From Cain and Abel and the Brothers Karamazov to Cinderella, the warmth and support provided by siblings has hardly been taken for granted. Now, researchers have found that children who moan about their brothers and sisters may have good reason to complain: the more siblings teenagers have, the more it hits their happiness, they claim. A study of secondary schoolchildren in the US and China found that those from larger families had slightly poorer mental health than those from smaller families. The greatest impact was seen in families with multiple…
Tag: Mental health
Six lifestyle choices to slow memory decline named in 10-year study
A combination of healthy lifestyle choices such as eating well, regularly exercising, playing cards and socialising at least twice a week may help slow the rate of memory decline and reduce the risk of dementia, a decade-long study suggests. Memory is a fundamental function of daily life that continuously declines as people age, impairing quality of life and productivity, and increasing the risk of dementia. Evidence from previous research has been insufficient to evaluate the effect of healthy lifestyle on memory trajectory, but now a study suggests that combining multiple…
‘What was it for?’: the mental toll of China’s three years in Covid lockdowns
After China’s abrupt scaling back of its zero-Covid restrictions, many ordinary Chinese people are struggling to cope with the mental trauma from three years of frequent lockdowns and are demanding answers for the heavy price they have paid. On Friday, one of the top shared posts on Sina Weibo – China’s Twitter-like platform – was an article citing medical experts as saying depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by the population would probably take between 10 and 20 years to recover from. Lu Lin, a fellow at the Chinese…
Covid forces China to face mental health crisis a long time in the making
Since the Covid lockdown in Shanghai began, Hu Bojun has received numerous inquiries about her and her hospital’s counselling services. This month, the US-educated clinical psychologist began facilitating lockdown support groups – in English and Chinese – to clients from “all walks of life”. “Even people from different socio-economic sectors are now attending [counselling] together … My old clients have been coming back, and there are a lot more new clients as well,” she says, adding that a lot more Chinese people have begun talking to her about their mental…
Video of woman chained to wall in shack causes outcry in China
A video of a woman apparently locked against her will in a filthy shack has gone viral in China, prompting an investigation as well as a conversation about the country’s treatment of people with mental illness. The footage, taken on 26 January, was posted to the video-sharing site Douyin the following day by a man who was shocked to find the woman locked in the rubbish-filled building in a village in Jiangsu province in the east of the country. Standing in freezing conditions, the woman appeared to be chained by…