Lottie is looking forward to spending time with her family this Christmas, but says one of the only ways she'll manage to get through it is by wearing her earplugs - especially during Christmas dinner. For the 23-year-old Christmas can be a particularly difficult time as the sounds of other people, chewing, slurping and sniffling make her feel extremely uncomfortable.
Inside the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Gerry Gregg, wearing an A's baseball cap and a U.S. Marine Corps shirt, leans down to give rubs and scratches to Murphy, a fluffy golden retriever who is part of a pet-therapy team from San Jose nonprofit Furry Friends. How are you doing? Gregg, 60, croons to Murphy, who looks adoringly into his eyes. Yeah, I know, Gregg tells the dog.
One of them handed Juan Giron a letter written by Kimberly, the trans woman he met when he was going to the bathroom and who called out to him, Hey, girl, pssst, hi. Now you might say that he and Kimberly are friends. He gave her a devotional scapular, and they get emotional when they see each other in the yard during the hour of sunlight they're allowed each day,
Many of us find that we still have pain to deal with after a medical procedure or an injury heals. If our pain is fairly low, most of us do our best to adapt and ignore it as we go about our life. The alternatives are generally habit-forming medications with side effects that cannot be taken very long without risking needing more over time.
Music has long served as both a mirror and a refuge-reflecting private pain while offering language for experiences that feel unspeakable. Few songs have embodied this dual role as powerfully as Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful." Released in 2002, when mainstream pop rarely centered vulnerability or marginalized identities, the song and its music video offered something quietly radical: affirmation without conditions. Psychologically, representation matters because being seen supports emotional regulation and belonging.
"The first time I took a shower, all the emotions came out. I was crying, doubting myself, but I had someone beside me to tell me that everything's gonna be okay," said Davies. "I was praying it wasn't anything serious, but when I got out of the MRI, they told me it was an ACL and meniscus; my whole energy went out of my body, all the confidence I had just escaped. "I remember the first couple of weeks, between six and eight weeks, I wasn't able to walk. I had to be on crutches...When you're up there working out, and you see all your friends, having fun playing football, and sometimes you think to yourself, 'I wish I was out there.' It's like when your mom says you can't go outside and then you see all your friends running around outside, that's basically how I felt at that moment."
Although relational AI has potential therapeutic benefits, recent studies and emerging cases suggest potential risks of emotional dependency, reinforced delusions, addictive behaviors, and encouragement of self-harm,
"We should never exercise for the sake of burning calories. ... We should exercise for cardiovascular health, for mental health, for emotional health. It gives structure to your day. You can create social relationships through classes together," she explained. "There are so many reasons to exercise. B urning calories shouldn't be one of them." Recent research shows that focusing on regular exercise improves your longevity ― even more than focusing on weight loss.
From a distance, it looks as though people are praying. Their heads are bowed solemnly, their hands folded before them. But then I notice the phone. They are not praying-just looking at their screens. Since the arrival of the smartphone, rates of mental illness have risen sharply: depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide, especially among the young. Our attention has been captured, our inner lives fragmented, and our sense of self quietly distorted.
ROBERT WALDINGER: I started out as an intern in pediatrics and I would see one ear infection after another, and the kids were adorable, but one ear infection is pretty much the same as every other. Whereas when you talk to people about their lives, it's never the same. And I knew that that would keep me interested for my whole career, which it has.
I get a lot of calls for that topic at this time of year. Sadly, whichever way you cut the demographic mustard-men, women, younger, older, LGBTQ, BAME/BIPOC, neurodivergent, disabled-more and more people report feeling lonely some or most of the time. Sadly, those feelings can be compounded by Christmas, making the festive period difficult for many, for a variety of reasons. The solution lies in being more than a little self-indulgent. It's a call to be selfish, but with good reason.
The questions were part of annual research carried out in the summer by pollster YouGov with 7,340 adults of all ages for Ofcom's Annual Online Nation report. Despite their increasing negativity, young adults in the UK spend significantly more time online than older age groups, averaging six hours and 20 minutes a day on personal (rather than work) devices, up ten minutes over the prior 12 months and much higher than the four hours and 30 minutes for all adults.
Coming of age alongside smartphones, however, has been linked to high rates of mental health concerns among Gen Z. A 2024 brief by the National Center for Health Statistics found that half of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 spent four or more hours on screens per day, and those teens were more likely to experience anxiety or depression symptoms.
After that show, without notice to Perry, we unilaterally determined it would be best to not continue the tour and made inaccurate statements about Perry's mental health which we regret. One of the statements being referred to may have been that which was posted by Navarro on Instagram following the altercation, which was signed by himself, Avery and Perkins. Due to a continuing pattern of behaviour and the mental health difficulties of our singer Perry Farrell,
Claney (2025) describes autistic masking as "a complex phenomenon in which autistic individuals consciously or unconsciously hide or modify their behaviors and traits to fit within societal expectations." Masking, Claney argues, takes a massive emotional toll on autistic adults and can be devastating to mental health. A substantial body of research supports these findings, with the entire neuroaffirmative movement as evidence of the psychological and physical costs of long‑term masking.
Jennifer Breheny Wallace: I shudder when I hear people bragging about perfectionism or saying perfectionism can be good; healthy striving, striving for excellence is good. Perfectionism? I just don't see any good that comes of it. Samantha Laine Perfas: Many people hold themselves to extremely high standards, but when the scales tip to the pursuit of perfection, it can result in anxiety, depression, and other serious mental health issues. So how do we know when we've gone too far in trying to do our best?
The topic of mental health is a crucial one, as security team burnout is a top challenge for many organizations. Those in the industry know stressors can be abundant when working security roles, and without proper mental health practices in place, many professionals can burn out. And when one team member burns out, it's possible that more will follow. "We're pretty much [on] 24/7, being security professionals," says Rodriguez.
A lot of the research that's been done on mental health relies on self-report: Young people are asked to guesstimate how many hours they had on different platforms over weeks or months. They're also asked to estimate the impact of that screen use on their social relationships, their sleep, their exercise, their patterns. If you asked me, "John, what was your screen time for the last two weeks and what were your sleep patterns?," I wouldn't know.
Over the past year, I started practicing breathwork to help with my mental health. Slowing my breath and breathing deep into my diaphragm has helped bring me calm and perspective, and longer sessions have helped me work through negative thought patterns. Breathwork, I have found, is an important adjunct to other components of a healthy life, such as nutrition, physical exercise, sleep, and social connection.
The Washington Post analyzed TikTok usage, finding what topics the algorithm nudges users towards more: TikTok's algorithm favors mental health content over many other topics, including politics, cats and Taylor Swift, according to a Washington Post analysis of nearly 900 U.S. TikTok users who shared their viewing histories. The analysis found that mental health content is stickier than many other videos: It's easier to spawn more of it after watching with a video, and harder to get it out of your feed afterward.
On the surface, Omar Bogle's career is that of your typical EFL striker. The Crewe Alexandra forward has played in every division from the Championship down to the National League North, scoring well over 150 goals across all competitions. Bogle's CV includes the highs of promotion to League Two and the Premier League, with Grimsby Town and Cardiff City respectively, as well as 2018/19 EFL Trophy glory with Portsmouth, but those on-pitch achievements have been put into perspective in the past 18 months.
Do you ever repeat affirmations to yourself, maybe while looking in the mirror or driving in your car? It feels weirdly powerful, especially when you say them out loud. And the ThinkUp app wants you to harness that power. Instead of listening to pre-recorded mantras from a stranger, you get to record your own very specific affirmations and play them whenever you like. The goal? To boost your mood, feel more self-assured, and maybe even manifest a few dreams.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
