicable Me’. Photo by Justin Lim on Unsplash A new way to explore adolescent depression Depression in young people can be difficult to understand, and even harder to diagnose. Many adolescents report feeling emotionally numb, but it’s not clear what’s happening in the brain to cause this experience. Traditional studies have often used static, single-frame images to study emotional processing in depression, such as still pictures of individuals overtly smiling, but such simplified pictures are rarely encountered in real life . Instead, emotional experiences only take on their full meaning in the context of multi-sensory information that evolves over seconds or minutes. That’s where this new study stands out. We scanned the brains of 84 adolescents (half with diagnosed depression and half without) while they watched a carefully selected clip from ‘Despicable Me’. The clip alternates humorous scenes where the adoptive caregiver, Mr Gru, develops a strong emotional connection with three little girls during bedtime stories, and sad scenes depicting them being taken away from him. By tracking fluctuations in brain activity throughout the movie clip, we could see how the adolescents’ brains reacted in real time to changing emotional content. What we found could help explain why depression feels so exhausting. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash What we found Our brains have two major circuits that help us pay attention to the world around us: The Dorsal Attention Network (DAN), which helps us consciously focus on things we choose to pay attention to, such as following a movie plot. The Ventral Attention Network (VAN), which helps us automatically notice unexpected details, such as a sudden change in loudness, brightness, or emotional facial expression. The study found that adolescents with depression overused the DAN and underused the VAN while watching ‘Despicable Me’. In other words, their brains had to work much harder to consciously make sense of the movie content, while struggling to naturally respond to unexpected changes in the scenes. And this effect was strongest during neutral scenes  when nothing dramatic was happening. Photo by Bhautik Patel on Unplash This suggests that the brains of depressed adolescents weren’t just reacting differently to overtly emotional moments but were also struggling to process more subtle, everyday social cues when the emotional content was more neutral and less emotionally intense. Why does this matter? Even though adolescents with depression might not outwardly show strong emotional reactions, their brains are putting in extra effort to process what’s happening around them, while being less likely to pick up on unexpected changes in their surroundings. This more effortful and less flexible way of handling emotions suggests that the depressed brain often misjudges how much energy it needs to make sense of its surroundings, even in situations without strong emotional content. Over time, this inefficient use of energy resources can lead to a general shutdown of the system, making it difficult for them to engage with the outside world, along with feelings of exhaustion and emotional numbness often reported in depression . Our study also highlights the importance of exploring how depressed adolescents navigate transitions between contexts of varying emotional intensity, rather than only focusing on their responses to highly intense emotional cues. This opens up exciting avenues for future research. In fact, our results support our previous findings  revealing similar changes in the same brain circuits in healthy participants who experience a lack of pleasure (anhedonia). In that study, unusual brain activity was most noticeable when participants listened to neutral music. Instead of relaxing after the emotional highs and lows of happy or sad music, their DAN remained unusually active. This difficulty in smoothly transitioning between emotional states at the brain level was linked to a flat emotional response at the behavioural level, where participants reported little difference in how they felt during happy, sad, or neutral music, indicating a more disengaged pattern of emotional reactivity overall. This is in line with depressive individuals’ accounts of feeling emotionally numb, disconnected from their emotions and perceiving the world as dull, empty and always the same. A fresh perspective on depression Our findings essentially challenge traditional views of depression, suggesting that scientists need to look beyond responses to intense emotional cues and pay more attention to the difficulties depressed adolescents may face in everyday neutral moments. By using ‘Despicable Me’ as a simple yet engaging tool, this study sheds light on a hidden challenge that many depressed adolescents face. Understanding how this unusual pattern of brain activity extends to other everyday social interactions, beyond movie watching, and why the brain struggles particularly during these neutral contexts, could help develop strategies to support more adaptive emotional and cognitive processing and make everyday experiences easier to navigate and less exhausting. So, next time you watch a movie, spare a thought for the incredible work your brain is doing behind the scenes - and how, for some, even a light-hearted animation can be a mental marathon.

The new Netflix sensation, Apple Cider Vinegar, is inspired by a true story but is not an entirely accurate portrayal, with new characters added and certain events fictionalised. “This is a true story based on a lie,” we’re reminded, as the cast breaks the fourth wall at the start of every episode. The next line, “Belle Gibson has not been paid for the recreation of her story”, is music to the ears of anyone who has watched the show – or has even just heard the story. Image source IMDB The series covers the story of Belle Gibson, an Australian Influencer who amassed an impressive following on @healing_belle, sharing her diagnosis of terminal brain cancer and journey back to health using holistic and nutritional measures. Her cult following led to the launch of a pioneering app, ‘The Whole Pantry,’ which shot to the top of the app charts, sharing nurturing recipes and wellness guides, inspiring others to take their health into their own hands, just as she had without the help of western medicine. Pocketing her over 1 million AUD and the support of Apple, the app soon became a book as she signed a deal with none other than Penguin, bringing her content to print at the height of her success. The catch? Belle Gibson never had cancer. As a viewer, I always lap up a scam series or investigative journalism takedown, but Apple Cider Vinegar hit particularly close to home for me. As someone who has seen several family members go through cancer treatment, Apple Cider Vinegar was a difficult watch. A triggering one with its particularly vivid portrayals of what it’s like to go through chemotherapy and the emotional depiction of the turmoil for everyone involved. But I don’t even think you’d need first-hand experience to feel the horror of this scandal. In 2015, when the revelation emerged that Gibson had lied about the foundation on which she had built her empire, headlines announcing that Penguin had not fact-checked her cancer diagnosis left a lot of people astonished. Hindsight is powerful though. Without knowing the fallout, would you question that someone would lie about something as grim as having cancer? However, there is another implication for the world of wellness here—a big one. Many viewers now say that if this story doesn’t make you realise the wellbeing industry is a scam, what will? Image source Ben King/Netflix via Stylist Apple cider vinegar—the bottled variety—doesn’t get much airtime in the series, save for a seemingly throwaway anecdote, which we’ll come back to. But it’s actually hugely symbolic. Well, in my interpretation. It’s been around forever as a simple ingredient for cooking, mainly used in dressings and marinades, adding a zing with its sour taste. However, the surge of social media saw the product emerge as huge wellbeing trend, and its popularity has steadily grown since. Due to claims surrounding several health benefits - including weight loss and balancing cholesterol - whether raw and unfiltered, in a sparkling beverage, or in the form of a gummy, you can buy it. Now, there is some evidence that apple cider vinegar has health benefits , but further research is needed to confirm several of the claims. Yet it’s still a leading product in a booming industry which many consume daily. Being undoubtedly one of the breakout stars in the wellbeing industry, the Netflix show writers knew what they were doing by naming the show as they did. With many knowing the product’s name and popularity, the writers have hinted that the show digs deeper than the actions of one individual, they’re telling us that Gibson’s actions represent the problems in the industry. Image source Ben King/Netflix via Express The last episode gives, in my opinion, one of the best examples of this show representing a bigger issue in the wellbeing industry. Crisis Manager, Hek, (most likely a fictional addition) shares some bold claims from Gibson that apple cider vinegar is a cure for a very confusing ailment. “…she told me how she looked in the mirror one night and she was covered in ringworm. She said someone on the internet recommended some apple cider vinegar. I don’t think it was a medical doctor. And she wants these ringworms gone, so she’s chugging it back, chugging it real fast. And then she starts to choke. There’s something inside her. She’s got to get it out. And then… Tapeworm. She swore to me, two feet long at least. She said the tapeworm was attracted to the vinegar and that it flushed it out, which makes no physical sense at all. Ringworm isn’t caused by tapeworm. Ringworm is a fungus. Tapeworm comes out of you’re a**, not your mouth. – But still, is that not magic? Drink a little bit of this stuff and you’re all cleansed. Pure again. I mean, how hopeful is that?” What this demonstrates is that Gibson has an undeniable lack of knowledge. And worse, she shared it. This individual shared health and wellbeing advice online. For anyone to hear - and specifically, actual cancer patients. Yet her medical knowledge was minimal at best. For what it’s worth, apple cider vinegar is not supported by medical professionals for the treatment of ringworm, nor tapeworm for that matter. And the only similarities between the two are four letters in the names. Rather than a critique of the consumer or those who took the advice of Gibson, the show makes us question why we are listening without knowing where anyone got their information. Why are we buying products without knowing the scientific validity behind the descriptions? Why do we invest in things without knowing if they have ever been tested? Gibson’s downfall was 10 years ago now – a time when 200,000 followers were comparable to present-day millions. This individual had access to a huge number of followers with whom she shared a lot of information. She had people downloading apps and paying for her book. Even before the cultural shift, this scandal was enormous, yet the growth of social media has still beckoned the growth of unfounded wellbeing claims. With even more of us active on social media today and influencer culture at its height, it is more important than ever to learn from this story and consume content with extreme caution, given that misinformation is rife. The potential reach is certainly a concern to be aware of. Image source Netflix Ultimately, Gibson – real life and fictional - was caught out when her philanthropic claims failed to materialise as charities she had pledged, and families she promised to support didn’t receive the funds. Stars aligned for those who had started to raise concerns surrounding the fidelity of her illness as this media outrage opened the door for further questioning. What else could she be lying about? Does she even have cancer? And just like that - poof - Gibson's stardom came crashing down in an instant. Netflix’s recreation isn’t just a form of entertainment. It’s a warning sign of what we believe and who we trust information from. That’s not necessarily to say that the whole industry is bad at its core , it just needs to be treated with extreme caution. Part of its strength is that the series shows us the real damage that can be done and the danger of misinformation, even in a time when social media platforms were in their infancy. It serves as a cold, stark reminder, not to take everything at face value, especially given the fallout could be even worse now. The deplorable fact is that Gibson managed to build a platform based on fiction and ultimately profited from an extremely vulnerable population. People’s lives were at stake at the cost of her actions, and cancer, quite frankly, is not something to mess around with. Sadly, she still hasn’t been held to account for her actions, but the success of the new show demonstrates that she will never be let off lightly.

Content warning : The following story contains references to sexual assault. Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦  on Unsplash She’s sixteen, and she’s on vacation with her family. She’s tired when the plane lands. She’s exhausted after the forty-minute bus ride to the hotel. On the plane and on the coach bus, she spoke to no one, and no one spoke to her. Her iPod earbuds effectively served as a blockage to civility. She meets them   on the trolley employed to escort all the newly arrived families to their rooms. To them, she speaks, and they speak back. Kate and Julianne, they introduce themselves. They’re best friends, and their families are vacationing together. They live in the city next to hers back home. It’s evening and she takes them in through the burning tangerine glow of the lampposts stationed strategically throughout the resort, to guide night trolleys through the maze. Julianne’s blonde and Kate is, like herself, a brunette. They’re both clear-skinned, slender, smiley with white teeth, and friendly to her. The girls chat as the trolley bounces along. Kate and Julianne’s clothes and makeup are just a tad dishevelled, but not offensively so. They’re tossed together but complete, like two forgotten-about homework assignments pounded out minutes before the deadline. They’re carelessly slovenly, yet they’re them , finished, endearing. She imagines that, back home, they’re both popular at their schools. Girls who can get away with being just a little messy that easily are always popular. They’re glamorous, by default, because they don’t try. They don’t have to try. Her parents, pleased to see her socializing for a change, tell her she’s lucky to have found some new friends right away. She does feel lucky, sort of. She’s far too aware that she’s one type of girl and they’re perfect specimens of another. They’re both so beautiful and fresh, while she really looks like she just came off the plane. She regrets choosing to travel in black leggings. Black leggings cling. She’s sticky and gross. She’s not together.  She’s duct-taped and falling apart. She has a lumpy body and it’s clad wrong. She wants so badly for these girls to like her. Or, at the very least, to not be repelled by her, as some girls at her school are, with their pencilled eyebrows forever raised at her sweat stains and her spotty glasses. Her questionable hairstyle choice, held together with plastic clips. Her refusal to wear the uniform kilt in a sexy style, opting for the plain trousers instead. She cannot, and doesn’t, keep up. She can’t keep up with herself. She’s lucky, though, for once. Kate and Julianne like her. For one week, partly thanks to their lack of choices on that enclosed and isolated getaway, they can like her. They can like the duct-taped her. They accept her as one of their own. For one week. she’s going to be allowed a small taste of what being a different type of girl is like. They pick a meeting place for the next day. The palm tree with the twisted trunk near the beach, after breakfast. They will meet there and go to the beach and work on their tans. She’s so excited the next morning that she can hardly finish her fruit juice and eggs, and her mother has to remind her to bring a bottle of sunscreen with her. On the beach, they lounge across towels like postcard models, three in a row, three sweltering young beauties on display for the passerby. She smears sunscreen across Julianne’s back, counting the little dark brown moles as she works her way down the sweltry flesh. One, two, three, four.  Julianne’s skin is warm beneath her touch, almost toasty. Kate says something funny about the family playing volleyball nearby and they all laugh. By the time it’s noon, they’re cooked. They eat their lunch at the poolside bar in the adults-only section of the resort. It strikes her as they sit down to eat: they are allowed to sit there. They are not children today. They are three girls together, but they are not three girls together. They order three pizzas to share, and in order to remain in that chic eatery they must not be too fussy about those pizzas, nor can they contribute too much to the noise. Their chatter must be contained, levelled, below the music. They must do lunch  like grownups. Before the lemonades arrive, the girls ask her if she has a boyfriend back home. “No,” she answers. “Not yet.” She didn’t know it then, but she would be using that excuse for years, to keep her nosy relatives at bay. I don’t have a boyfriend… yet. That “yet” will become crucial to her survival. “We’ll meet some boys here. We’ll find you one,” Kate promises, really promises, like an encouraging parent with a child struggling at math. During lunch, she makes the mistake of showing them one of her stories-in-progress. She hands over her notebook, more than a little nervously. At home, only her teachers read her stories. “I don’t understand,” Julianne confesses when she finishes reading it aloud. She really read it all the way through, from beginning to end. She put in a reasonable amount of effort, for someone so clearly accustomed to putting extraordinarily little of herself into anything. She even throws in a dash of outrage. “Why doesn’t she just tell them?”   Kate agrees. She doesn’t have an opinion of her own, so she latches onto Julianne’s. Signs her name on it. Julianne closes the notebook and hands it back. They all go silent, mulling over Julianne’s question. The teenage heroine in the story is hiding a dirty secret from her family and friends, which the author realizes then and there must be nothing to the adventurous Julianne, who must have many, discarded casually, overflowing the wastebin she never bothers to empty. It’s not daring enough. There’s no new ground broken. Julianne’s cracked it. Julianne sits on her lap later when they meet up with some older college boys at the resort’s coffee bar. It’s swarmed with guests smoking cigars, and sipping away the cool, overcast afternoon. There aren’t enough seats for everyone, and she obliges to being Julianne’s. She enjoys the weight of Julianne, the clean, sweet smell of her hair, and the lingering, sultry scent of the sunscreen rubbed into her back and neck. The sensation of participating in something a bit offbeat, something she wouldn’t do at school, where there were plenty of places to sit. Hard, plastic folding chairs, classroom chairs, benches, and wooden pews in the chapel. Julianne, here, has chosen her lap. The boys think it’s funny, a girl on another girl’s lap. They think it’s girlishly cute. They have just become girls again, despite their efforts at lunch. She doesn’t think much of the college boys Kate and Julianne collect at the resort as the week progresses. They’re not that special, she privately decides. They’re not that much fun. They’re just like the boys at her school. They are older, but hardly. A few years and a short climb up the education ladder have made little to no difference. They’re all the same. High school boys, college boys. Annoying. Careless. Boisterous. Always laughing at everything. Always elbowing their way into all the free space. They never inspire her. They’re never featured with great care in any of her stories, which are all about girls. But she’s sixteen now, and she has to at least try  to like them, because that’s what a girl is supposed to do when she turns sixteen. She must learn to be all about boys. They follow one into his hotel room later. She wonders if something’s going to happen there, as something always happens in the movies when teenagers find a room to occupy. She’s never smoked weed and wonders if today she finally will. She doesn’t. The boy just wants to show off his surfboards. Disappointed, she flops down with Kate on one of the beds, waiting for Julianne to finish play-acting being impressed. She senses Kate’s restlessness beside her like the tremor of an approaching earthquake. She imagines this happens often between her and Julianne at home. This is a dynamic, one that she’s been unknowingly dragged into, as a bystander, a silent participator. Julianne shamelessly flirts, Kate restlessly waits. Kate and Julianne suggest going to the resort nightclub that night. The age for entry is twenty-one, but they have a plan. Everyone at the resort has a wrist bracelet, white like a freshly pressed bedsheet for the adults, and mango-orange for the children and older minors. They’ve figured out that if you flip the orange bracelet over on your wrist and carefully peel back the top layer, it’s white underneath. They’re geniuses, she thinks. She never would have discovered that on her own. Kate and Julianne are her first realization that there are many sneaky shortcuts to the privileges of adulthood. The bracelet trick sweeps them through the nightclub’s doors thirty minutes to midnight, helped along by the meticulous consideration put into their makeup, jewellery, and low-slung summer dresses. Effort. Effort at last. Effort with a purpose. They fool the bouncer, and when she catches a glimpse of herself in the full-length, gold-bordered mirror on the wall beside the coatroom, she almost fools herself. She’s not sixteen anymore. She’s dusted off from the high shelf of a Catholic high school. She’s passing as twenty-something and she’s part of the real world, finally. They head straight to the bar to do shots. Feeling emboldened by her new maturity, she jokes about her hot-blooded, vodka-swinging Russian ancestors, boasts that this will be easy for her. It isn’t. The vodka burns. It scrapes her throat. Kate and Julianne laugh at her and convince her to try another. Her early history of sampling alcohol is embarrassing. At thirteen, she got drunk for the very first time, on champagne at a wedding. She recklessly flirted with a second cousin. Her future will be worse. At twenty, she will drink too much cheap pink wine at a college party. She will drink a whole bottle she brought for herself because she doesn’t like beer. She will break down crying in front of strangers and fall asleep on the host’s top bunk bed after somehow making it up the ladder. She’ll wake up with a pounding headache, confused and guilt-ridden. But for now, she’s sixteen and she’s forcing down that second shot and then that third shot and then a fourth. She’s sixteen trying to be twenty, but twenty is continents away. Soon, she’s drunk. Kate and Julianne’s college boys arrive soon after. The fifth round of vodka shots is a group effort, as the boys have already been drinking back in their rooms. Now, she’s dizzy. Her friends are ready to dance. She dances like wild, with Kate and Julianne. She feels almost feral, detached from herself, spiritually connected to a ghostly Russian somewhere up her family tree, jumping about to keep warm in the snow, tossing shaggy hair, plotting revolutions, brimming with vodka and intensity. She’s them and they’re her. They’re trying to be fire and she’s trying to be snow, a blizzard. Something that rages with the music. Something with a strong pulse. She dances to a slow song after, with a boy, some boy, one of Kate and Julianne’s boys, a blonde one. The boy smirks down at her the whole time. She can tell, he finds her innocence and her grownup playacting funny. He has no intention of kissing her or taking her back to his hotel room. She can tell he can tell she’s sixteen. He’s probably guessed what she’s done with the wristband. She, Kate, and Julianne think they’re the first ones to come up with that trick, but they’re not. He holds her hips as they sway to a soothing love song in a language neither of them understands. He thinks she’ll topple if he doesn’t hold her. She thinks he thinks he’s doing her a favor, holding her up like this, paying attention to her like this, being indulgent. Her two friends are much prettier. He probably likes Julianne, the blonde one. He’s probably imagining this girl’s dress on Julienne. Then, off Julienne. Never mind that Julianne’s sixteen too. Her head feels too heavy. She leans it on his shoulder. He smells like a pine tree sawed open, the vapors escaping. The vodka’s swirling around in her stomach and inside her head. She doesn’t have any special thoughts or feelings for this boy. The vodka washes out everything and anything she could feel for him. Right now, he’s just a bony shoulder, a pillar she’s clinging to while she waits for the world to stop spinning. She feels just like she just got off the teacup ride at Disneyland. She’s beginning to understand why the hatter and the hare went mad like they did, why they baffled poor, young, innocent Alice. Parties are too much when you’re not a natural-born partyer. It might have been vodka they had in their cups. Vodka passed off as tea. A sixteen-year-old can sometimes pass as twenty. Is nothing real anymore? At some point in the night, Julianne disappears. She feels Julianne’s absence like a phantom limb that cannot be reattached. She knows she’s gone off with one of the boys, maybe the tall one, maybe the short one, maybe the one with the freckles, or the unfortunate acne. Damn their names, she can’t remember them. Longing sinks into her like a body in a weathered mattress. Or two bodies, wrestling, grasping, pressing into the springs. The boy she dances with, bored of her now, leaves her too. She doesn’t care about him anymore either, doesn’t wonder where he’s gone. She leaves with Kate, both of them swaying on their heels, supporting each other, on the verge of collapse, teetering, crumbling landmarks together. They’re followed by a dark-haired boy who likes Kate. The evening outside is cool and salty. That nightclub was too hot. They’re all slick and rank with sweat. They head for the beach. She’s curled up on a stiff beach chair now, feeling sluggish, drained, bored, and done. Very much the child who’s tired of playing in the park and wants to go home. She’s watching Kate and her puppyish boy-of-choice on another beach chair nearby. He’s flat on his back and Kate’s on top of him, straddling him with her thighs. They’re stacked, perfectly fitted together, two puzzle pieces embraced and separate from the bigger picture. They both seem to know what they’re doing. They know where to put their hands, somehow. The strong, salty night wind attempts to pry them apart but succeeds only in lifting and playing with the strings of Kate’s hair. They are locked together, a single entity. A wet, squirming sea creature upheaved on the beach. She decides she doesn’t like looking at it. Kate doesn’t hear or respond to her when she announces she’s going back to her room. She’s had enough of being a grownup for one night. She wants to sleep, and dream like a child. She wants to relapse back to being five years old and thinking being a mermaid when she grew up was an attainable career option. She wants to dream about this idea. She wants to be a native of the ocean, with the confusing love affairs happening only on the beaches, on the beach chairs, no concern of hers. She doesn’t want to be sixteen anymore. She carries her shoes in one hand. She carries all of herself with some spare ounce of willpower fetched from somewhere deep within. The grainy boardwalk is rough on her feet, as are the sharp, bumpy stone plates of the walkways in the residential area. She’s done something wrong tonight, and because of that, she hasn’t ended up with a boy of her own. That is what matters most. Boys. Scoring boys. Scoring enough of them so that your name stays on the board and in the game. While she’s walking, her feet ache relentlessly, and she’s relieved when a resort worker pulls up beside her in one of those trolleys, smaller than the one she rode on with Kate and Julianne the night she met them. “Would you like a lift, miss?” the driver asks her politely. He’s an older man, though not old. He’s   probably closer to her second cousin’s age, around twenty-four or maybe even twenty-five. Not a boy, but a full-grown prince who’s spotted a damsel in distress. She’s too tired now to overthink it. She nods her yes  and climbs in the trolley with him. “Where’s your room, miss?” he asks her. It takes her a moment to remember. She thinks, 'mermaids don’t need to remember room numbers'.  “Room…room…” A number eventually exits her lips, and he promptly turns the key in the ignition. They drive for a bit. She slouches in the passenger seat. She’s still so drunk. His eyes are shifting sideways at her, regarding with casual interest her young, ample cleavage, shiny with sweat, and the new tan on her skin, the mark of the leisurely tourist. "You’re out very late," he remarks. They’re driving along slowly. On their left, the hotel buildings, as artfully arranged as the suburbs, with the occasional window light still blazing. On the right, the beach, empty and dark. She is in the passenger seat, closer to the haunted beach. “Where’s your husband? Are you married?” She shakes her head no. She’ll do it again, over and over again, in the future. No, I don’t have a husband… yet. “Do you have a boyfriend?” “No.” She huffs this answer, bristling at this unwelcome interrogation. Who was this man, the resort minister? The village priest? Why does he need to know if she’s married or not? And couldn’t he tell that she’s only sixteen, and drunk? “What?” He reaches out with a free hand, cups her chin with playful, greedy fingers, and makes her turn his way. Makes the vodka swish   swish in her head, as his other hand grips the steering wheel. “A pretty girl like you?” Something wet then brushes her mouth, which is parted slightly. It takes her a moment to register that it’s his own mouth, kissing her, or more accurately, trying to playact something resembling a kiss while they’re still driving. She freezes, only her heart inside of her moving, her mouth tingling with what she at first mistakes for pleasure, because she’s read somewhere that pleasure feels like this, this tingling, like a bee sting. But his mouth really makes her want to throw up, or scream and run away. Run back to the beach, back to Kate and her boy. She’s so drunk. She’s so tired. Why is this man doing this to her, this man who’s supposed to be driving her to her room? Why is he kissing her instead? “Do you want to make love?” he asks her when he breaks away, finally leaving her lips alone. Tears escape her eyes and roll fast down her cheeks. Is he drunk too? Her response to his entreaty is to jerk her head away from him, reach for the door handle, and jiggle it furiously, only to discover that it’s locked. “Stop that,” he pleads gently, but this elicits from her a hoarse sob. She demands, in turn, to be let out of the trolley, or she’ll scream. She’ll scream loud, the promise of this being in her sob. They’re still driving beside the hotel buildings, crammed with sleeping people on vacation, alert to the sounds of any disruptions to their peace and quiet, something they could complain about to the front desk the next day if she did decide to scream. All she has to do is scream, and someone will come running. He’ll get caught. He’ll lose his job. He’ll go straight to jail. Yes, he will. She just has to scream loud enough. Sense suddenly returns to this man. He stops the trolley and lets her off. “I’m sixteen!” she snaps at him irately, as she slams the trolley door shut behind her. He watches her flee up the stairs to her room. She feels him watching her, feels his eyes sweeping her backside. In her room, where her little brother is already snoring in his bed, she buries herself under the covers of her own, once again the little girl who fears the Boogeyman. She wraps the blanket around herself to prevent the possibility of someone crawling underneath and touching her. Sleep reclaims her, eventually, from the older man and his gross, wet kiss. The next morning she’s groggy, sore, undone, and far too aware of her younger brother also awake in the room, watching her creaky, tentative movements with that keen curiosity younger siblings have when they suspect their tight-laced older sibling has strayed. A deep, intoxicated, coma-like sleep has diluted the face of the resort worker who kissed her in his trolley. She doesn’t remember his features, his nametag, or even his smell. She recalls only his voice, asking those dangerous questions, and his slimy, prying lips on hers. She considers this as she brushes the foul flavors of the night before from her teeth and tongue. There are hundreds of workers at this resort and they all look alike in their uniforms. She will never find out who he is. But will he recognize her? Her plan to avoid this is to gather up her hair, twist it into a loose bun on the top of her head, and sweep a sunhat over it. She adds sunglasses and a different coloured lip gloss. She throws out the one she wore the night before. Her parents don’t question it when she appears at breakfast like this. They ask her if she had a good time with her friends last night. She lies and says yes.  Later, she knocks on a hotel door with one hand. In the other, she holds an offering for her two goddesses, some doughnuts from the breakfast buffet wrapped in a cloth napkin. The cinnamon sugar spills out of the napkin and sprinkles the floor, mixing with the sand carried back from the beach by certain pairs of feet. Kate’s sand, from Kate’s feet. Julianne’s sand, from Julianne’s feet. Kate’s mother answers the door. “They’re still asleep,” Kate’s mother says. It’s ten-thirty. She lost the night and they’ve lost the morning. She decides to wait for them to wake up. Give them another chance to make being popular seem worth it. In her head, she’s practicing how she’s going to tell her friends what happened to her. But when they finally rouse themselves from their beds, she listens to what happened to them instead. Kate went night-swimming with her boy, and Julianne went to bed with hers, in the room he’s sharing with his friend from college. “He pulled out fast,” Julianne confides to her and Kate in a conspiratorial whisper. She leans forward so they could smell her acid-like, peach-scented body spray. A little giggle lags lazily behind, eventually catches up with Julianne’s smell. She wonders how that works, how that’s even coordinated. She bites into a doughnut that’s gone a bit stale, chewing slowly as she considers the details. She thinks about health class, the scandalous gossip about her classmates back home. She thinks about the trolley driver who kissed her. The doughnut swims in her stomach, too sweet, unwelcome, the wrong breakfast to have after a night like last night. She feels queasy the way she had when she got off the plane five days earlier. Kate’s story is less interesting because it doesn’t end with sex. She left her boy in favour of a dry change of clothes and a few snatched hours of sleep. They both had better nights than her. Something in her locks up her own story, traps the words in a notebook that doesn’t open. She doesn’t tell them about the trolley man. They never ask, and so she never tells. The rest of the week passes in a fog of quiet paranoia that the man who kissed her would reappear again. Do it to her again. She’s jumpy, constantly looking over her shoulder, but he never appears. Meanwhile, her resort friends gloat about their satisfaction with their vacation. It has gone exactly the way they planned for it to go. They’ve escaped their parents’ watchful eyes for a week, if their parents were ever watching at all. She hugs them goodbye the day they leave. They’ve exchanged phone numbers and vows of eternal friendship. “Call us when you get home!” She knows they’ll never call her. When she and her family get home, she can’t bring herself to call them either. There’s this sense that she blew it, that she didn’t play their games well enough, made a cinnamon-sandy-sticky mess of it all. They’re grown up, miles ahead of her, and she’s just a trolley stranded with broken wheels. So she doesn’t call. Not on purpose, at least. There is another girl named Julianne on her phone’s contact list. A procrastinating, exasperating classmate from school she’s doing a project with. She doesn’t want to work with that particular classmate, but the teacher doesn’t give her a choice in the matter. “You don’t always get to choose. Work with Julienne,” her teacher insists. Julianne, or Julianne. She dials the wrong Julianne. She dials her  Julianne, her resort Julianne. She demands, enraged, of her Julianne, “Did you finish your part yet?! You were supposed to send it to me yesterday!” “Umm—! Who is this?” Her Julianne cackles on the other end. There are other girls with her, cackling with her. She hears them, clustered in the background. She’s provided the entertainment at what is clearly Julianne’s outing with her real friends. She’s already faded from Julianne’s memory, the dorky girl from the resort, the awkward girl whose lap she’d sat in. The girl who writes odd stories. Julianne asks, “Who is this?” as if none of that had happened. Julianne is laughing at her. Mortified, she hangs up fast. Her cheeks burn like the harsh tropical sun did. Clutching the flip-phone in her sweating palm, she ignores her mother’s curious inquiry. “Let me guess. She doesn’t have her part done?” She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t speak at all. Nothing comes out of her mouth. It remains firmly closed to all entries or exits. She remembers that resort worker’s mouth on her mouth. She remembers Julianne’s mouth, dusted with cinnamon sugar. She feels like the ocean tide is carrying her away from the beach, away from Kate and her boy on the beach chair, away from everything. She never tries to call Julianne again. She never calls Kate, either. Not purposely, not accidentally. Just…never. Both their names disappear from the contact list, the lifelines cast out and cut off. She’s not allowed to be a popular girl anymore. She got her week and that was it. For a while, she imagines them talking about her when they’re together. She imagines they make fun of her. Her clothes, her hair, her failure to snag a boy that night they went out dancing at the forbidden club. Then, miraculously, she gets busy with school and a new part-time job at a grocery store bakery. She forgets them and the older man who forced a kiss on her, with time’s help. She turns seventeen in October. A decade later, she’s twenty-seven, going on twenty-eight. She suddenly remembers them again. Kate and Julianne, her best friends for a week. A killer virus is rampaging its way through the world and she’s stuck at home. She can’t go on vacation like she planned to. She can’t go anywhere. She has far too much free time to remember things best left unearthed and undisturbed, like the tombs of the dead. Yet she finds herself writing the story down, bent over her laptop every day after dutifully teaching her online classes, squinting through the smudge time has made with its greasy thumb. Trying to make sense, or at least sensible art, out of what the hell happened to her when she was sixteen.

Lessons Learned for Successful School Collaborations It’s 8:30 am. The morning bell rings, signalling the start of another busy school day. Students shuffle in, some bleary-eyed from oversleeping, and others won’t make school today due to illness. My key school contact—essential to the day’s research activities—has been pulled away to manage a student crisis. The room we were scheduled to use has been taken over by a teacher in need of extra space. To top it off, exam season is in full swing and the students are feeling the pressure to maximise their study time. This isn’t just an isolated bad day – it’s the day-to-day reality of collaborating with schools. Image source SolStock For researchers, schools provide a unique opportunity to study adolescent development in a natural setting, offering insights into wellbeing, relationships, and cognitive growth. Schools help foster many key life skills including interpersonal relationships, problem-solving, decision-making, and managing emotions, making them ideal environments for research. However, schools can also be unpredictable, with shifting priorities driven by the needs of students, staff, and the broader community involved with the school such as parents and carers. For schools, participating in research offers exciting opportunities for both student and staff development. Participation is often driven by a staff member with a particular interest in the research topic. However, staff are often not allocated time for additional projects amongst their demanding schedules, making it difficult for staff to manage competing priorities. Engaging with research and understanding how evidence can inform decisions empowers schools to make the best choices for their students. As highlighted by the Education Endowment Foundation, leveraging research findings can help schools adopt evidence-based practices that improve outcomes for pupils. I am a research project manager from University College London. I have spent the past 10 years working in partnership with schools in a research capacity, including recruiting over 200 secondary schools for The Surrey Communication and Language in Education Study (SCALES), a longitudinal study of child language development. Recently, I’ve been managing Building Resilience Through Socio-Emotional Training (ReSET) – a study to develop and test a new preventative mental health intervention for adolescents, funded as part of the UKRI AMHDM initiative discussed in this article series . Over this time, I’ve experienced a lot of challenges working with schools. On the other hand, I’ve also learned how to face these challenges head-on to form successful research collaborations, which can lead to benefits for young people , school staff, and researchers. Writers own image: The ReSET team How can we successfully connect Classrooms and Research? Build your brand Recruiting for a research project is surprisingly similar to marketing – you need your project to stand out. Start with an attractive logo, a cohesive colour scheme, and a memorable, catchy acronym. These elements make your project easy to remember. Where possible, including adolescents during the early planning stages can help tailor materials to a younger audience and boost long-term engagement. What resonates with them? What captures their interest? This collaborative approach, known as co-production, often uses the insights of experts by experience. For example, consulting young people with mental health experiences can help design relevant and appropriate materials for adolescent mental health studies . Do your background research Fortunately, we are often met with enthusiasm when recruiting schools for research projects. Student wellbeing, in particular, is at the forefront of both Government and school priorities , so participating in mental-health-related projects attracts a lot of initial attention. However, as researchers, ensuring that each school is a ‘good fit’ is our priority. How well does each school align with the goals of your project? If the fit isn’t quite right, it might be challenging to make the collaboration successful. Do your background research. What are the demographics of the students? Where is the school located? What is the school population? You can find key information about schools on their website or through their latest OFSTED reports . Plan ahead Assessing risks effectively helps to ensure a project runs smoothly. For instance, in schools, research sessions might clash with exams, student absences, or school trips. Sometimes, school staff are unaware of these events until they happen. Asking staff to check calendars for the students involved can help to prevent some of these difficulties, but not all of them. Checking ‘the school day’ and school calendars (often available on school websites) beforehand can highlight potential clashes, reducing the need to return another day.   Sending a simple reminder email a day or two before your visit, to confirm all the details, can also help ensure that things go smoothly. Nonetheless, having a contingency plan can save you a lot of time and reduce stress in the long run! Don't put all your eggs in one basket Unfortunately, many factors can affect a school’s ability to commit to a project and, despite initial enthusiasm, it’s not always practically possible to proceed with a collaboration. One helpful tool to ensure that schools understand the commitment of a project is an informal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) , which outlines expectations for both the research team and the school. In addition to the MOU, it’s important to set realistic expectations of the commitment. Erring on the side of caution and over-estimating the commitment can help schools allocate the necessary resources and prepare for the workload, rather than being caught off guard with unexpected tasks later down the line. This also helps to build trust and g ood relationships from the outset, to ensure a smoother long-term collaboration. Creating mutually beneficial relationships Recognising and appreciating the time and effort that staff dedicate to supporting research can promote goodwill and create advantages for both sides. Some ideas to enhance collaboration include: Honorariums — Many schools operate on tight budgets, and financial contributions can help to enhance resources for students in need or fund additional staffing time to help run the project. Careers Talks, Work Experience, or Educational Workshops — Schools welcome opportunities that expose students to a variety of career paths and offer hands-on experience to develop skills for their future careers. Newsletters and Dissemination of Findings — Sharing updates on research findings and their practical implications can help schools develop evidence-based practices to improve student wellbeing. Acknowledgement of participation — Schools benefit from engaging in cutting-edge initiatives. Recognising their participation, such as by being named on a project website or in media, can showcase their important role in the work, enhancing their reputation. It’s clear how mutually beneficial collaborations between research and educational teams can be, despite the challenges that can unfold. Through transparent communication, flexibility, and an understanding of each other’s goals and schedules, researchers can overcome these challenges. In the long term, the benefits of these collaborations can massively outweigh the difficulties in the delivery of the research. As a researcher in schools, each day brings unique challenges, keeping me on my toes. But the successes make it all worthwhile. For instance, SCALES was the UK’s first longitudinal study to track language development in a large, inclusive cohort of children throughout primary school, providing vital insights into the prevalence and impact of language difficulties. ReSET is breaking new ground as the first preventative school-based mental health intervention for adolescents that targets both emotion processing skills and social relationships — key factors in resilience and vulnerability. Stay tuned for results later in 2025! Website: https://resetproject.co.uk X: https://x.com/ReSET_Project_ Writer's own graphic

Predicting the future is hard. There’s no secret about it. We so often hear about trends, stock market changes, and big business decisions that are being made in the financial and political worlds, but few of these are ever actually analysed for their cascading effect on the average population. Whilst news outlets often reflect on the potential long-term effects and shine light on people’s initial reactions to these decisions, there’s a gap when it comes to real predictions about the impact and changes to everyday life that some of these decisions bring. As a marketer, I spend a lot of time analysing trends and consumer behaviour, both online and offline, to understand how people react to change and what drives their decisions. I suppose that’s why multi-billion businesses spend millions on market research and try their hardest to understand consumer behaviour prior to launch. In recent years, with the rise of digital burnout, widespread misinformation, and increasing political extremism, society has started to shift. Their behaviours are changing. People are tired. And who is taking the big hit? Social media platforms. From being an online space where people could have a laugh, like many millennials did on Vine, or a place to post funny photos with retro filters and semi-inspirational quotes, like on Instagram, social media has evolved in a way that many see it as an evil force for propaganda, silencing of rights, and frankly, complete domination of attention; and people are starting to fight back for their freedom. Social media has become the perfect breeding ground for doomscrolling . Polarising views that provoke a reaction, absurd videos that tap into your curiosity, so you keep watching. AI-generated content, aggressive commercial targeting of vulnerable viewers, materialistic tendencies, harmful comparisons, and a loud platform for extreme ideologies—these all fuel the cycle. Hate and arguments spread like wildfire. Seeds of doubt are planted. And you come out of it either annoyed at the world, sad, or low on money because you purchased something you never even needed. So why are people still spending hours glued to their phones? Image Source: Illustration via Paper Trident, Getty Images. ‘ Doomscrolling ’ is a concept that originated in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic and describes the habit of endlessly scrolling through news sites or social media feeds, even if it causes stress and anxiety. The term was officially added to the Cambridge dictionary in 2022. Research has repeatedly shown that excessive social media consumption is linked to increased anxiety, depression, and loneliness. The curated nature of content—where people showcase only the highlights of their lives—contributes to unrealistic comparisons and a warped sense of self-worth. And the never-ending stream of news, ranging from global catastrophes to personal tragedies, creates a sense of helplessness and hypervigilance. As someone who has studied the psychology of advertising, I know that these click-bait videos are created to purposefully challenge autonomy and completely kill attention spans. I’ve been trapped in it, too! Realising that I don’t need to sit there and watch fifty 30-second videos that I won’t even remember once the app is closed is liberating, but it is also challenging. The sad reality is that people no longer know what to do with their free time. The paradox of choice plays a significant role in this dilemma. In theory, having an endless selection of content should be empowering, but instead, it becomes overwhelming. Studies in psychology suggest that when people are faced with too many options, they struggle to make decisions, leading to stress and dissatisfaction. This is why users often default to passive consumption—scrolling endlessly rather than making an active choice to engage, or disengage. How often have you scrolled just because you were bored? Because you felt like you had nothing better to do? Because you just automatically open the app out of instinct, without even thinking about it first? And it’s never just one video, either. Right? It’s a frightening epidemic. Recent studies have also highlighted a concerning trend: Generation Z is experiencing higher levels of anxiety and depression compared to previous generations, with excessive social media use being a significant contributing factor. Spending more than three hours daily on social media platforms increases the risk of mental health problems among adolescents, including sleep deprivation, cyberbullying, body image issues, and depressive symptoms.  The constant influx of information from these platforms can lead to cognitive overload and decision fatigue . This mental fatigue can have negative effects on attention, increases impulsivity, and hinders the ability to process information effectively, potentially leading to anxiety and depression. Plus, the overwhelming amount of data encountered daily can cause emotional exhaustion, highlighting the importance of mindful social media consumption and the need to manage information overload to protect the mental well-being of Generation Z and all others. Image Source: Created by the author on Canva But today, in 2025, I have a feeling that things will change. By observing society, and reading reports, I see the rising trend to fight back against doomscrolling. Some people challenge temptation in more creative ways than others—whether by implementing digital detoxes, setting strict screen time limits, or even switching to minimalist phones - but the shift in mentality still stands. Especially given social media can be used for good! Whether its learning something new via a YouTube Shorts tutorial, understanding complex information that’s well laid out in an infographic on LinkedIn, or simply finding joy from your community on Reddit, social media has the potential to bring people together, as long as the platforms are responsibly managed, and the content is curated with intention. Within our setting, our research team have used social media to recruit participants for countless studies. From engaging with young people to better study youth mental health in the CELEBRATE Project , creating a people with lived experience advisory board for ASPIRE , or reaching out to pregnant women to take part in the Happy Mums Study , we also use these apps. The difference is that we make sure that all the content we do create is empowering, educational, and engaging. So, while society is changing, it also highlights an important lesson: social media isn’t inherently evil—it’s how we use it that makes all the difference. People are no longer passively accepting doomscrolling as the norm; they’re actively taking steps to regain control and are finding ways to create healthier habits. But looking ahead, the real question is how the corporate world will respond. Will social media platforms adapt to this change, prioritising well-being over engagement? Or will they find new ways to keep users hooked? As society pushes back, will businesses follow suit or fight to maintain their grip?

Trigger warning: This article contains discussions on sexual assault and violence, and some readers may find it distressing. Doctor Gang-Raped at Workplace; left to succumb to her injuries . Another rape. Another headline. The vicious cycle continues as another surge of fear and anxiety brings me back to the roots of rebuilding resilience. My hands were glued to my phone, tingling with the surge of cold sweat as I gulped down the horror. Photo by Damir Mijailovic on Pexels As a young South-Asian woman pursuing a BSc in Psychology, I’m acutely aware of the psychological impact that such news stories can have on women while simultaneously feeling this impact myself. The casual sexism and harassment women are sometimes subject to in the media reinforces this discomfort and undermines our safety. The media's portrayal of sexual violence against women is conflicted, often shaped by patriarchal values. It can sometimes blame us for our trauma, depict us as victims of abuse, and justify our suffering by framing it as inevitable. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge that media outlets have also been a source of uplifting women, providing initiatives such as the #metoo movement, which was pivotal in encouraging solidarity for survivors ever since. The article is a media critique regarding its dual role in promoting and advocating against women’s rights.  It highlights the reinforcement of the male gaze, victim blaming and the lack of predators' accountability in sexual violations. Lastly, it briefs the psychological impact women deal with and the resulting coping mechanisms offered by the mainstream media that may aggravate the situation, putting the media in question.  The Illusion of Freedom Via the Male Gaze While the media often advocates for women’s rights and safety, portraying them in high-end jobs, managing work-life balance, and providing them platforms for voicing their concerns, issues like domestic abuse and sexual objectification remain ongoing threats. In 2023 alone, 85,000 women were intentionally murdered , with 51,000 (60%) of these homicides having been committed by an intimate partner. Overlooking the ongoing problems and only focusing on the advancements in women’s freedom and rights inadvertently exacerbates the problem. Can we really feel safe if Countless sexual violations committed by men go unpunished? For this article, I spoke with two women, referred to as X and Y. Y, a graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, is a dedicated advocate for women’s rights. Whereas X, an A-level student pursuing humanitarian studies, is actively challenging societal norms through her individual grassroots efforts. As Y told me, ‘Every criminal and rapist unpunished rightfully by the law boosts the moral and confidence of those actively committing the crime, as well as the bystanders intending crime’ . The media can subtly endorse a culture where crimes against women are downplayed or ignored, making it easier for perpetrators to avoid accountability and for society to dismiss the seriousness of such acts This issue is tied to the concept of the ‘ male gaze ’ which refers to how media narratives frame women as passive, sexualized objects for male pleasure, while men are positioned as active agents. The recent allegations brought by Blake Lively against her co-star Justin Baldoni regarding the filming of It Ends with Us  have become an internet sensation. In December 2024, Lively filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment during the film's production, stating that Baldoni i mprovised intimate scenes without receiving her consent  first. Baldoni, on the other hand, has defended himself, claiming these actions were simply part of playing his character. This situation highlights how the male gaze  can direct the narrative, reinforcing the power imbalance that treats women as passive objects in male-dominated on-screen stories—an imbalance that extends into reality. Much like the insidious nature of casual sexual harassment ( previously discussed on ITM ), the media’s portrayal of women, which seems harmless and trivial, normalizes and perpetuates harmful rhetoric. Women in turn are conditioned to constantly assess how they are perceived by others. ‘It is this toxic system that even women themselves may perpetuate’ X said as she shared her disappointment. For many, life revolves around meeting the male gaze, diminishing women’s autonomy over themselves. Society continues to applaud and justify toxic masculinity—aggression, narcissistic-abuse, and the entitlement to objectify women. While   statistics on psychological disorders stemming from sexual abuse continue to rise. Photo by Cottonbro Studio on Pexels Coping Strategies: Media and True Crime With rising mental health awareness, sexual-abuse survivors have taken initiatives to challenge the resulting shame and helplessness and take preventive measures. This includes:  trauma-informed care, group and individual therapy, podcasts reducing stigma and shame around sexual-abuse, online support groups, and 24/7 hotlines  for immediate support. ITM’s feature on Lindsay's moving story  highlights how such programs empower survivors. However, healing isn’t linear; unhealthy coping mechanisms can create an illusion of progress, often complicating recovery. To cope with the rising anxiety and fear and to temporarily distract themselves from the overwhelming reality that dismisses these struggles women heavily consume true crime , making up 80% of the total viewership . Studies  show that the concentrated female audience is due to a desire to learn how to escape or prevent violent attacks.   ‘It’s entertaining when you consider the psyche behind it, often rooted in various traumas. But also, very unsettling to realize how capable (of violence) people around me can be’  X shared. Y chipped-in, “ my paranoia serves as a protective trauma response.” Arguably the media is playing an effective role in providing women with the safe space of exploring feelings which remains a dream otherwise. Recent productions highlight the darker aspects of society, such as the emotional and mental burdens women must bear to simply navigate societal expectations. While this relatability helps drive awareness and advocacy, the media itself has long been responsible for perpetuating many of these issues. This raises an important question: is the media genuinely supporting women, or is it keeping them trapped in an unresolved cycle? After every shocking news story, shows and movies based on real events depict women as resilient survivors reclaiming their power and confronting fears. While inspiring, these portrayals only romanticize justice. Will justice ever be served beyond the fairy-tale fiction? Desensitization and Blame Shifting      ‘At this point, I don’t even think they (the media) are sympathizing with women. Their circumstances are treated like an opportunity for the media to cash in, for money. It’s basically just fiction,’  X shared her frustration. Overall, the resulting self- worth and self-respect of women is heavily impacted both by the media and the resulting perspective of society. Somehow women are held responsible for the trauma they are made to go through. ‘People make you self-conscious about your image, compromising your self-respect. Society lets men abuse anyone without it diminishing their self-respect’ , Y shared. Instead of focusing on the abuse itself, the media shifts the narrative to the aftermath, distracting from the root issues of the abuse. While I truly appreciate the quick sympathies that the media extends to the survivor, a survivor doesn’t exist if there is no villain. Where is the villain in the media’s headlines? Each headline broadcasts ‘another girl raped,’ but never ‘man rapes girl.’ The narrative focuses on her attire, profession, or the time of day, but never addresses the lack of accountability or the perpetrator's desire for fulfilling their sexual needs as the real causes. "It silently approves violence, encouraging those waiting for a chance to commit crimes against women," Y shrugged. X added: ‘ Good men do exist, but for the sake of my safety, I have to generalize ’ Photo by Martproductions on Pexels Challenging Norms We must challenge the structures that allow violence to persist, while also nurturing women’s femininity to avoid the imbalance we see today. As we heal from sexual traumas, I hope we are just as committed to raising men who are mindful of the impact of their gaze, educating them to be caretakers who provide securityfor the women around them. Society needs to heal from justifying men’s abuse and weaponizing their responsibilities. Respect, consent, and equity are fundamental rights for everyone. As much as we focus on women’s experiences and healing, it is still a two-way relationship structuring recovery, tolerance and respect within society. To promote this view, we need the mainstream-media to play its part, emphasizing the need for the dual role of masculinity and femineity in society’s construct.

It’s 8 AM midweek in January, and you’ve just woken up to see the sun shining bright outside your room. The temperature is 26 degrees, and there are no clouds in sight. You hit the pool before having breakfast in one of the cute island cafes. You flip out your laptop to get in a few hours of work under the shade of a palm tree. Writer's image - Krabi beach Digital Nomads are people who travel freely, essentially living a nomad lifestyle, often with no permanent home or base while working remotely. It might actually be the biggest trend for millennials when it comes to careers, particularly for many of us who were taught to aspire to climb a corporate ladder, but decided we’d rather climb trees and mountains while making a living online instead. By no doubt, the increase in remote work since COVID and our increasingly digital lives have also contributed to making digital nomading both a viable and attractive career path. It’s adventurous, exciting, and seemingly provides a beautiful balance where prioritising the lifestyle you want doesn’t get in the way of finding work to support yourself financially. But as always, nothing is perfect, and while social media certainly makes digital nomading look like a dream, that dream can certainly become one’s nightmare if heading into it unprepared.   I left the crowded streets of London at the end of 2022, with the idea of becoming a yoga teacher and travelling. I had a one-way ticket and a travel budget, and I thought that that budget would dictate when I’d be coming back. But as it happens with travellers, I ended up meeting digital nomads everywhere, and thanks to my background in digital marketing, I was fortunate to be approached with freelance work, way before my travel budget ran out. So, in the spirit of a true backpacker and inspired by the digital nomad community surrounding me, I thought: ‘Why not?’ And just like that, I was now a digital nomad. Writer's images - India It often truly felt like a dream. The scene I painted when starting this article is indeed part of the lifestyle, but as is often the case, the reality is more complex. There are endless bus rides and crowded train journeys, packing and unpacking backpacks, and waking up not knowing where you are because you’ve been on the go for so long. You end up feeling out of place. There are sick days where you can only rely on the kindness of other strangers and locals to support you because you’re alone and you have no idea where the nearest hospital or pharmacy is, or if they’d have the same drugs and remedies you’d usually take at home. You start feeling like you don’t have a home and while freeing, it can also be terrifying.   You spend hours or even days understanding taxes, visas, and insurance, and how not to mess things up so it comes back to bite you. You spend even more time on research and booking transport and accommodation, often while on the edge of tears because you’re so exhausted from all the decision-making that you've forgotten to eat all day.   Of course, as you become more experienced, you also become better at dealing with this uncertainty. You become more prepared and in general, have a good structure for your planning, but a lot of these feelings never fully go away. I have to say, I’ve never met a digital nomad or solo traveller who has never experienced these feelings. And depending on your comfort zone and how you deal with such situations, this lifestyle can indeed become difficult. In my experience, to understand if this is a career path that will work for you, it's good to ask yourself the following questions. Can I be comfortable dealing with: Uncertainty and Instability Many people thrive in uncertainty. There’s a certain thrill to it when it comes to nomading. Not knowing what’s next can mean wonderful new experiences and an escape from boring routines. But as with anything, the novelty can wear off. When literally every day is a new adventure, exciting can become exhausting.   Many nomads choose to slow travel, staying in one place for weeks and months, skipping the usual excursions and instead, seeking to get immersed in the everyday living of a local. Personally, I've found this to be a great way to learn what healthy routines mean for me. What aspects of day-to-day living I was missing, and what kind of stability did I need to be comfortable, which brings me to my next point. Security & Comfort Be that financial-, social-, or psychological security, uncertainty puts all these at risk. Whether you are a freelancer or a remotely employed digital nomad, your security and comfort will depend on the safety nets you’ve built around you to fall back on. Traditionally we are more used to building these within our physical proximity, so while it is absolutely possible to feel secure and comfortable while nomading, it does have different implications and requires planning (i.e., having an emergency budget, or at least enough to get you a flight back to wherever you feel is home) and being mentally prepared that things go wrong sometimes and that you’ll have to find new ways of dealing with that. Having a supportive community, whether that’s friends or family checking in on you via messages or joining local communities, it’s important to make sure you’re not isolated. Writer's image - Sunset Koh Phangan Lacking a sense of belonging Social media is often the easiest way for us nomads to stay connected with our loved ones, but being reliant on such things can be a double-edged sword. It’s important not to give into the pressure of ‘filtering’ your experience through these outlets and be able to open up to those who might not physically be around you, but who always have your back.   Community, belonging, and relationships are essential to all human beings. We want to feel accepted, loved, and treated with respect. When you feel like you don’t belong, that can be hard on your mental health. And let’s be honest, as a digital nomad you are mainly in places where you’re neither a local nor a tourist. Oftentimes, you’ll connect with other nomads, and they are a wonderful global community, but considering the lifestyle, you’ll likely be on different schedules and crossing paths will become a wonderful coincidence. Make sure to acknowledge the challenges that can come with isolation and reach out to people who can support you. Digital nomading can be a wonderful experience, one that many people pursue for several years or even into retirement. It’s not for everyone but it certainly is for some, and trying out if it works for you can be a great learning experience. I have certainly enjoyed mine. So, are you ready to pack your bags?