Trauma informed care is moving up the agenda in UK schools, even when policy documents never use the phrase. The idea itself is simple. Staff learn how harmful experiences can shape a child’s wellbeing, then adjust the way they teach and respond. Trauma means an event, a series of events or a set of circumstances...
People living with severe mental illness (SMI) die 15 to 20 years earlier than the rest of the population, and cigarettes play a large part in that gap. So the question of how to quit smoking with severe mental illness is a matter of life and death, not a footnote. A new review in BMJ...
Anxiety often gets blamed on stress, work pressure or personal worries. But for a fair number of people, the real trigger is sitting in their medicine cabinet. Certain prescription and over the counter drugs can bring on restlessness, a racing heart or a sense of panic, even in people who have never struggled with anxiety...
A veteran walks into a clinic and describes a drinking problem. The clinician asks about the drinking. What often goes unasked is what happened before the drinking started. New research on trauma and addiction in men, particularly among veterans and first responders, suggests this gap in questioning is not a minor oversight. It may be...
Sporting Culture, Addiction and the Toxic Game of addiction. For years, Paddy Ryder’s addictions did not begin with a single catastrophic choice. They grew through a thousand smaller decisions: the drink after the game, the binge rationalised as “normal”, the belief he could still function, and the conviction that help was for someone else. His...
Builders keep the country standing. Yet many of them are quietly falling apart. A growing body of research shows that construction worker mental health has become one of the most pressing issues in the trade. It is also one of the most overlooked. Behind the noise of drills and cranes sits a workforce carrying far...
A leading psychosis researcher has laid out some of the clearest evidence yet on the high potency cannabis psychosis link. Daily use sharply raises the odds of a psychotic disorder. The pattern holds even once genetic vulnerability, geography and time are all factored in. Dr Marta Di Forti delivered the findings in a keynote at...
A sweeping new analysis of more than 180 studies has confirmed what clinicians have long suspected. Cannabis use and psychosis onset move together, and the link grows stronger with age. The study appeared in Biological Psychiatry. It pooled data from 18,272 cannabis users and 52,801 non users across 149 studies. As a result, it stands...
Do our bodies really connect without a word being spoken? Growing evidence suggests they do. Scientists studying social synchrony have a name for it: the tendency for two people’s biological rhythms to line up during a shared experience. Couples, siblings, singers and even strangers can fall into step with one another. This goes far beyond...
Twenty five years ago meal deals were new. Mobile phones still had buttons. Cocaine was seen as a drug for the wealthy. Today, Britain’s addiction crisis looks very different. A major new retrospective from The Conversation, part of its Britain’s Quarter Century series, pulls together the evidence from leading academics to show exactly how. The...