We’ve all probably experienced denial in some form  or another during our lives. Maybe we’ve seen it in others, or maybe we’ve been ‘guilty’ of it ourselves, but whatever our experiences, most of us would agree it’s far from uncommon – and it takes on a myriad of forms.

Denial is ignoring that lump in the breast or developing mole on the arm, and pretending it’s nothing to worry about.

It’s throwing money at a lost cause in the misguided hope that you can recover a bad situation. Maybe it’s that ‘one last bet’ to get back what you’ve lost at the bookmakers, or maybe it’s the failing business that you keep pumping money into in the belief that tomorrow will be different.

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They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s thro...

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You’ve probably never heard of Joseph Weizenbaum, a German American computer science professor at the world renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). You’ve probably never heard of ELIZA, either – the computer programme he created to demonstrate that machines could not replicate talking mental health therapy.

At least, that was the intention. But as students of his work would be quick to tell you, that’s not quite how things worked out.

Let’s rewind a little. The Sixties is now recognised as having been a hothouse of new trends and new ideas. Not just around fashion, music and film, but also in social consciousness (this is the age of peace and love and antiwar sentiment, after all) and in technological advancement.

L

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When the news of Sinead O’Connor’s death broke in the evening of the last Wednesday of July, it was a painful reminder that fame – even when the height of it is long distant – comes at a high emotional price.

Her death will be processed no differently to the sudden and unexpected death of any other UK resident: a postmortem followed by a coroner’s investigation. 

The autopsy will already have been performed. If the cause of death is found to have been natural, she will be laid to rest in accordance her expressed wishes within a matter of just a few weeks.

And it is, of course, entirely possible that the singer succumbed to some sudden illness or catastrophic health event.

But as any journalist will tell yo

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The comedian and actor John Cleese has an interesting take on extremism, arguing that what some people see as extremism in those they perceive as enemies can often be used to justify their own equally extremist reactions to it. “You can be as nasty as you like and feel your behaviour is morally justified”. 

In other words, extremism begets extremism – it’s just that our own certainty that we are right and ‘they’ are wrong risks blinding us to the fact our own behaviour is no less extreme.

Extremist ideology of whatever nature blooms in closed networks of ideological echo chambers (like internet chatrooms,

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The world has known its fair share of cult leaders. From Charles Manson and David Koresh and R. Kelly, history is punctuated by the coercive and often deadly activities of individuals who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to tap into extremism’s zeitgeist.

Predominantly male (of the 68 cult leaders deemed worthy of their own page on Wikipedia, only 8 are women – though what they lack in number as leaders they seem to more than make up for in body count of victims), cult leaders trade on charisma, manipulation, and the creation of a strong sense of community and belonging.

It seemed for a while that organised cults that tended to exist in or gravitate toward communes – primarily a phenomenon of the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies and

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In 1939, the New Yorker published a short story titled The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Written by James Thurber, the partially autobiographical story and the expanded novel that followed three years later introduced readers to a meek and unassuming man with a wild fantasy life.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story (film versions have starred Danny Kaye and Ben Stiller), you’ll find no spoilers here. But it’s enough to say that Walter has what might be best described as an incidental relationship with reality.

During rare lucid moments when reality does intrude on Walter’s overpowering fantasy life (he believes himself to be, among other things, a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a louche killer), he is confronted by a world he doe

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It’s now thought that around 70% of UK TV audiences regularly watch reality TV shows.

As statistics go, it’s at the more depressing end of the spectrum, especially when you consider that the genre itself is the ultimate misnomer: there really is nothing real about reality TV.

There are those shows – like Gogglebox, Location Location Location and Grand Designs, for example – that have their feet firmly planted in the world of entertainment. These are shows where the participants may be front and centre on our screens (and they can – and do – play to the camera), but they are not the sole focus of the programme itself.

But those that are centred purely on the human condition and have been

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Anyone who has experienced anxiety, or has been close to someone who has, knows how debilitating and destructive it can be.

Some commentators are quick to dismiss anxiety as a ‘modern illness’ and indeed there has been a marked increase in reported anxiety amongst the general public in the last few years, but the truth is it is a difficult condition to live with.

Of course, sometimes anxiety is a perfectly normal and useful way to respond. It is our body’s natural response to a perceived threat. When we are faced with potentially harmful situations it makes sense for our ‘fight or flight’ response to be triggered.

When this happens, cortisol and adrenaline are released into our systems. These cause our heart to beat faster, our b

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If you’re someone who gets their daily news fix from BBC News Online you could be forgiven for thinking that people like me spent the whole of the pandemic making a mountain out of a mental health molehill.

Apparently, according to the BBC news feed this week, all that time I spent jumping up and down between March 2020 and … well, now, really … calling on the Government to take seriously the impact of its lockdown on mental health and invest more in the provision of desperately needed acute and counselling services was all just wasted breath.

Because, you see, according to the BBC the real impact of the pandemic on people’s mental health was minimal.

Quoting a British Medical Journal study, the

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