Streamers focusing on mental health often find themselves in unenviable positions
For several years, James was one of Twitch’s most prominent mental health streamers. (James prefers to keep his surname private.) Under his somewhat absurd online alias, General_Mittenz, a talking cat, he’d discuss his issues with anxiety and depression, give tips on how best to deal with panic attacks and talk about the stigma he faced; he even told viewers about his father’s suicide several years prior.
The point, James says, was to create a safe community where people could come and talk about their problems, whether that was something as serious as a mental health diagnosis or as standard as…
The new services turn email into bloodless business speak. So why are we allowing Silicon Valley to dictate what we say?
If you’ve used Gmail any time recently, you’ll probably be familiar with Smart Reply and Smart Compose. Smart Reply is simple. Whenever you receive an email, three jaunty and heavily exclamation-pointed options pop up under its body: things like “Thank you!”or “That sounds great!” or “That works for me!” Click the option you like the best, edit (or don’t), and press send. Congratulations: an email that would have taken you 30 seconds to write has taken you two.
Smart Compose, on the other hand, helps you craft emails yourself. Up pops grayish text when you start to write an email…
Advocates claim talking therapies can help with recovery, but also minimize repeat offenses
Claire was in her first semester of college when she was raped. “I was hanging out drinking with a bunch of kids,” she says. “I’d never drunk to the point of blacking out until that evening. It was the first time that ever happened to me. And somebody who I thought was my friend thought it was okay to have sex with me while I was passed out.”
After that deeply traumatic event came an adjudication process that Claire says was almost as traumatic as the actual assault. College rules about mandated reporting meant that as soon as Claire told…
For the last year or so — from “Time to Talk Day” to campaigns fronted by the British Royal Family — we’ve all been barraged with the message that we should be talking about our mental health problems in order to raise awareness, and ideally, seek help.
Much of this narrative is explicitly aimed at men, the burden on whom mental illness is not insignificant. According to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics, three-quarters of suicides are committed by men. Suicide is also the biggest cause of death of men under 35. Similarly, men are less likely to seek…
Sometimes when I come home late at night I look over at the Rectory. I see something white at the window. Could that be you, Miss Alma? Or, is it your doppelgänger, looking out of the window that faces my way?
Everything that has ever happened to you is happening now.
Facebook posts about nights out in 2008; that old LiveJournal you used to anonymously talk about anorexia and boys; that review you left of a book you hated; the handful of blogs you abandoned, one after six months, one after two, one that never got further than the url…
Emily Reynolds
Journalist and author
