August 18, 2024 — The mental health of youth is in serious decline around the world – a decline that is a mirror image of rising obesity. These overlapping tragedies may be independent. But common threads are easy enough to find. An editorial from the Lancet Psychiatry distills perspective from the new Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Youth Mental Health: […]
May 26, 2024 — Skimming the headlines, it would be easy to think that the combination of mobile phones and social media are responsible for quite a range of our current ills – including mental health and obesity. If you want to dig deeper, you can find a whole tome on the subject from Jonathan Haidt. He has woven […]
March 17, 2024 — Professor Bruce Hood at the University of Bristol wants us to know that we can indeed learn to be happier. He has been teaching the Science of Happiness there since 2018 and measuring the results over time. Collaborating with Catherine Hobbs, Sarah Jelbert, and Laurie Santos in Higher Education, he reports that coursework in positive […]
January 23, 2024 — A new study of social isolation in people living with obesity tells us that this might be among the most important complications of obesity. In fact, it points to the possibility that reducing isolation could yield longer lives for people living with obesity. These results are nothing more than the observation of an association. But […]
December 25, 2023 — Yes, we are ready for a little lot more peace and goodwill in this world we have filled lately with too much pain and strife. Thousands of children dying in a war of retribution, famine, gun violence, mistrust, and animosity. It is all simply too much to bear at times. But we have options. “The […]
September 27, 2023 — Travelling on a train recently you couldn’t help but overhear two women deep in conversation about a mutual obsession with food, including emotional triggers that pushed them towards chocolate and pizza. They shared feeling guilty about a perceived lack of willpower around food and regularly rummaging through the fridge looking for tasty treats to help […]
September 24, 2023 — A good friend often reminds us about the importance of kindness, and of course, she is right. The world offers us too little kindness too often and we make it better when we add the warmth of kindness to the corner of the world we share. But our friend Gary Foster took it a bit […]
September 10, 2023 — The impulse to do it yourself is strong – even in healthcare. Self-care can be essential for good health, but because it has its limits, it can easily feed into self-shame. In an essay for the New York Times, pediatrician Aaron Carroll shares his own experience with this: “Despite all the advances in science, we […]
August 5, 2023 — Often in scientific research we find a tension between answering a question and telling a story. A recent study of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) after metabolic surgery offers a case in point. The scientists who designed this study wanted to answer a simple question. Does CBT improve the the clinical outcome of weight reduction? Or […]
June 1, 2023 — New research provides impressive evidence for the contribution of obesity to the risk of a range of mental health disorders. These include depression, psychosis, eating and personality disorders. The added risk is apparent at all ages, in both men and women. Furthermore, these data suggest that the mental health burden of obesity is greater in […]
