There is going to be a mental health crisis unlike anything we've seen before. PTSD will be widespread, and look who we've got running the country.

When soldiers return from active duty, the TRIM (Trauma Risk Management) system helps deal with issues arising from acclimating back into civilian life. It's designed to provide support in the aftermath of traumatic events. Which is what we have here, on a huge scale.
It won't just be frontline healthcare workers either. I fear a massive trauma response from the wider population, as and when Covid is brought under control and we begin to return to whatever 'normal' looks like at that point.
The armed forces could provide insight into how hospital trusts, schools and businesses could apply this for their staff / students at scale, but it would need government support and...no.
This is the same govt which has decimated mental health care over the past 10 years.
We already had a mental health crisis before Covid.
In 2017 the number of young people arriving in A&E with psychiatric problems had doubled since 2009 but mental health services were cut by £538million.
Rates of depression and anxiety among teenagers have increased by 70 per cent in the last 25 years. Almost 19,000 teenagers were admitted to hospital for self-harm in 2015/16, an increase of 14 per cent since 2013/4 and 68 per cent across the last decade.
These numbers were still climbing at the end of 2019, and now we're still in the throes of a global pandemic.

I'll take a stab at how much planning Johnson and his cronies have done to mitigate the onslaught of trauma-related psychological injury: none.
There are myriad organisations who would consult with the government and provide planning assistance to roll out community mental health training and support, but I bet they a) haven't even thought about it, b) wouldn't fund it.
I lead our mental health first aid programme at work and we're busier than ever. And this is a company with *significant* support for emotional distress and whose employees are well-paid and thus able to access third-party help.
My colleagues are struggling to cope with the last 12 months, and we're all working from home. Now overlay living in poverty / being forced to go to work / being a carer - any of the other factors which increases the chances of contracting the virus / losing your income.
If you work for the kind of company which talks about mental wellbeing, or already has something in place, petition them NOW to scale this up. It will be needed. People who are seemingly coping fine right now may well not when they reach the 'relief' phase of the crisis.

More from Health

Before we get too far into 2021, I thought I’d write a thread recapping some of the research that came out of my lab in 2020. Most of this work was led by my talented team of graduate students, Kerrianne Morrison, @kmdebrabander, and @DesiRJones.

Back in January, a news story was published about Kerrianne’s study showing improved social interaction outcomes for autistic adults when paired with another autistic partner.

A detailed thread about the study and a link to the paper can be found here (feel free to DM me your email address if you’d like a copy of the full paper for this study or any of our studies):


Another paper published early in 2020 (it appeared a few months earlier online) showed that traditional standalone tasks of social cognition are less predictive of functional and social skills among autistic adults than commonly assumed in autism research.


Next, @kmdebrabander led and published an innovative study about how well autistic and non-autistic adults can predict their own cognitive and social cognitive performance.
Now you know I love to sh-t in Harvard. But I also like accuracy. So I decided to go look at Harvard’s catalog to see its lack of military history that this article describes (they only teach history of pets it claims) and what I found shocked me! Shocked me! A thread: 1/


First off, Harvard students literally have multiple sections of military history that they can take listed. (It appears these ones are taught at MIT, so they might have to walk down the street for these) but... 2/


Say they want to stay on campus...they can only take numerous classes on war and diplomacy...3/


They have an entire class on Yalta. That’s right. An entire class on Yalta. 4/


But wait! There is more! They can take the British Empire, The Fall of the Roman Empire for those wanting traditional topics... 5/
I applaud the #EUCancerPlan *BUT* caution: putting #meat 🥩 (a nourishing, evolutionary food) in the same box as 🚬 to solve a contemporary health challenge, would be basing policy on assumptions rather than robust data.

#FollowTheScience yes, but not just part of it!
THREAD👇


1/ Granted, some studies have pointed to ASSOCIATIONS of HIGH intake of red & processed meats with (slightly!) increased colorectal cancer incidence. Also, @WHO/IARC is often mentioned in support (usually hyperbolically so).

But, let’s have a closer look at all this! 🔍


2/ First, meat being “associated” with cancer is very different from stating that meat CAUSES cancer.

Unwarranted use of causal language is widespread in nutritional sciences, posing a systemic problem & undermining credibility.

3/ That’s because observational data are CONFOUNDED (even after statistical adjustment).

Healthy user bias is a major problem. Healthy middle classes are TOLD to eat less red meat (due to historical rather than rational reasons, cf link). So, they

4/ What’s captured here is sociology, not physiology.

Health-focused Westerners eat less red meat, whereas those who don’t adhere to dietary advice tend to have unhealthier lifestyles.

That tells us very little about meat AS SUCH being responsible for disease.

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