Mental health
For better, for worse: Death Do Us by Ruthy Mason reviewed
Underwhelmed by the prospect of her future marriage, Bea focuses on the past instead, reconnecting with a former boyfriend and reliving dark events from her undergraduate life. Past and present blur uneasily together and the reader is kept cleverly in suspense
Therapy speak is turning us into sissies
As one who’s always been keen on putting their hand up and admitting to their faults (a perverse form of…
The ADHD-ification of squishy toys
‘Feeling a bit stressed or anxious? Want to practise more mindfulness? Looking for good vibes and your best mellow and…
The uncomfortable truth about the new Mental Health Act
Three years ago, Nottingham University students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, along with caretaker Ian Coates, were murdered by Valdo…
The art of owning up
Though Rebecca Culley is obviously a wrong ’un – having stolen £90,000 from her dear old gramps while pretending to…
The inconvenient truth about cannabis and mental illness
Mash’s older brother was the same age as Anthony Williams when he slaughtered a stranger in a brutal and random…
Why are psychiatrists scared of sectioning dangerous patients?
The police initially treated last weekend’s stabbings on a train near Huntingdon as a possible terror attack, before confirming it…
Perfection: Hampstead Theatre’s The Assembled Parties reviewed
The Assembled Parties, by Richard Greenberg, is a rich, warm family comedy that received three Tony nominations in 2013 following…
Every line in the new Alan Partridge is perfect
By now, viewers of TV thrillers are no strangers to a baffling prologue – but this week brought a particularly…
The lunacy of emotional support animals
Naturally, the start of the new school year is often stressful for pupils. Perhaps those anxious children returning to their…
The problem with psychiatrists? They’re all depressed
Edinburgh seems underpopulated this year. The whisky bars are half full and the throngs of tourists who usually crowd the…
In defence of benzos
In the latest series of The White Lotus – a moral fable about the narcissism and toxicity of the privileged…
The nightmare of ‘maladaptive daydreaming’
At the beginning of the spring term of my second year at university, a French boy called Xavier looked up…
Why today’s youth is so anxious and judgmental
In a well-evidenced diatribe, Jonathan Haidt accuses the creators of smartphone culture of rewiring childhood and changing human development on an unimaginable scale
‘Childhood has been rewired’: Professor Jonathan Haidt on how smartphones are damaging a generation
Something strange is happening with teenagers’ mental health. In Britain, the US, Australia and beyond, the same trend can be…
TicTok
The pandemic has hit our children even harder than we thought
Canada’s lovely, liberal solution
My favourite Martin Amis novel was his 1991 book Time’s Arrow. It is a pyrotechnically brilliant work in which all…
The midlife crisis spread: why are the affluent so depressed?
‘You are here’, as those signs in windswept carparks unhelpfully point out. Yup. No mistaking it, you will tend to…
Mental health
It is easy to laugh at young people asking for sympathy because ‘I’ve got mental health’. I think I heard…
How we fell for antidepressants
The French novelist, Michel Houellebecq, with his accustomed acuity about modern culture, titled his last novel but one Serotonin. By…
America has betrayed its young
Two articles last weekend made me feel sorry for American young people. We in the anti-woke brigade can be awfully…
User friendly
The London mayor’s new policy on cannabis is a disaster
Into the woods
Anyone who spends time among trees senses how good that is for their physical and mental wellbeing, says Ursula Buchan
Simone’s Olympic trial
The outstanding gymnast Simone Biles has pulled out of several Olympic events, saying: ‘I just don’t trust myself as much…
Diary
I’ve always been a Spectator reader, so I’m delighted to be writing a diary about the Olympics from Tokyo. My…
