#mental-health

#mental-health

Before anyone received an official alert about the Eaton fire, a message lit up a pickleball group chat. "Everyone look up, there's a vegetation fire on Canyon Close," the message read. "If you're anywhere near Eaton Canyon, I'd evacuate." Over the next several days, the chat of about 50 people who met regularly at the Altadena Country Club pinged with updates about where the fire was headed, pleas to evacuate, offerings of safe-havens and status updates on what was lost.

An analysis of numerous studies shows that grade-centric approaches are not always beneficial for young people's mental health and do not yield the expected benefits. Understanding, encouragement, and support, rather than asserting too much pressure, become the cornerstone of healthy youth development. A child with their parents' support is more likely to grow into a resilient, confident, motivated, and secure adult. On the contrary, emotionally unsupported children are likely to remain mentally fragile and underachieving.

But for how casually and frequently we reference the gut, few of us know exactly how it works, why it sometimes doesn't or much about its intimate relationship with the brain. Even medical experts have only recently come to appreciate the microbiome's connection to mood, anxiety and neurodegenerative disease. That's because the microbiome is a complex community comprised of trillions of microbes - and every single gut is unique to the specific person. It's an ecosystem as mysterious to us as the deep ocean, or outer space or the brain...which it evidently shares a "communication highway" with.

I knew there could be as many bad outcomes as good outcomes, says Christine. Certain things will be picked up and stories might come out, including ones that aren't true. But I'd been trying for four years to understand what happened and I still had so many questions. I'd come to a brick wall so I went ahead. She pauses for a moment before adding: And whatever happens next, I always say that no one can do anything worse to me now.

My mother made it clear from the start, she wanted my sister to get help,

On 14 October 2025, the CEO of OpenAI made an extraordinary announcement. We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive, it says, to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. As a psychiatrist who studies emerging psychosis in adolescents and young adults, this was news to me. Researchers have identified 16 cases in the media this year of individuals developing symptoms of psychosis losing touch with reality in the context of ChatGPT use.

Instead of being applauded, many people might face the silent wrath of those who resent their success, undermine them, or make them feel socially excluded. This phenomenon is known as the tall poppy syndrome, where those who "grow taller" than others are cut down to size. It's more than casual jealousy. Tall poppy syndrome penalizes those who stand out and stems from the desire to punish their success. The tall poppy is not rewarded, and they stay small.

OpenAI revealed that a small but significant portion of ChatGPT users, more than a million weekly, discuss mental health struggles, including suicidal thoughts, psychosis, or mania, with the AI. The company says it has improved ChatGPT's responses by consulting more than 170 mental health experts to handle such conversations more appropriately than earlier versions. OpenAI reportedly working on AI that create music from text and audio

[My grief] was coming out in ways that made me think, I need to take this away,

If a post didn't get a like within two minutes, I'd delete it and try again, often asking friends to like it and comment just to keep up with appearances. When I lost a follower, I'd look at an app to see who it was. I was constantly refreshing, hoping to get more than 100 likes in an hour. I drove myself crazy.

Working out is an integral part of my mental health and I truly think it helps me be a more patient mom who's able to handle the squabbles, irrational demands, and complaints that arise when my little boys are home. My husband has an erratic work schedule and we don't have family around to help watch the kids, so I rely on my affordable gym membership ($49 a month) to help me work out three-plus times a week.

When I was cast on the TV show "Survivor" in 2023 (yes, that show is still on), I thought I knew what anxiety felt like. I had spent years helping clients understand it, name it, and care for it. I had been in active therapy for around a decade. But living through it in front of millions of people is something no training could have prepared me for.

"You get to that mountaintop that you've always dreamt of," Allen said. "But no one has ever dreamt of what happens after getting to the top."

They often opened their home to extended-stay guests. A friend would be going through a divorce and needed a place for a few weeks while looking for an apartment, or a meditation teacher would be in town from India, bringing us tiny clay buddhas and new dishes at the dinner table. One year, my parents hosted a violinist who was performing at the local symphony for about a month. I remember watching her play violin at the top of our entryway stairs.

A week after South Lake Tahoe's mayor resigned amid an embezzlement scandal, her successor was chosen a man who is fighting charges related to a run-in at a bar. An overflow crowd attended the Tuesday city council meeting at which Cody Bass was promoted to the top role, TV station KOVR reported. Tamara Wallace formally left the job on Oct. 13. The previous week she announced in a public letter that she had embezzled from a church, and that her guilt, shame and grief drove her to attempt suicide on Sept. 11. She spent the subsequent weeks in mental health treatment, she said.

There's a lovely intimacy to Every Brilliant Thing at @sohoplace, a play that's as much about the performer as it is about the story. The West End season has seen a star-studded rotating cast including Lenny Henry, Jonny Donahoe, Ambika Mod and Sue Perkins, each bringing their own flavour to Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe's one-person tour de force. Minnie Driver closes the run, lighting up the stage with her warmth, humour and natural charm,

Martin's former agent released a statement on behalf of the family, saying in part, "Privately, Doug battled mental health challenges... Doug's parents were actively seeking medical assistance for him and had contacted local authorities for support. Feeling overwhelmed and disoriented, Doug fled his home during the night and entered a neighbor's residence two doors down." Police say Martin was involved in a break-in at a home in the Oakland Hills.

During Pastor Appreciation Month, we include our gratitude for the support of the pastor's wife. Spiritual spouses are viewed differently than their faith-leading husbands. Although there are plenty of benefits, both emotional and spiritual, of serving within the leadership of a faith community, there are challenges as well. A pastor's wife is expected to be kind, compassionate, sympathetic, supportive, patient, gracious, long-suffering, and the list goes on. She is required to be, in a word: perfect. Yet this unrealistic expectation can be tempered through realistic strategies of coping and support.

Remember working during COVID? While healthcare workers, first responders, and restaurant employees still had to show up in person, many others suddenly found themselves working from home, logging into Zoom meetings in pajama pants. For some, the isolation was tough. Others loved more time with family, the freedom to work from anywhere, and not having long commutes. Some people even traded expensive city apartments for more affordable homes or resort-style locations.

One of my neighbours who has lived here for 40 years said he has never seen anything like it,

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I'm weird. I can be more open in some ways with audiences than I can in interpersonal relationships. Look, I've lived and learned over time. I've been a toxic person in my life. I'm not great at relationships. I used to do a joke where I think I'm about 85 percent woke and the other 15 percent I keep to myself.

We look at loneliness in the digital world, where everyone is connected but no one is connecting. From rising suicide levels to surveys showing how Gen Z is the loneliest generation ever, we look at the reasons behind this global sentiment. We ask: Is the digital world helping or hurting our ability to truly connect? What happened to communities that support their members? Presenter: Stefanie Dekker Guests: Larissa May Founder, #HALFTHESTORY Tracey Mark Psychiatrist and author