A Toxic Feed: Social media and teen mental health

 

In 2021, a whistleblower inside Facebook disclosed a trove of documents showing that the company had studied its own platforms’ toxic effects on teen girls.

The revelations struck a chord with Hillary Hamilton, a mother in Colorado who spent more than a year investigating whether social media may have contributed to her daughter’s death by suicide in 2020.

Women, mental health and equality – the challenges being faced

 

Meet women across South Asia who are breaking stereotypes and voicing their opinions loud and clear. Get ready for HER - great stories about stepping up, health, depression, dating, beauty and marriage filled with twists, turns and feeling.

Forgotten at Sea

 

When the world went into lockdown, international trade continued to thrive as people turned to buying online. But for the workers keeping the shipping industry alive, it marked the beginning of a nightmare.

Closed borders have left many seafarers without a way home. Stuck at sea for months, many are struggling to carry on, with mental health concerns rising and reports of seafarers taking their own lives. One shipping business simply deserted its crew during the pandemic leaving them at port, without pay.

Naomi Osaka pulls out of French Open, citing mental health issues

 Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open on Monday and wrote on Twitter that she would be taking a break from competition, a dramatic turn of events for a four-time Grand Slam champion who said she has "suffered long bouts of depression."

Osaka's agent, Stuart Duguid, confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that the world's No. 2-ranked tennis player was pulling out before her second-round match at the clay-court tournament in Paris.

The stunning move came a day after Osaka, a 23-year-old who was born in Japan and moved with her family to the U.S. at age 3, was fined $15,000 for skipping the postmatch news conference after her first-round victory at the French Open. She also was threatened by all four Grand Slam tournaments with possible additional punishment, including disqualification or suspension, if she continued with her intention - which Osaka revealed last week on Twitter - to not "do any press during Roland Garros."

People so easily dismiss the metal health of professional athletes simply because they are paid to play a sport at a level 99% of those who watch could never achieve. These same people then attack them when they have the audacity to let the world know they have the same issues as everyone else.  Ones mental health is just as important as their physical health. 

Coronavirus, teen trauma and mental health | COVID-19 Update

 

Teens are especially hard hit by the psychological toll the COVID crisis has taken. Instead of going to class and hanging out with friends, teenagers have been banished to a life of screens, solitude and uncertainty.

Coronavirus: Lockdown's heavy toll on Italy's mental health

Italy’s coronavirus death toll is the second highest in the world, and its lockdown is the strictest and longest in Europe. Doctors say both things are creating a mental health emergency. The BBC has been given access to a psychological support centre run by the Red Cross, where staff say they’re overwhelmed by calls from people struggling. Psychologists are warning that Italy is not equipped to deal with the crisis, and that the rest of Europe must prepare.

Staying positive during the coronavirus pandemic | DW Documentary

The coronavirus pandemic is presenting everyone with challenges. But some people are coping with the current circumstances by staying positive. In Italy, Umberto De Martino converted his restaurant into a catering kitchen to cook for the Red Cross. Sonja Völker and her daughter Marie have started the production of face masks in Vienna.

Singapore: Top of the Class

101 East goes inside Singapore's schools to find out why the nation's students top the global leader board.

Singapore's education system is renowned for creating the world's smartest students.

It is the envy of nations around the world, but what is the secret to its students' success?

Supporters point to a culture that values education and holds teachers in high esteem.

But it is a high-stakes game - only the top students make it into the best schools.

Twelve-year-old Xuan is preparing for a national exam that will determine which secondary school he attends.

What The Mueller Report Reveals About Trump's Mental State | Opinions | NowThis

The president failed every criterion for rational and reality-based decision-making capacity.’ — Here’s what top psychiatrists learned about Trump’s mental state from the Mueller report.

Radio La Colifata: Argentina's 'loony radio'

Mental patients broadcast around the world from an Argentine mental asylum.

More than 20 years ago, a psychology student doing his training at one of Argentina's oldest psychiatric wards kept being asked by his family and friends what it was like to work in there. So, he came up with an idea: to let the patients explain in their own words.

The first radio station to broadcast from inside a mental hospital was born.

Radio La Colifata - slang for "loon", or "crazy person", has been on air from Hospital Jose Borda in Buenos Aires every Saturday afternoon for 23 years - to confront the stigma around mental illness, breaking through the wall in AM, FM and now online.

Richard Graham: Why gaming addiction is on the rise

Psychiatrist Dr Richard Graham discusses why gaming is so addictive and how it can be treated.

The design of online games has reached a new level of sophistication, appealing to millions of people.

There are more than 2.3 billion active gamers in the world this year, of which almost half spend money on games. A recent report by the international games market research company Newzoo estimates that the global games market will reach $137.9bn in 2018, with digital revenues accounting for 91 percent.

As the gaming phenomenon grows, the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified a new disease - gaming disorder. The WHO defines the disorder as "a pattern of gaming behaviour with increasing priority given to gaming over other activities ... and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

My Six Million Dollar Father (video)

Armed with a photo from Interpol, a Latvian filmmaker travels to Malaysia to find her disappeared millionaire father.

Self-made banker Boriss Osipovs achieved quick success immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he fled Latvia to avoid arrest for illegal operations.

Fifteen years later, his family receives a photograph from Interpol of an elderly gentleman with the same name who resides in a Malaysian psychiatric hospital. Could it be him?

Despite the reservations of her family, his daughter, filmmaker Ieva Ozolina embarks on a journey to find out the truth about the man in the photograph

Unwasted Poland

Mentally disabled workers at a recycling facility in Poland struggle to face new challenges and acceptance.

At the EKON waste disposal and recycling plant on the outskirts of Warsaw, all of the workers are differently abled - suffering from varying conditions from mild learning difficulties to developed schizophrenia. The employees collect the rubbish from 60,000 flats and sort recyclable material at the factory.

The factory has run successfully as a company for 20 years. Many of its workers would find it hard, if not impossible to find other jobs.

The work done here provides a necessary service to the community, but it also helps to restore the self-confidence of employees, giving them a sense of purpose, companionship and allowing them to earn a wage while contributing to society.

Gaming addiction: Are we asking the right questions?

Is gaming addiction a mental health issue or a distraction from valid questions surrounding technology development.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has decided to include "gaming disorders" in its 11th revision of internationally recognised diseases.

This addiction is described by the WHO as "a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour" that may become so extensive that it "takes precedence over other life interests".

Australia's Lost Generation: Battling Aboriginal Suicide

Australian Aboriginal youth suicide rates are among the highest in the world, so how can communities save their youths?

Young Aborigines are four times more likely to commit suicide than non-indigenous Australians. Experts and Aboriginal elders believe a variety of reasons drive Aboriginal youth to suicide, including a disconnection from traditional culture and land.

In 2012, 101 East travelled to Western Australia's Kimberley region to find out what was behind the abnormally high suicide rates there. Numbers were the highest among Australia's Aboriginal youth.

Locked up alone: Solitary confinement in the US

We examine one of the biggest human rights issue in the US that most Americans have never heard of.

More than 80,000 people in the United States are held in solitary confinement on any given day, with underreporting being one of the main issues for the lack of information about conditions and effects.

Not only does the media rarely get access, but popular culture also works against people in solitary confinement, demonising them and portraying them as "bogey men", psychopaths and killers that need to be put away.

But is this pop culture over-simplification of a real issue in the American justice system damaging journalists' chances to uncover a blanketed story? And what is being hidden under the pretence of the "Natural Born Killer"?

The awkward debate around Trump's mental fitness

Trump has made questions about his mental fitness unavoidable, with nearly every major news network now openly discussing whether the president has the the cognitive stability to do his job. But psychiatrists and mental health experts have been largely absent in the debate about Trump’s mental health. That’s thanks to the Goldwater Rule, a decades-old ethical guideline that’s coming under serious pressure as Trump starts his second year in office.

Radio La Colifata: Argentina's 'loony radio'

How a radio station that broadcasts from inside a psychiatric hospital changes attitudes towards mental illness.

More than 20 years ago, a psychology student doing his training at one of Argentina's oldest psychiatric wards kept being asked by his family and friends what it was like to work in there. So he came up with an idea: to let the patients explain in their own words.

The first radio station to broadcast from inside a mental hospital was born.

Radio La Colifata - slang for loon, or crazy person, has been on air from Hospital Jose Borda in Buenos Aires every Saturday afternoon for 23 years - to confront the stigma around mental illness, breaking through the wall in AM, FM and now online.

My Father the Banker (Video)

Armed with a photo from Interpol, a Latvian filmmaker travels to Malaysia to find her disappeared millionaire father.
Self-made banker Boriss Osipovs achieved quick success immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he fled Latvia to avoid arrest for illegal operations.

Fifteen years later, his family receives a photograph from Interpol of an elderly gentleman with the same name who resides in a Malaysian psychiatric hospital. Could it be him?

Despite the reservations of her family, his daughter, filmmaker Ieva Ozolina embarks on a journey to find out the truth about the man in the photograph.

My Father the Banker is an emotional story about a

Radio La Colifata: Argentina's 'loony radio'

How a radio station that broadcasts from inside a psychiatric hospital changes attitudes towards mental illness.



More than 20 years ago, a psychology student doing his training at one of Argentina's oldest psychiatric wards kept being asked by his family and friends what it was like to work in there. So he came up with an idea: to let the patients explain in their own words.

The first radio station to broadcast from inside a mental hospital was born.

Radio La Colifata - slang for loon, or crazy person, has been on air from Hospital Jose Borda in Buenos Aires every Saturday afternoon for 23 years - to confront the stigma around mental illness, breaking through the wall in AM, FM and now online.

In-patients produce and present the shows that range from politics to sports - and over the years, millions of Argentinians have been tuning in.