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Several of you have been in touch about a new book which is out by GP Dr Claire Bailey Mosley about how families should be eating together. She explains that her family always ate meals together every evening without fail, and she feels that this was the glue that help them together.
Things went really wrong for Ollie at school. He would be shaking every evening and grey-faced every morning. He didn’t like the lessons, the noise, being made what to do and the other children bullied him. After years of trying, he stopped going.
No one thinks that they are spreading misinformation. For the most part, misinformation doesn’t spread maliciously. It spreads because people want to share something important they’ve discovered. It spreads because people hear something and it makes sense to them. It spreads because someone has a ‘lightbulb moment’ and they want to let the world know. It spreads because something is a good story or analogy. Misinformation mostly spreads in good faith. Here’s an example. There’s a story I’ve seen repeatedly on social media which goes like this.
I’ve often heard children told that their brains are ‘differently wired’ as a reason for why they struggle with things which other children find easier. It’s an easy metaphor to reach for, and it’s definitely better than telling them that it’s their fault or that they aren’t making enough effort.
A recent study has found that over half of the most popular TikTok videos about mental health contain misinformation. To be honest, I’m surprised that it’s only around half. I see a awful lot of misinformation online. Not just about mental health, but also about neurodiversity.
I’m sometimes asked how you can tell if a child is depressed or in burnout. I’ve seen posts in social media saying that this is a crucially important distinction because the treatment for depression is the ‘polar opposite’ of that for burnout. One post I saw said that in depression you’ll be advised to ‘push through’ whilst with burnout it’s essential to rest.
I know, as I post this, that for at least a third of 16-year-olds this week will not have been one of celebration.
As I write this, there is a heatwave in France where I am on holiday with my kids and at home England is having its fourth heatwave of the summer. Last week, wildfires reached the outskirts of Madrid. Climate change is no longer something happening in the future in distant places, it is happening now all around us.
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