Mental health

Mental health

Previous research has shown that people feel better in bird-rich environments, but Christoph Randler, from the University of Tubingen, and colleagues wanted to see if that warm fuzzy feeling translated into measurable physiological changes. They rigged up a park with loudspeakers playing the songs of rare birds and measured the blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels (a marker of stress) of volunteers before and after taking a 30-minute walk through the park.

The handbook, produced by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), lists symptoms for all known conditions and aims to steer psychiatrists, doctors and others towards a correct diagnosis. But in a field that struggles to connect people's inner experiences to measurable changes in their brains and bodies, the DSM is a lightning rod for criticism. It does not delve into the possible causes of mental illness, for example, or acknowledge that sociocultural and environmental factors could be important.

Opening up isn't always easy, but honest conversations can be a powerful first step towards better mental health,

I can't work up the courage to talk to any of my friends when I'm having mental health issues. It hits the worst for me usually at 4-5 am, and I never want to wake anyone up when I'm having panic attacks that late due to my intrusive thoughts, even though being around people helps. I'm in a safe place and have a therapist/medication, but it feels like I'm not getting better every time I find myself back in this situation.

Picture this: You're at a party, having a great conversation, genuinely enjoying yourself, when suddenly you hit a wall. Your energy drains like someone pulled the plug, and you make an excuse about an early morning and slip out, feeling guilty and wondering why you can't just be "normal" like everyone else who seems to thrive in these settings. Here's what most people get wrong: Struggling with long social events might just mean you have a smaller social battery than others, and that's completely okay.

Haney's research found that such prolonged isolation led to paranoia, anxiety, despair, anger and, eventually, numbness among people in the SHU. "When you're in the SHU, you don't feel," said Frank Reyna, who spent 20 years in solitary at Pelican Bay. "If you feel, you start getting weak. When people die, you just move on. You lose your emotions." Prison officials had built a fortress designed to keep people away from each other.

The Meta researcher's tone was alarmed. "Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug," the user experience specialist allegedly wrote to a colleague, referring to the social media platform Instagram. "We're basically pushers... We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can't feel reward anymore." The researcher concluded that users' addiction was "biological and psychological" and that company management was keen to exploit the dynamic.

The iconic Golden Gate Bridge has a dark side. Historically, an average of 30 people each year have climbed over the four-foot railing and jumped to their deaths. Not anymore. In the second half of 2025, there were no confirmed suicides. What's different? And are would-be jumpers now dying by suicide in other places or using other means? The answers to these questions are important in themselves and for suicide prevention more broadly.

After two years of living in New York City, I realized that, although I loved life in the Big Apple, I wasn't fond of the exorbitant cost of living. My days in the city were busy - think last-minute Broadway tickets, venturing out to Brooklyn for my photojournalism class, and bottomless brunches that turned into all-day affairs. Still, I found that leaving my apartment was costly, and I knew I needed a change.

Last August, Adam Thomas found himself wandering the dunes of Christmas Valley, Oregon, after a chatbot kept suggesting he mystically "follow the pattern" of his own consciousness. Thomas was running on very little sleep-he'd been talking to his chatbot around the clock for months by that point, asking it to help improve his life. Instead it sent him on empty assignments, like meandering the vacuous desert sprawl.

When we think of rituals, we tend to think of face masks and wellness trends. But there are actually ways to use rituals to help heal grief and deal with stressful times. On this episode, Lucy Lopez, Elizabeth Newcamp, and Zak Rosen are joined by ritual expert Betty Ray to talk about creative ways to help children process grief and big emotions, how to use ritual to create safety and expression, and much more.

In some cases, fear of looking dumb is a symptom of social anxiety disorder (APA, 2022), and it can be associated with perfectionism and fear of failure. It can show up in issues such as imposter syndrome, or feeling like a fraud and worrying about not rising to the expectations of a high-achieving position. It can also be related to stereotype threat, when someone's membership in a marginalized group leads them to worry that they will act in a way that confirms negative stereotypes.

Patience is a capacity to endure difficulties, frustrations, and suffering with some sense of calm. Perseverance, self-regulation, and judgment are components of patience. Patience can help you manage your emotions, reactions, and responses in stressful situations. While positive psychologists don't specifically name patience as one of the top 24 character strengths, it is seen as an important element of human behavior. Strengths researchers propose that patience is an amalgam of several recognized character strengths, including perseverance, self-regulation, and judgment (Niemiec, 2018; Peterson and Seligman, 2004).

Hanka noted that, in the trial, participants who microdosed LSD showed "elevations in mood, energy, feelings of social connectivity, creativity, enhanced wellbeing, reduced irritability and anger." Where things didn't measure up to the company's expectations came in one very specific department: microdosing, he wrote, "is not more effective than placebo in treating Major Depressive Disorder."

A shortage of mental health beds and poor communication between agencies contributed to the death of a teenage girl on hospital grounds, an inquest has found. Ellame Ford-Dunn, 16, who had a history of self-harm, died in March 2022 after absconding from an acute children's ward where she had been put because of a dearth of appropriate mental health beds.

When Justin Harrison got the call in 2022 telling him that his mother would likely die within the day, he didn't panic. He got on a plane to Singapore, where he was scheduled to present at a conference about his start-up, You, Only Virtual, a platform on which users can chat with AI versions of their dead loved ones, and which Justin believes can ultimately eliminate grief as a human experience. He learned about his mother's death while flying over the Pacific.

Over the 74,301 years he's been playing tennis, warming to Novak Djokovic hasn't always been easy. And the man himself knows it, frequently bristling at sleights perceived, imagined and real, his 24 grand slam titles unable to replace the basic need to feel loved. What we all learn from Djokovic, though what even Djokovic himself can learn from Djokovic is how to execute the perennially torturous business of loving yourself.

Although awareness and recognition of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD) have increased over the past few decades, particularly through the pandemic years, its effects are still trivialized in the public discourse. The core symptoms are brushed off as stereotyped nuisances of flitting attention, bouncing legs, and misjudged spontaneity, and more exotic but similarly misleading characterizations and "look squirrel" memes that provide clickbait on social media. These misrepresentations create an image of an ADHD diagnosis as divorced from "real-life problems."