Good evening 👋

This week we learned that as many as 70% of PTSD cases in young adults go untreated1 that there’s been a huge step forward in treatment resistant depression using psychedelic medication2 and that physical body touch shows strong anecdotal potential to treating some mental illnesses3

Opinion 🗣️

By Charlie Penwarden

Today we celebrate(?) the 75th anniversary of the UK’s National Health Service with an expectant flurry of superficial platitudes from political leaders who have critically underinvested in the service for over a decade.

I, like most of the British public, love the NHS for its founding principles. A socialistic system of care that everyone contributes to and everyone benefits from.

A system of care that is uniquely British.

But one that is under attack and has been for some time now.

Much hasn’t changed in the way of progress since I started training to be a mental health nurse back in 2008 and it was in dire need of investment back then.

You may see reports floating around of a 20% increase in mental health social workers since 2019 but that’s mainly due to acknowledgement of trainee placements now and isn’t entirely an honest reflection.

There has – in fact – been a 5% decline in qualified mental health nurses.

The damning report from The King’s Fund, titled The rise and decline of the NHS in England 2000–20 has concluded that…

The cynic in all of us can, unfortunately, see exactly where this is going.

And it’s all about the money.

Especially when you find out that a multi-billion-pound tax-payer-funded contract paid for nearly 200 private hospitals to assist with the UK’s COVID response and only 0.08% of COVID patients ended up being cared by them throughout the pandemic. (Source) …so why were NHS hospitals overburdened?

Especially when Big Pharma made $90 Billion in excess profits on COVID-19 vaccines and pharmaceuticals in 2021 & 2022, paid for by governments tax-payers around the world thanks to an emergency-use authorization from questionable trial data as Peter Doshi, Associate Editor at the British Medical Journal writes:

“Hospitalisations and deaths from COVID-19 were simply too uncommon in the population being studied for an effective vaccine to demonstrate statistically significant results in a trial of 30,000 people in such a short space of time. The same is true whether it could save lives or prevent transmission: the trials were not designed to find out.” (Source)

The report titled Pharma’s Pandemic Profits shows that these enormous gains are largely due to decades of research funded by public investment, billions in grants for development and production, and tens of billions in Advanced Purchase Agreements (APAs) with governments.

A reminder that excess deaths during the pandemic dropped from ~40,000 in April 2020 down to ~16,000 in January 2021 which was before anyone in the world could have been fully vaccinated. And of those excess deaths, 92% occurred in the population aged over 65, with the mean average age of the deceased being 80.5 years old (Source). If the vaccine didn’t stop transmission and the risk of harm was so low to under-pension age adults and children then why was it mass-mandated?

Not only that but there has since been a worryingly high and unexplained increase in excess deaths over the past year of about 10-15% above the average, globally, mainly affecting young people up to the age of 65. These are unexplained, unattributed deaths that don’t fall under self-harm or COVID related.

What could it be?

A 2023 consumer insights report by Statista revealed that 22% of British adults already pay for private medical insurance (Source) and the London School of Economics have reported that 25% of NHS funding is being spent on ‘private’ independent services. (Source)

Both these figures are trending upwards.

It wasn’t long ago that practically the whole nation were outside their homes at 8pm every Thursday clapping in support of the workers who dedicate their lives to the vocation in service of others, usually the less fortunate.

Whilst mental health doesn’t discriminate, we learned from the pandemic that these groups of people are more likely to be affected than others…

• Health care workers

• Mothers and pregnant people

• Children and young adults

• People with preexisting mental illnesses

• People with financial or housing insecurity

• People from ethnic minority groups

• People with disabilities

And these are the people that our hard-earned tax-payer money should be helping to support so we can celebrate the institution with pride and not angst.

Research 🎓

New research has been published in Molecular Psychiatry Journal this week which has studied the behavioral and emotional factors that may help people who’ve suffered childhood maltreatment become more resilient to avoid substance abuse.

The study found that people who experienced childhood maltreatment but didn’t develop substance use disorder had better emotional control and ultimately a healthier functioning of the body’s endocannabinoid system that helps regulate mood, appetite, sleep, pain and immune response, among others.

It’s hoping that these findings will contribute to the development of treatments to prevent substance use disorder in people who have suffered childhood maltreatment with the most impactful being the early development of high emotional intelligence. Read more 🔗

Top stories 📰

United Kingdom
Over 300,000 16 – 24 year olds in England & Wales are suffering with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with most cases linked to personal assault and violence, according to figures estimated for a new Channel 4 show ‘Konan: Trapped in Trauma’.

Low awareness of the symptoms and the difficulty of diagnosing PTSD means that as many as 70% of cases go untreated. If the NHS offered more early intervention therapy, it could save £2.4Bn in taxpayer money, according to Channel 4’s analysis of research by King’s College London and Office for National Statistics.
Read more 🔗

Australia
Australia has become the first country to authorize psychiatrists to prescribe psychedelics for depression and PTSD treatment. A huge step forward. Doctors can now prescribe MDMA for PTSD and Psilocybin for hard-to-treat depression.

The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) designated Psilocybin as a "breakthrough therapy" in 2018, a label that is designed to speed up the development and review of drugs to treat a serious condition with many studies. A recent study from Johns Hopkins University showed that a single psychedelic treatment with psilocybin relieved major depressive disorder symptoms for patients for up to a month.
Read more 🔗

New Zealand
So much of being mentally ill is a lonely business. Even within diagnoses, presentations and symptoms vary so wildly. Every person is sick in their own way. So, if your loved one is unwell, and it’s OK with them – touch them. You don’t have to speak, you don’t have to have all the answers – just hold their hand through the storm.
Read more 🔗

Spotlight 🔍

Returns next week!

That was a heavy one,
Thanks for reading.

Behaveo.com

References

Good evening 👋

Another busy week for mental health news.

Breakdowns and breakthroughs.

This week we discovered the diminishing evidence of long term prescriptions of antidepressants1 that a taskforce in the US are recommending – for the first time ever – a regular screening for anxiety and depression in those under 652 and that there’s been a worrying spike in eating disorders and self-harm among teenage girls in the UK, particularly those who live in affluent areas3

Research 🎓

New research suggests that issues with the immune system, including autoimmune disease, could cause psychiatric symptoms and even contribute to mental health conditions like schizophrenia and depression.

This has opened up new treatment options, including immunotherapy, which has shown promise in clinical trials. Routine screenings for immune system markers are now being done in Germany and elsewhere.

The study has led to improved conditions for patients like April and Devine, who suffered from psychosis and schizophrenia. Devine, now 21, is rebuilding her life after losing over a decade to her condition.

April Burrell, once a top student, developed severe schizophrenia after a traumatic event. Years later, doctors discovered she also had lupus, an autoimmune disease affecting her brain. After targeted treatments, April recovered from her catatonic state. This breakthrough could help other severely mentally ill patients, especially those with underlying autoimmune conditions. This research is changing how mental illnesses are diagnosed and treated, offering hope for patients previously thought to be beyond help.

Read more 🔗

Top stories 📰

United Kingdom
More than 8 million people in England (15%) have an antidepressant prescription for conditions like depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. 1/4 of those have been taking them for 5 years with worrying low evidence for their effectiveness. Long term use has also been linked to heart disease and diabetes whilst a pharmaceutical company has been caught covering up the difficulties of withdrawal.
Read more 🔗

United States
A phenomenon known as Brain Synchrony is being studied by neuroscientists to understand its role in social interactions. Early findings show that when people engage in conversation or share experiences, their brain waves synchronize, creating matching patterns. This synchronization is believed to prepare us for interaction and is seen as a positive or negative marker of relationships. This could potentially shed light on why we sometimes don't 'click' with others and why social isolation can be harmful to our health.

Read more 🔗

United States
A Preventive Services Task Force has recommended all adults under 65, particularly pregnant and postpartum women, should be regularly screened for anxiety and depression, even if they don't show symptoms. This is the first time the group has advocated for routine anxiety screening. This comes as emotional stress has significantly increased in recent years, putting a strain on the limited number of mental health professionals. Little evidence to back screening for adults 65 and older.
Read more 🔗

United Kingdom
There's been a worrying surge in eating disorders and self-harm among teenage girls in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. The spike is particularly noticeable among girls from affluent areas, possibly due to better access to healthcare services. The pandemic's lockdowns, which led to a sense of lost control, could be a trigger. The UK government is pouring funds into eating disorder services, but charities insist that early mental health support needs to be universally accessible.
Read more 🔗

Spotlight 🔍

Community
We’ve been closely following the developments of a community-based for-profit organization called Vanna Health over in the US. Their revolutionary psychosocial rehabilitation model is proving to be effective by leveraging diverse 1:1 local coaches, local pod support groups and clubhouse environments too. Read more 🔗

Company
Half of the battle with mental health care is in accessibility. Charlie Health are on a mission to change that by making intensive outpatient care accessible to teenagers by accepting more than 200 insurance plans in the 23 states it operates in, and Medicaid in 14 of the states they operate in. It also seeks to improve existing problems in care such as mismatched therapy groups with algorithms based on diagnosis, maladaptive coping mechanism, and demographic information such as age, gender identity, sexual orientation and race. Read more 🔗

Campaigner
The light shines on Christian Angermayer this week as he announced that his fund, the largest VC fund dedicated to mental health care (re.Mind Capital), has invested in immersive experience wellness company TRIPP to expedite growth and provide alternative solutions to rehabilitation. Read more 🔗

Plenty to ponder… see you next week!

Behaveo.com

References

Good afternoon 👋

Apologies for the short absence.

Due to permission issues on this platform, we were temporarily unable to access our account and therefore unable to publish. Quite frustrating too, considering there’s been plenty of activity in the Mental Health space, so let’s get straight into it!

This week we learned that 2 in 5 young people report symptoms of mental ill-health1 that students who are educated early on mental health report higher intentions of seeking help2 and that 1/4 of large listed employers improved their performance on workplace mental health in the past year3

Opinion 🗣️

By Charlie Penwarden.

Over the past few weeks there’s been an understandable outrage in the mental health community following the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s decision to selectively refuse to attend 999 incidents if they are judged to be mental health related and non-life-threatening.

Justified outrage? Or tough decisions to expedite change?

The Met Police are already at breaking point and this appears to be the simplest blanket decision considering that there is only basic mental health training given to officers on the beat and should it have been their responsibility in the first place?

There are simply not enough services to support someone going through an acute mental health crisis that the only options people have are to call the Police if there’s a criminal threat of harm or the Ambulance service if there’s a physical threat to life.

The consequences of this decision will be realised when it comes into effect this September, which doesn’t give the already broken mental health system much time to operationalise nationwide emergency mental health call handlers nor bolster the existing understaffed crisis ‘home resolution’ community teams.

When I was active in clinical practice for my local crisis team, there was just one on-call psychiatrist, one nurse and two support workers covering an area of over half a million people. Bouncing between the town’s A&E (ER) centres and police custody.

It’s a bold decision, that’s for sure, but one that I hope instigates a fast-track service upgrade to be able to re-route the 999 incident calls and mobilise the compassionate support that people need during a time of crisis.

Pressure’s on.

Research 🎓

Aside from floaty anecdotal evidence; it’s been notoriously challenging to prove the overall effectiveness that better education and open discussions about mental health can have on outcomes.

We’ve all known for years that most mental health problems start in the teenage years, with a recent NHS survey identifying that 2 in 5 young people report symptoms of mental ill-health. But unfortunately, due to poor knowledge of mental health issues and stigma about mental ill-health, most young people don’t have the facilities or the wherewithal to seek help.

New research from Action for Children, in collaboration with Cardiff & Swansea universities, has just been published that demonstrates the benefits of improving pupils mental health literacy at a crucial stage in their development.

The study group of 2,000 students aged 13 and 14 were split into two groups for a randomized control trial with the active group given access to specially trained teachers following an evidence-based program and the control group just taught the standard curriculum.

Of the active group participants, the following results were observed:

• Better mental health behaviors

• Reduced mental health stigma

• Increased intention to seek help

Whilst these are difficult to quantify, the results should form the basis of solid evidence to encourage an evolution in embedded mental health teacher training.

Top stories 📰

United States
This week, the Biden-Harris Administration announced that it’s working to make it easier for schools to receive payment for mental health services delivered to students impacted by gun violence. The US Department of Education has since awarded $286 million to boost the training, hiring, and diversification of mental health professionals in schools. It’s also distributed $1 billion in the Stronger Connections Grant program, and provided an additional $50 million for before and after-school programming.
Read more 🔗

United Kingdom
The University of Bristol is now part of a £42 million 'Mental Health Mission' announced by the Government to accelerate research into mental health conditions, including those impacting children. The research will develop radical new treatments, improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and increase the use of technology to free up clinician time.
Read more 🔗

United Kingdom
Almost 1/4 of the UK’s largest listed employers have improved their performance on workplace mental health overall in the past year, and almost 1/2 now recognise the link between financial wellbeing and the mental health of their employees.
Read more 🔗

United Kingdom
The Welsh Government has moved to expand the provision of mental health support as it launches an update to the NHS 111 service. The 111 (press option 2) service will give people crucial 24/7 access to a mental health professional who can provide over-the-phone assessments to guide people through crises and help alleviate stress.
Read more 🔗

Spotlight 🔍

Community
A healthcare organisation in Ontario, Canada, recently announced that Ryan Finch has donated $5 million to fund research into new solutions to make it easier for patients to access mental health care. The funds will support a new research chair in mental health system transformation, a first in Canada. The chair will aim to develop collaborative initiatives that help create change in the mental health system.

Company
Of all the online therapy services, only one of them in the US has a qualified clinical psychiatrist at the helm: Cerebral. Last week we had the pleasure of chatting to David Mou MD MBA, and his passion for increasing the provision of care and dedication positive patient outcomes was palpable. Read more about his vision 🔗

Campaigner
The light shines on Rob Stephenson this week after another successful InsideOut Awards ceremony in London, UK, last week. The InsideOut Awards celebrate the most impactful mental health players in the workplace and this year’s winners included Booking.com, Deutsche Bank and Nationwide Building Society.

Continue the conversation in the comments!

Thanks for reading and see you next week.

Behaveo.com

References

Good afternoon 👋

A warm welcome if you’re part of the 20+ new subscribers since last week’s edition. Glad to have you here and open dialogue is encouraged in the comments section. If you haven’t already, download the Substack app for a better reading experience.

This week we learned that nearly 3/4s of children detained under the mental health act are female1 that record numbers of healthcare staff are seeking crisis support2 and that targeting gut receptors prevents stress-induced psychiatric symptoms3

Plenty to discuss…

Opinion 🗣️

Another week, another set of shocking statistics.

It really is a struggle to hold onto hope during times like these and especially when it’s children that the system is seriously letting down too.

The knock-on effect of unresolved childhood trauma is almost like a life sentence for the individuals but it’s also likely to incur a serious practical and financial burden on a multitude of societal services as a result.

In a much welcomed ‘anti-positive-psychology’ stance; Chance Marshall, co-founder of The Self Space, has today declared that it’s International Sadness Day.

A lot of the problem with labelling mental health ailments as ‘disorders’ is that it automatically assumes a person is ‘abnormal’ when, in fact, the person will be experiencing a perfectly normal human reaction to the stresses and strains of life or the cards they’ve been dealt with since birth.

Exploring and not suppressing the sadder parts of the human experience is what helps us to develop greater emotional intelligence (EQ). Acknowledging emotions when they present, responding accordingly by ‘going with the flow’ and then recognising your reactive effect on others is the EQ trifecta.

I listened to one of the most powerful performances from a musician on the subject of mental illness and human nature, this week, and wow! Cutting straight through the noise, the song-in-question is titled Hi Ren by young British artist, Ren. It’s a visual and audible masterpiece that linguistic explanation is unworthy of, only feels.

Top stories 📰

United States
In new experiments with mice and humans, a team led by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers says it has identified a particular intestinal immune cell that impacts the gut microbiome, which in turn may affect brain functions linked to stress-induced disorders such as depression.

Targeting changes mediated by these immune cells in the gut, with drugs or other therapies, could potentially bring about new ways to treat depression. Read more 🔗

United Kingdom
Of the 869 detentions of children under the Mental Health Act in 2021-22, almost three-quarters (71%) were female. It’s amid warnings that young people face a “postcode lottery” in their wait for treatment with the average reported time to care being 40 days yet up to 80 days and beyond in some regions.

The commissioner also looked into the quality of care for children in inpatient mental health units and found many environments where children did not have access to any activities and only a few hours of education in some places.

The report calls for the Department of Health & Social Care to roll out mental health support teams to every school by the end of 2025. Read more 🔗

United Kingdom
Unsurprisingly, given the nationwide strikes across the country of late, record levels of NHS staff are seeking mental health support as senior clinicians warn the crisis facing workers is “worse than the pandemic”.

1 in every 20 doctors and 1 in every 4 ambulance workers sought mental health support from the NHS’s Practitioner Health service last year and rising.

Most worrying about those statistics is that this past year was a 57% increase in GPs and medical doctors using the service than the previous year, which already was a 44% year-on-year increase before. Shocking. Read more 🔗

Spotlight 🔍

Community
The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has proposed the next step to modernise how California treats mental illness, substance use disorders and homelessness in the community.

The proposal sets out to build state-of-the-art residential mental health centres across the community to house Californians with mental illness and substance-use disorders and to create housing for homeless veterans. Finally, a step in the right direction with significant financial backing. Read more 🔗

Company
We’ve been impressed with The Self Space since they opened in London, England, and they now have a base in Manchester too. They call themselves “a contemporary mental health service” that offers therapy to individuals, couples and also companies, and their general vibe and ethos seem exactly aligned with what ‘the people’ need.

Campaigner
The light shines on Daniel Wilsher this week after his incredibly moving performance of an original song Learn To Live on the Channel 4 show, Piano Man. Danny is an inspiring speaker with his own company, Damaged Goods, and continues to turn his battles with mental health into education for the next generation.

Thanks for reading.

Charlie Penwarden
Mental Health Consultant @ Behaveo.com

References

Good afternoon 👋

This week we learned that the Covid-19 pandemic has reportedly had a minimal impact on people’s mental health1 that ministers have called for a ban on electroconvulsive therapy in women2 and that the Great Resignation among teachers is having a negative affect on the mental health of young people3

Some surprise. Some not so much!

Let’s dive in…

Opinion 🗣️

It’s been an interesting week for mental health around the world. On one hand we see workplace statistic after workplace statistic that confirms what most of us social listeners hear: people are struggling. A great deal.

But then other research suggests that (maybe positively due to lowering stigma) that mental ill-health figures were largely stagnant throughout the pandemic.

What is clear, however, is the positive impact that local, niche-specific, communities ran by influential figures have on the mental health management of people.

I’ve seen it first hand over the last 2 years supporting Project Pitstop, a men’s social club for the motorbike community which regularly has 50 bikers in attendance who are all encouraged to open up and destress from daily life, with appropriate support on hand should an escalation be required.

Meeting people where they are, in places they’re comfortable with, with influential people in their community is the closest thing to a silver bullet.

Another one is the MAST (Men Actively Standing Together) program by Green Door Families. A local initiative to Dorset that opens up safe spaces free-of-charge for victims of domestic abuse who are struggling to cope and need that support.

From what I see, there are dozens if not hundreds more like this which is encouraging.

It’s too easy to hold perpetual pessimism with a system that’s so very broken and so unable to be fixed that’s letting down scores of people every day but the only possible way to overcome these challenges is to take ownership and act.

Top stories 📰

Global
Our lead story this week is a narrative-bending finding that the Covid-19 pandemic may not have taken as great a toll on the mental health of most people as earlier research has indicated, as a new study suggests.

The pandemic resulted in “minimal” changes in mental health symptoms among the general population, according to a review of 137 studies from around the world led by researchers at McGill University in Canada, and published in the British Medical Journal. Read more 🔗

United Kingdom
Members of UK Parliament have told The Independent journalists that they have serious concerns women are disproportionally given electroconvulsive therapy, and argued that patients are not properly notified of the treatment’s potential side effects.

Some patients have also reported that they weren’t asked to provide consent before it was administered. Read more 🔗

United States
Between Feb ‘20 and May ‘22, more than 300,000 educators resigned in the United States citing concerns over safety, burnout, and low pay, among other reasons.

As a result, gaps in critical youth support have widened, negatively affecting the mental health of adolescents and young adults.

While the reasons behind the so-called Great Resignation are complex and understandable, the timing couldn’t be worse, as America’s children and adolescents are experiencing a significant increase in mental health challenges, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and other leading medical groups. Read more 🔗

Spotlight 🔍

Community
A new initiative from Bournemouth University called The University Retreat is now open to students between the ages of 16–25. Dubbed a “bespoke mental health space for students” who able to turn up unannounced, free of charge, from three university colleges in the local area.

NHS Dorset has provided funding for the service, operated by local Housing Association volunteers plus mental health professionals offering 1-2-1 or group sessions with crisis intervention too.

Company
JAAQ (pronounced ‘Jack’) burst onto the scene out of nowhere not long ago and they have certainly kept their promise to deliver relatable content from world leading experts and people with lived experience on common searched for subjects like ADHD, anxiety, depression and more.

Campaigner
The light shines on Alex Holmes this week for his dedication to providing helpful first-hand resources to his audiences in an easily digestible style and his buttery smooth voice helps too! Alex is a bibliotherapist and mindfulness-based therapeutic coach who is definitely worth a follow to brighten up your social media experience.

‘til next week!

Charlie Penwarden
Mental Health Consultant @ Behaveo.com

References