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TOPIC: mental health

Migrant Lives

How Nepal’s “Left-Behind” Children Of Migrants Hold Families Together

Children left to fend for themselves when their parents seek work abroad often suffer emotional struggles and educational setbacks. Now, psychologists are raising alarms about the quiet but building crisis.

BARDIYA — It was the Nepali New Year and the sun was bright and strong. The fields appeared desolate, except the luxuriantly growing green corn. After fetching water from a nearby hand pump, Prakash Jaisi, 18, walked back to the home he shares with his three siblings in Bardiya district’s Banbir area, more than 500 kilometers (over 300 miles) from Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. As it was a public holiday in the country, all his friends had gone out to have fun. “I’d like to spend time with my friends, but I don’t have the time,” he says. Instead, Jaisi did the dishes and completed all the pending housework. Even though his exams are approaching, he has not been able to prepare. There is no time.

Jaisi’s parents left for India in December 2021, intending to work in the neighboring country to repay their house loan of 800,000 Nepali rupees (6,089 United States dollars). As they left, the responsibility of the house and his siblings was handed over to Jaisi, who is the oldest.

Just like Jaisi’s parents, 2.2 million people belonging to 1.5 million Nepali households are absent and living abroad. Of these, over 80% are men, according to the 2021 census on population and housing. The reasons for migration include the desire for a better future and financial status.

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Psychwashing: When Employers Use "Well-Being" To Hide Workplace Business As Usual

Corporations are racing to adopt the language of the mental health movement. But is this anything more than a veil to cover up the deeper problems within the modern workplace?

WARSAW — Raises? Shorter working hours? Jobs that carry real meaning? Does anyone really need these things anymore? Nope, if you ask corporations, they would rather have their employees learn deep breathing or sign up for courses on how to effectively manage stress. Therapy and wellness culture has entered companies, but in a caricatured form.

Not so long ago, topics such as productivity and efficiency were all the rage in workplaces. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and it forced a reorganization of corporate priorities. All of a sudden, companies began to claim that they care about the mental health, well-being, and stress levels of their employees. But considering that what businesses still treasure most is their own bottom line, has this shift in language really changed anything?

“Mental health is now a corporate topic”, said professor Tomasz Ochinowski, a psychologist and organizational historian from the Department of Social Management at the University of Warsaw. “The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have definitely played a major role here”, he added, “but in a lot of ways, this is also a generational change”.

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Sincericide, When Speaking Your Mind Can Kill A Relationship

We all know good communication is the bedrock of a healthy relationship. Here's why keeping some of your thoughts to yourself, and a practiced lack of utter sincerity, is a bedrock of a healthy couple.

BUENOS AIRES — We know we can often be hard on ourselves, even if our perpetual, and private, self-evaluation can help us reassess our conduct and do better.

But what if it's your spouse or partner criticizing you? How harsh can they be without harming or even killing a relationship? Ours is a time of limited tolerance for dissent (with a brisk tendency to cancel and "unfriend") and polls show younger generations are keener than before to meet kind and empathetic partners.

While we can always state our views and discuss a point of discord without offending, it is also crucial to understand why and when we feel we are justified criticizing a partner's conduct or decision. Because even the plain truth, blurted out freely and once too often, can do irreparable harm. Some call it "sincericide."

Psychoanalyst and therapist Irene Fuks told Clarín that the dangers of "sincericide" are in the word itself, which combines sincerity with homicide and suicide.

"There's something deadly at work," she stresses, as words become darts. And while some people like to boast they say things "as they are," we need to stop a moment, says another analyst Erika Salinas, and "ask ourselves, this thing I'm going to say, does it add up, is it necessary or does it contribute something?" It is one thing to disagree, she adds, and another "to tell [your partner] what they 'are' or 'are not'," which can be hurtful.

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Moscow Shoots Down Drones, Amazon Protection Alliance, Fossil Mystery Solved

👋 Mogethin!*

Welcome to Wednesday, where Russia shoots down two combat drones near Moscow, Amazon nations launch an alliance to protect the fragile ecosystem but fail to agree on a common goal to end deforestation and paleontologists end a 30-year-old mystery surrounding the Australian fossil of a 1.5 meter-long creature. For our special Summer Reads edition of Worldcrunch Today, we feature an article by Katja Ridderbusch in German newspaper Die Welt — and three other stories from around the world on mental health and well-being.

[*Yapese - Micronesia]

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This Happened

This Happened — July 23: Farewell Amy Winehouse

On this day in 2011, Amy Winehouse was found dead in her home in the Camden neighborhood of London. The cause of her death was determined to be accidental alcohol poisoning.

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food / travel
Juan Pérez Fernández and Roberto de la Torre Martínez

Why Your Vacation Countdown Is Even Better For Your Health Than The Vacation Itself

Numerous studies in the past have shown how holidays are important for human health and well-being. Now, researchers say even the anticipation of your break is good for your body (and mind).

You have spent the past few days on a cloud over your forthcoming, well-deserved holidays, and will go back to daydreaming about them as soon as you finish this article. And the truth is that the benefits of a good holiday can be felt even before the trip begins.

Scientific studies show that merely looking forward to a future reward can be even more rewarding than the reward itself. This is so thanks to a small molecule called dopamine, which we will talk about later.

But, before we continue, let’s think about a few questions. Are holidays really necessary? Why do we need them? And, above all, what are the benefits of a few idle days?

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Dottoré!
Mariateresa Fichele

Another Love Story Ruined By The Titanic

Our Dottoré discovers the origin of a patient's schizophrenia, deep in the icy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The existence of a curse linked to the Titanic is something that Ciro has insisted on for a long time.

His clinical history seems to show that his schizophrenia arose following a disappointment in love, and one day I asked him to tell me more about it.

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This Happened

This Happened - April 20:  The School Shooting That Triggered A Plague

On this day in 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Colorado, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, carried out a mass shooting. They killed 12 students and one teacher, and injured 21 others before taking their own lives.

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Society
Alan Posener

Sweden Has One Of The Best Social Welfare Systems. Why Are So Many People Lonely?

Hygge dreams and happy extended families are increasingly fading away.

-Analysis-

Even if Sweden has one of the world's best social systems, more and more people say they are becoming lonely. Instead of idyllic extended families, more individualistic ways of living are becoming more common. This is having serious consequences, especially for those over 60.

If you believe in individualism, you should be in favor of a strong state. That sounds paradoxical, and it is. But while ideologies strive to erase contradictions, the real world is often contradictory.

Sweden, which is still the country with the world's most comprehensive welfare system, is also the country with the second-highest proportion of single-person households, just after Finland. Almost half of Swedes live alone.

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Society
Mónica Graiewski

Who Is Responsible For The Internet's Harm To Society?

A school in the US is suing social media giants for damage done to children's well-being. But fining tech giants is a feeble response to their attacks on society's welfare.

BUENOS AIRES - In January 2023, schools in Seattle in the United States took court action against the websites TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking damages for losses incurred from the psychological harm done to their pupils.

They maintained that behavioral anomalies such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders were impeding pupils' education and had forced schools to hire mental health experts, develop special educational plans and provide extra training for teachers.

Here in Argentina just days after that report, two teenagers died from taking part in the so-called "blackout challenge" on TikTok.

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Society
Julián de Zubiría Samper

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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Society
Ginevra Falciani

Reports Of A Quiet Rise In University Student Suicides In Multiple Countries

On top of the traditional troubles some young people face on their own for the first time are the added factors of social media pressure and the effects of the pandemic. The crisis appears to have hit hard in Italy, with other countries, from India to France to the UK, reporting a similar situation.

TW: Contains references to suicide and suicidal thoughts.

On the first day of February, a 19-year-old took her own life in the bathroom of Milan’s IULM university. As reported in Italian daily La Stampa, a note left in the victim's purse said she considered her life and studies a failure.

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