Princes William and Harry break mental health taboos for a new generation | Simon Wessely

Big boys don’t cry, so I was told as a child. But has that always been the case? Nelson’s captains as they made their slow way towards the French fleet at Cape Trafalgar certainly didn’t think so. Many had wept when first shown the battle plan. Tears were not unmanly – far from it. Nelson’s captains were “men of feeling”, part of the culture of sensibility. And this wasn’t just an affectation of the gentry: jolly Jack Tar wasn’t always jolly, and wept buckets on numerous occasions captured in contemporary accounts.

Politicians such as Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox were also liable to burst into tears in moments of high parliamentary emotion, as shown in many satirical drawings. As Thomas Dixon describes in his splendid Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears, it was not until the Victorian era that stoicism replaced sensibility, and the cult of the “stiff upper lip” was born. And it wasn’t even British – the phrase had been popular in the United States for several decades before it first made an appearance over here.

Now Princes William and Harry have called for the end of the British stiff upper lip culture. And there is much to welcome in this, even if theirs is by no means the first such call – John Lennon being an early advocate in 1970, reminding people that “men hurt” and the therapeutic value of tears. We know for example when dealing with grief and bereavement that repressing memories, not talking about the death of a loved one or avoiding reminders for a long period of time can sometimes prolong grief and its consequences and make things even more complex.

Our own research has shown that after traumatic tours of duty many people in the services find sharing difficult experiences with their mates, and to a lesser extent their families, immensely helpful. Likewise, the vast majority of those living in London during the 7 July 2005 terrorist bombs said that they dealt with their feelings of anxiety and upset by talking a great deal to friends, relatives and colleagues.

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But equally, we have also shown that this should be done at a time and a place of your choosing, and preferably to someone who knows you, or is at least part of your social circle and network. At other times, most particularly in the immediate aftermath of trauma, exhortations that it is “better out than in”, as happened with the vogue for what was known as single-session psychological debriefing, not only failed to reduce distress; it often made it worse. Sometimes it is better to talk about family and football until the person is ready for something more difficult.

There is no correct way to deal with trauma and grief – and we should never forget that most people most of the time cope with horrendous adversity without any help beyond their own social networks. People are more resilient than professionals think.

Everybody deals with trauma and grief in their own way, and that’s how it should be. These are painful, sometimes gut-wrenchingly painful, experiences, but eventually it will happen to all, and we should not be, and are not, in the business of pathologising a normal experience. Talking to others at your own time and pace is one way to deal with this, but not the only one.

However, sometimes the pain never eases, and perhaps people will slip into depression, unusual behaviours, or alcohol. Then the evidence does show that it is good to talk, and continued avoidance or repression can just perpetuate suffering. And sometimes it is OK to talk to what Prince Harry called a “shrink”. I think I prefer myself to be called a psychiatrist, but frankly, it doesn’t really matter what we are called so long as people feel able to get the help they need.

So there can be no doubt that having such high-profile young figures as princes William and Harry talking about mental health and their experiences of it can only be a good thing. They belong to a generation that definitely “gets” mental health much more than my generation did. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with having that much parodied and perhaps slightly mythical “stiff upper lip”, but lips sometimes need to be unbuttoned, especially in times of trouble.

So when I saw Prince Harry come to King’s College London last month and interview three ex-service personnel who had experienced significant mental health problems as a result of their experiences of war, it was clear he was speaking from the heart as much as he was appealing to the head. He’s a powerful role model and has a reach that we can only dream of.

Similarly, his brother means what he says when he talks of ending the taboo around talking about important issues such as anxiety, saying how in the past that has been seen as a sign of “weakness”, and how touring schools with his wife Catherine has inspired them. He said that seeing children talk about some “quite difficult subjects in a really clear and emotionally articulate way” had given him hope that things were changing and “there is a generation coming up who find it normal to talk openly about their emotions”. Indeed so. No, it’s not rocket science. No, it won’t eradicate all mental disorders and no, it won’t work for everyone. But it’s a good place to start.

Princes William and Harry break mental health taboos for a new generation | Simon Wessely

Theresa May paves way for new generation of grammar schools

Theresa May will pave the way for a new generation of grammar schools on Wednesday, as her chancellor uses the budget to push ahead with a controversial policy that is seen as a key priority for the prime minister.

Philip Hammond will plough £320m into expanding the government’s free school programme, creating 70,000 places in 140 schools, which will be free to offer selective education after the government passes legislation.

May’s pledge to end the ban on grammars during this parliament means that many of the new schools, which are largely due to open after 2020, could opt to choose pupils based on academic merit.

The chancellor will underline the government’s focus on selective education by also extending free public transport for the poorest children to grammar schools, covering those within two to 15 miles of their homes.

The news triggered an immediate backlash from groups representing teachers, asking why the money wasn’t going to existing state schools. They claimed that a funding crisis meant children faced being taught in bigger class sizes, with limited resources and fewer teachers.

Labour accused the government of “throwing more good money after bad” while the Liberal Democrats described it as an unbelievable decision in the face of “devastating cuts to school budgets”.

The policy comes alongside plans, expected to be announced on Wednesday, to put aside rising tax revenues to help build up a £60bn reserve to deal with Brexit-related uncertainty.

Hammond is also likely to react to a Conservative backlash over the government’s business rates reforms by offering more transitional relief to companies and to put money towards plugging a massive funding gap for social care.

But the decision to place the possibility of more grammar schools at the heart of a budget that will be seen as the chancellor’s chance to steady the ship before article 50 is triggered underlines a determination to drive forward what many consider May’s flagship education reform.

The prime minister insisted that the proposals would guarantee more choice for parents. “For too many children, a good school place remains out of reach with their options determined by where they live or how much money their parents have,” she said. “Over the last six years, we have overseen a revolution in our schools system and we have raised standards and opportunity, but there is much more to do.”

Hammond insisted that the core schools budget – which stands at more than £40bn a year – would be protected and that the policy would help to ensure that children could access quality education whatever their background.

“Investing in education and skills is the single most important thing that we can do to equip our children for the future,” he said.

The policy will also see £216m of investment into school infrastructure to help rebuild and refurbish existing schools, which the Treasury said would be on top of £10bn to be spent on the condition of schools. It said that 1.8m more pupils were being taught in good or outstanding schools – now making up 89% of the total – but argued that more than 1m were still in under-performing institutions.

The new schools will come on top of 500 free schools already in train for 2020, with 110 of the 140 expected after the next election. Examples of successful free schools provided by the Treasury included Tauheedul Islam boys’ high school in Blackburn, Exeter mathematics school and the London Academy of Excellence.

While not all the new schools will choose to become grammars, officials made clear that the new money was to support the proposals in the green paper called schools that work for everyone in which the notion of expanding selective education was key.

Dr Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said teachers and heads would be dismayed to see Hammond throwing money at free schools and grammar schools when others were facing big real terms funding cuts.

“These spending pledges are totally insufficient to tackle the funding crisis the government is inflicting on schools by forcing them to make over £3bn of savings by 2020. Bigger class sizes, fewer learning resources and fewer teachers with greater workloads are the likely consequences,” she said.

She argued that “funding the expansion of selective education is a mistake that will result in a small minority benefitting at the expense of the vast majority of the country’s young people”.

The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, said free schools were being opened in areas where they were not needed. “This is now throwing more good money after bad. It will do nothing to address the shortage of available school places,” she said, pointing to £3bn of funding cuts.

The Lib Dem education spokesman, John Pugh, said: “This is unbelievable. Two weeks ago, the free schools programme was shown to have overspent to the tune of £9bn, at the same time as existing schools struggle to pay for books, cut teachers and their buildings decay around them.”

But Toby Young, director of the New Schools Network said: “I’m delighted that the government has renewed its commitment to free schools. It’s a recognition that free schools are the most cost-effective way of providing much-needed new places, as well as popular with parents and more likely to be ranked ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted than any other type of school.”

The policy comes as Hammond is being urged to scrap cuts to inheritance, corporation and income tax in order to plough money into benefits, as figures reveal the extent to which living standards are going to be squeezed by rising inflation.

Analysis by the Resolution Foundation shows a “double whammy” for lower-income working families who the government has said it wants to target.

It finds that real wages could start falling by the end of the year while the government’s welfare freeze will inflict far more pain than has been predicted, taking £3.6bn more than expected from some of the poorest people in the country by 2020.

Torsten Bell, the thinktank’s director, warned that the pattern of external forecasts since November suggested that the Office for Budget Responsibility could revise up its inflation forecast to 2.6% this year and next. He said the impact on wages could be catastrophic.

Hammond will respond to concern over the deterioration of social care in England by announcing a £1.3bn emergency boost for those services, Whitehall sources say. The money will be made available over the next two financial years, starting next month, but is unlikely to appease critics such as the Local Government Association and Age UK, who claim the sector needs at least £2bn a year more giving rising costs and the growing elderly population.

Hammond is expected to say that the money should directly benefit the NHS by reducing the number of patients who end up stuck in hospital despite being medically fit to leave because social care in their area is unavailable.

It is likely to be directed at schemes that aim to tackle what the NHS calls delayed transfers of care, or bedblocking, and the risk of mainly older patients being admitted or readmitted to hospital.

However, Hammond is set to face down demands from Labour, the British Medical Association and many NHS bodies by refusing to increase the health service’s budget beyond the sums already agreed.

The BMA has called for an extra £10bn a year for the NHS, while Labour has demanded £12bn for health and social care.

But he is expected to make an extra £200m available for NHS capital projects in 2017-18, after warnings from NHS England chief Simon Stevens that his planned “transformation” of the health service in England would struggle unless local NHS bodies had more money to spend building and repairing premises.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, controversially moved more than £1bn from the NHS’s capital budget to its revenue budget in an attempt to give hospitals more money to spend amid an unprecedented financial squeeze.

Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb has organised a cross-party group of 28 MPs who have met the prime minister to urge action on the issue. They are calling for £2bn for social care over 2017-18, £1.5bn for the NHS focused on out of hospital care and £500m dedicated to mental health.

Theresa May paves way for new generation of grammar schools

Generation snowflake is not failing us: we’re failing them | Deborah Orr

A healthy society, surely, is one that helps its children feel safe and secure. If this were a banal proposition, it wouldn’t even have to be stated. Yet there are plenty of people who would contend that it’s not up to society to make kids feel safe. That, they will announce with tremendous self-satisfaction, is the job of their parents. It’s as if they don’t even know that humans are social animals, and that it is the ability of humans to think and act from social motivations that fostered civilisation.

For these folks, any sign that children are struggling in Britain today is sneeringly dismissed as more evidence of generation snowflake’s feeble lack of resilience. This aggressive, sloganeering refusal to engage with the feelings of vulnerability of others, but instead to mock and belittle them? That in itself is a statement of intent. It is an assertion that helping young people to feel safe and secure is not in the least their business. On the contrary.

Research by the NSPCC, gathered through freedom of information requests, warns that serious cases of self-harm among young people have jumped by 14% in the last three years, with 19,000 children and young people treated in hospital in England and Wales in the last 12 months. People self-harm when they crave the primitive distraction of physical pain from the insistent complexity of emotional distress. The respite is brief and dangerous. Often, it piles shame and guilt on to a chaotic heap of negative emotions that has already proved overwhelming: snowflakes dissolving in their own sticky blood.

The fact that these children choose to harm themselves rather than others is a sign that they feel plenty of shame about their fears already, for which they blame themselves. Often, children report that they couldn’t talk to their parents because their parents were too busy. What they tend actually to mean is that they’re worried and upset because they know their parents are worried and upset, and they don’t want to add to the burden.

But if it’s the job of parents not to be worried and upset, so that they can help their children, then you have to ask why it’s such a great idea to consider human competition rather than human collaboration as the magic fountain from which all good things gush. It’s always too simplistic to theorise about how a vast range of individual and particular crises are all down to one thing. Yet the list of the usual suspects that’s aired when mass psychological struggle hits the headlines does include a lot of stuff that has competitive elements.

Any sign that children are struggling is sneeringly dismissed as more evidence of generation snowflake’s feebleness

There’s the pressure to look attractive, the pressure to succeed at school, the pressure to be popular, the pressure to get a job, to get a home. If I were growing up now, I’d be terrified. I was pretty terrified in the 1970s, when I’d no idea how much more demanding and complex life was going to get. Are children wrong to feel these pressures? Can any parent honestly tell them that none of it matters and that life has a way of turning out OK?

Yet all this is just a backdrop to the existential struggles of life. Children still have to deal with private catastrophe – bereavement or abuse, illness or trauma – as well as global horror: the horrific evidence of human aggression and the suffering it causes, there on your phone all day, every day. All this, alongside the sheer effort of becoming yourself in an era that idolises individualism.

Left and right, politically, they both do this. The left champions identity, the right champions robust economic self-sufficiency. Do we give children time to find out who they are, among the blanket demands that they should Be Themselves? We don’t give them time and we certainly don’t give them much in the way of psychological tools or support. After all, therapy costs money in this economically competitive world.

We need to feel part of something bigger than ourselves, and sometimes I think Brexit is best understood as an expression of that yearning. Young people, on the whole, felt like part of Europe because they’d grown up with it. Maybe older people just felt like their own place in the world had just become so much harder to locate in their hearts once they weren’t simply British. And how people viewed Europe in their daily lives also raised the spectre of competition; people coming here looking for work, and helpless employers, themselves governed by competition, quite unable to do anything other than pay the lowest wages possible.

I’m not saying that vulnerable young people self-harm because hashtag Brexit. That would be too simple. But I am saying that it may reflect the fact that there is too much competition in the world and not enough caring support. Competition can be a great driver of achievement, but so can collaboration. The corrosive thing about competition is that it fosters fear of failure, which has to be countered. Balance is everything, and that’s what we don’t have. People are afraid and ashamed of their fear; so it festers, and explodes in anger and resentment. It’s fertile ground for demagogues who offer glib, bogus answers and, boy, do they plough it.

You can choose to see “generation snowflake” as a bunch of wimps, or you can observe that there is plenty going on in the world to traumatise a sensitive child – or adult. Then you can think a bit about how traumatised people make bad decisions, and conclude that the aggression, the fear, the shame, the self-harm – it has to stop. The very essence of what it is to be human – to be able to look after one another and help one another find solutions to our problems – is what is at stake, and children feel it.

Generation snowflake is not failing us: we’re failing them | Deborah Orr

Generation of hope: the girls challenging misogyny in the heart of rural Paraguay

At the end of a 20km red dirt track winding through a rainforest in eastern Paraguay, lies a secondary school for girls providing a source of hope in a country that has a notorious reputation when it comes to women’s rights.

“Machismo is very strong here,” says Palmira Mereles, as she scrapes the dirt from a freshly unearthed root vegetable, a manioc, in the school’s garden. “Only men have a voice. Women aren’t encouraged to have dreams or opinions.”

Now 21, Mereles was part of the first year group to study at the Mbaracayú Education Center when it opened in 2009. Built by the NGO Fundación Paraguaya, it aims to tackle precisely the problems she points to: the issues of gender equality in this small landlocked country.

It has been a year since Paraguay’s strict abortion laws were brought to international attention when a 10-year-old girl was denied a termination. The girl, known as “Mainumby”, was allegedly raped by her stepfather, but abortion in the predominantly Catholic country is only legal if the mother’s life is at risk. Amnesty International describes these laws as “draconian”, and despite repeated requests from the girl’s mother, protests within the country and across the world, the authorities refused to allow it.

We were treated like a house of witches

Gloria Rubín

This was not an isolated incident. Teen pregnancy rates are among the highest in the region. More than one in 20 girls under 20 have given birth (pdf); and in rural areas, like the Atlantic forest, a quarter of these girls are aged 14 or under. As a result, many are unable to finish their education.

“Gender discrimination is common across Paraguay,” says Celsa Acosta, the school’s founding director. “Poverty is desperate, particularly in rural areas, and girls suffer the worst consequences. We wanted to help them take control of their own lives.”

Protests against child sexual abuse erupted in Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital, after the Mainumby case. Photograph: Cesar Olmedo/AP

Activists have often come up against the country’s traditional Catholic background. Gloria Rubín who was Paraguay’s minister for women when the school was built, produced a sex education handbook to be distributed to Paraguayan secondary schools. But the church organised protests against it, and the book was withdrawn. When she later travelled around teaching the handbook directly to teachers across Paraguay, the church pursued her with demonstrations, she says. “We were treated like a house of witches.”

[Sex education] is taught from the perspective of the Catholic ​church, which means it’s stuck in the 19th century

Gloria Rubín

The school sits in an isolated clearing surrounded by the Mbaracayú reserve, which protects the largest surviving fragment of Atlantic forest in Paraguay (only 7% of the original forest remains). The small campus is scattered with dormitories, classrooms and thickets of lofty palms. Alongside the vegetable garden where they grow potatoes, maize, courgettes and peanuts, there’s a livestock farm, hotel rooms, and a tourist trail winding into the undergrowth.

In this richly fertile yet vulnerable area, the school aims to grow these girls into leaders of sustainable development in their communities. They are taught techniques for agribusinesses and IT skills, which is particularly unique for indigenous communities. Alongside the national curriculum, they can also study a range of vocations, including textiles, tourism and environmental management. More radically, they provide programmes on gender, self-esteem, and sex education.

Sex education across the country is “inadequate” according to Rubín. “It’s taught from the perspective of the Catholic church, which means it’s stuck in the 19th century,” she says. Yet it has a central role at the Mbaracayú school. Girls are taught about their sexual and reproductive rights on a weekly basis, in what the school describes as “orientation” classes focusing on their physical and psychological health.

The Atlantic forest is home to the only living examples of almost 10,000 species of plant. Photograph: Felipe Dana/AP

“I became pregnant very young, because I lacked the information to know any better,” school founder Acosta explains. “It really marked me as a person. I decided then to make sure girls of the next generation have access to the information that I never did.

“We teach about contraception and ensure girls understand their own fertility,” she continues. “But just as important, in a macho culture, is cultivating their self-esteem. They need to know what they want and be able to assert it in their relationships.”

The school also gives a second chance to girls who previously dropped out of education. Elva Gomez, 19, lives and studies here with her four-year-old daughter.

“Before coming here, I thought I’d just stay at home and look after Romina,” she says. “But now I want to finish my studies and train to be a nurse.”

The Mbaracayú school hopes that girls will be able to better support themselves and their families with the qualifications and skills they offer. Students from indigenous communities study for free, while most Paraguayan families pay 100,000 guaraní a month (£12). And though many parents of local indigenous communities were initially sceptical about this progressive school, most are now keen for their daughters to study there after witnessing its benefits – two graduates of the 2011 class are now primary school teachers in their communities.

Students are also encouraged to apply for university scholarships, both within the country and abroad. Mereles studied agricultural sciences in Costa Rica, before returning to teach and run the vegetable garden.

“I’ve known many girls who didn’t want to continue studying,” she says. “They didn’t believe they could achieve anything. But over time their attitudes change. They become much more confident.”

With the school’s drop out rate at just 9% compared to 17% throughout the region, there is a new generation of girls from the heart of the Mbaracayú forest who are gaining the confidence to fight for their rights – and the potential for change in the rest of the country is perhaps within reach.

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Generation of hope: the girls challenging misogyny in the heart of rural Paraguay

It’s never been easy being a teenager. But is this now a generation in crisis?

Mollycoddled and cosseted or stressed and over-pressured. Energised and engaged or bored and turned off. Young people have so many labels and stereotypes slapped on them it’s a wonder these are not visible on their endless selfies. What is undeniably true is that the evidence suggests that rates of depression, self-harm and anxiety among young people are at unprecedented levels.

Youth unemployment is more than 13%, the cost of higher education is rapidly rising, a drought of affordable housing coupled with low pay is keeping many young people sealed under the parental roof and trapped in what one report called “suspended adulthood”. The ubiquity of the internet and social media, with its dark underbelly of hardcore pornography, body shaming and cyberbullying, is encroaching on their wellbeing, while a relentless focus on academic high-achieving is turning up the pressure in the classroom. Youth, traditionally thought of as the most enviable time of life, can now look like a deeply challenging and sometimes unpleasant time of life.

But is the experience of adolescence – defined as the period after childhood, from puberty to maturity – any tougher now than it was for previous generations? And when does it stop, given that some experts argue that full intellectual maturity is reached at the age of 27.

Among the events planned for World Mental Health Day, an exhibition by a small but successful charity in London aims to unpick some of the issues around the “lived experience of adolescent development”. Open Door has helped thousands of young people with therapy and support with problems including depression, anxiety, self-harm, drug and alcohol misuse, eating disorders, psychosis, sexuality and gender identity issues since it opened in 1976.

The exhibition, Adolescence Then and Now, marks the charity’s 40th anniversary, and director Julia Britton, one of the capital’s leading consultant child and adolescent psychotherapists, says demand for its services is greater than ever. “We are operating with a constant waiting list of around 100, we can’t even meet local demand. Parts of the country have nothing at all for young people with mental illness. The lack of provision is a huge issue for now, and a huge issue being stored up for the future.”

She says many of the issues facing young people have not changed. “I look at myself as a teenager in the 1970s and so many issues were around: teen pregnancies, drug and alcohol misuse, psychotic breakdowns, financial and identity pressures. But there are many differences, too. The context certainly is different. I think there are far more pressures educationally, more sense that it’s all hinged on one exam, and certainly teachers are hugely concerned about the mental distress they are seeing. Then there’s cyberbullying where you can’t switch off and you can’t get away. Pornography, a normal part of development, is now very far removed from Playboy. A lot of young people are disturbed by what they see online.

“The internet is both helpful and not. If young people type in ‘self-harm’, they can either go to a Young Minds website where they will be offered help and support, or to a destructive group which is discussing how to self-harm and hide eating disorders. So it’s good and bad,” she says.

The sense of a struggling generation has undoubtedly taken on new dimensions. Last week a poll by the charity Young Women’s Trust found that “suspended adulthood” was affecting the mental health of one in three 18-to-30-year-olds who felt worried about the future and under financial pressures due to low pay and lack of work or opportunities. More than half of the 4,000 surveyed were having to live at home with their parents.

“Make no mistake,”says Dr Carole Easton, chief executive of the charity, “we’re talking about a generation of young people in crisis. It is not in any of our interests to write off an entire generation.”

Abena is 18. A former mental health service user at Open Door, she interviewed artist Grayson Perry in a video project for the coming exhibition. They discussed the contrasts in their teenage experiences. He told her: “My family was quite screwed up, it was quite a volatile household and quite scary.” In 1976 Perry was 16 and had already been thrown out of his home by his stepmother over his transvestism: “When I was that age you hung out on the village green and got bored with others. I had low impulse control, I was incredibly angry until I went into therapy.”

What most struck Abena, she says, was that, while his cross-dressing was a major taboo and so a pressure point for him as a teenager, “he doesn’t remember having any issues over his body image at all. He doesn’t remember having a conversation about body image. But he remembers trying to keep his dressing-up from his parents and how everybody thought transvestism was very strange and taboo. That identity didn’t exist.

“Now I think that would be far more acceptable and people would be quite relaxed about that. But I feel like there are very real pressures around body image now that he didn’t have. Having social media now, it’s real pressure around how you look, making sure every picture is perfect,” she says.

“So the pressure he had then isn’t what we have now, but we have other ones. And it all depends on where you go in the world. I’m a black woman, but that would be a very different issue if I was living in America, for example. As a young person now I don’t drink very much, but I’m going to university where there is a real culture of drinking heavily and I find that really daunting. I’ll be in a minority, and being in a minority can be very uncomfortable,” says Abena. “I don’t think I’d have gotten through my bad times, to be honest, if I hadn’t been able to access Open Door. I don’t know how I’d have coped on my own. All the worries I had which felt too big to say to teachers or even my family, I was able to say there. It felt like home.”

Leigh Wildman, a therapist and support worker for young people with special needs, is 54. “I often wonder about whether I’d be on computer games if I’d been a teenager now instead of climbing trees, kicking a tin can down the road and making camps as we did then. Then later on there was music, of course, counter-culture music and art which rescued me. I left school at 15, but in those days you could go round the industrial estate and get a job and I did lots of jobs before taking off hitchhiking round Europe when I was 18,” she says.

“My mum was pleased, but I feel young people today are much more fearful. They stay at school longer, at home longer, and the world looks very daunting. They have to knuckle down at school and there’s no space to be light-hearted or to drift a little, to find out who they are, what kind of people they like. I had time for that, and I’m very glad I did,” adds Wildman.

Another teenager, a client at Open Door, is Elena, 17. She says all her friends at school suffer panic attacks and anxiety: “If you drop grades a bit, you feel a failure, you feel the teachers immediately ignore you for the people who are high achievers.

“It’s like you have to be this robot. I think it’s harder now in terms of all the pressures to look a certain way and keep up with everything, and I think it’s harder in terms of trying to speak to your parents or people at school who are not trained because when they were growing up mental health was not something anyone spoke about.”

And she adds: “ I’d cry in the classroom a lot at school, but teachers would just be a bit uncomfortable and you’d not want to open up. I’d just say I was having a bad day. I feel a lot more hope for the future now than I used to. I never used to think there was a future for me.”

CHANGING TIMES

Television

1976 Around 93% of homes own a television. 2016 Young people spend more time online than watching TV.

Pop scandals

1976: Sex Pistols prompt a media storm by swearing live on Bill Grundy’s TV show.

2016 Kanye West faces a backlash after calling Taylor Swift a bitch in a song lyric.

University

1976 Around 14% of people go to university. 2016 Around 40% of England’s school-leavers go to university.

Youth unemployment

1976 9.1% of UK men and 8% of UK females aged under 20 are out of work. 2016 13.6% of UK 16-24-year-olds are unemployed.

It’s never been easy being a teenager. But is this now a generation in crisis?

Generation Blockhead: How Minecraft Mods The Grown-Ups Of Tomorrow

At the time of this creating, Minecraft had sold above sixteen.2 Million copies of the desktop Pc/Mac edition. The “Pocket Edition” (for tablets and smartphones): 21 Million copies. Include in XBOX and PS3 income and it tends to make it to variety three on Wikipedia’s greatest-promoting video games of all time list (no. one is Tetris, no. 2 Wii Sports activities). That is a big deal.

Inquire anybody with a tween-aged kid and they will inform you that their youngsters are obsessed. My eight 12 months old son sets the alarm on his view for 5:30am every single morning so he can squeeze some Minecraft play in just before leaving for college. There is a mod referred to as MinecraftEdu geared for classroom use. There are toys, Lego sets, and clothing. Surely, Minecraft is much more than just a game, it is cultural phenomenon.

But what does it suggest that so numerous kids are enjoying? What are they finding out? What does Minecraft inform us about the way they are making sense of the globe close to them? How is their encounter in the game world associated to their encounter in the daily life globe? What are the considerable characteristics of Generation Blockhead?

Minecraft is a world of its own–an existence constructed from code and knowledgeable as blocks–within which little ones are establishing not only social-emotional skills and cognitive abilities, but also a worldview. The way people perform as kids gets the way they will perform as adults. Minecraft, therefore, has most likely currently had profound effect on decades to come.

Could it be that when Generation Blockhead opted out of “Survival Mode” in favor of a make-your-own-aim competition-free of charge “Creative Mode,” they simultaneously turned their back on a rigid race-top-the-leading Darwinian economic system and sent a ripple of change into our collective long term? I’d like to think so.

However, only a single thing is for confident: theirs is a far distinct playground from the one particular I grew up on. Some days, I feel theirs is a greater 1. Other days, I think it is worse.

At its best, Minecraft appears like a “maker-area.” It performs as a sandbox in which kids can practice STEM skills in a contextualized way. Anything is feasible like Phineas and Ferb, my kids can develop roller coasters, skyscrapers, underground cities. It just entails on-the-fly counting, engineering, and imagining how consistent modular units can conjoin into something new.

At its worst, Minecraft reinforces an presently predominant worldview in which every little thing can be reduced down to common-denominator monads–in this situation, blocks. An more than reliance on rigid, angled, quantifiable ways of being in the globe eliminates the equally important soft fuzzy curves of qualitative ambivalence. Martin Heidegger as soon as wrote, “becoming is not some thing that can be found in the nature of a table, even if the table were to be broken down to its smallest parts.” On some level, we all know that the globe is not truly made of extractable assets (human or ecological) available for guilt-free of charge rape and pillage. Still, for some cause, we pick to see it that way. In no way fail to remember: it is a option, 1 for which each and every and each and every a single of us bears accountability.

It is exciting, consequently, that the up coming generation has largely turned off the mining in Minecraft. They pick to make rather than get. They mod their own worlds, connecting on servers with others, producing situations for friends to investigate. This is what social networking would seem like if it weren’t weighed down by rhetorical guidelines inherited from thousands of many years of linear considering.

For most of recorded background, people have communicated in the identical way. We inform stories–linear stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. The engineering with which we distribute these stories has modified several times. We have transitioned from oral myths to cuneiform on tablets from animal-skin-parchment to paper from feather quill to fountain pen from the graphite pencil to the word processor scrolls to books monastic scribes to the printing press mass-market place paperbacks to eReaders etc.

On a foundational level, nonetheless, info mostly remained linear until finally the past couple of decades. Then, one thing occurred. We began to construct expertise in a different way. Now, on the net, details no longer has beginnings, middles, and endings. It opens, hyperlinks endlessly, and then hovers completely in the realm of possibility.

But I’m receiving ahead of myself. I must most likely start off by explaining that I roll my eyes whenever a person discusses how the world wide web is altering humanity. I do not think it is shifting us at all.

I do believe humanity changes–sometimes even in this kind of significant approaches that our perception of the world about us, and consequently consciousness itself, is fundamentally shaken. But these changes do not happen simply because of technological innovation. Rather, following we have altered our thinking, we then develop resources in approaches that enable us to interact with the planet accordingly. In other phrases, tools do not change us, we alter tools.

These days, engineering often tricks us into considering that we serve it rather than it serving us. But that is not the case. Plato knew this. He put τέχνη “technê” (handicrafts, fine arts, machinery, and so forth.) in opposition to ἐπιστήμη “epistēmē” (understanding, or the way in which one gives an account of the planet through narrative). For Plato, each belonged to a class named ποιέω “poeisis” (bringing forth, creativity, poetry).

Plato described the planet this way because he understood that technological innovation is not just about making it is also about a way of bringing forth a particular worldview so that it can be skilled tangibly. It is a kind of poetry. When we swipe our fingers across the touchscreen of our smartphones we are not just checking twitter, we are also embodying an aspirational image of the good daily life, bringing it forth. In each and every gadget there lurks a vision of the world that could be feasible if only all the tech just worked proper and adoption was ubiquitous. What the Maker’s Motion is uniquely to each and every participant, engineering, as a whole, is to a generational collective: we always construct the world as a reflection of our own consciousness.

For humanity, the technê has transformed usually, the epistēmē has remained a lot more continual. But perhaps it is altering. What defines the consciousness of Generation Blockhead? What is left now that the little ones have removed winning and losing? It is a world of offerings, invitations, and prospects rather than goals.

With no predefined objectives, ambition falls by the wayside along with linear thinking. Soon after all, what is an objective aside from the ending toward which a starting previously factors? Beginnings and endings are locked with each other. In reality, in a linear planet, at the beginning, the ending is already there. So we by no means genuinely get anywhere, do we? We just reside statically inside an illusion of forward trajectory.

Non linear contemplating is various. It does not aim to get anywhere. It just reaches out for connection. It is a world in which communities, networks, and social programs just aim to strengthen their very own sustainability. Daily life is measured by way of relationships, procedures, and processes. Accomplishment is a product of what every individual can construct for the other individuals.

Maybe I am being overly optimistic.  The ends are just a figment of our imagination. Following all, each and every person erupts out of a swirl of cellular soup and is recycled back into the compost heap when the work is accomplished.

Minecraft will mod a generation of grown-ups who realize that there is only iteration. We continually reframe. We perpetually redefine. We attempt on new categories and usually see that there is room for improvement. Almost everything is dynamic and versatile. Nothing at all is fixed neither in time, nor space.

I can hardly wrap my mind around it. But then, how could I? I’m not a Blockhead.

Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guidebook to Optimum Euphoric Bliss, and MindShift’s Guide To Games And Learning For info on Jordan’s upcoming books and events click here.

Generation Blockhead: How Minecraft Mods The Grown-Ups Of Tomorrow

Superbugs: resistance is not futile but a new generation of antibiotics is necessary

Superbugs, such as MRSA (laptop artwork illustration), could make regimen operations as well risky to execute. Photograph: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Corbis

Title: Superbugs.

Age: not new, but all of a sudden really prevalent.

Physical appearance: super-small.

Funny – you’d feel that anything referred to as a ”superbug” would be at least as huge as a shed. They’re bacteria.

What is so super about them? They are, like, totally resistant to antibiotics.

Meh. What is so fantastic about that? Practically nothing. Superbugs could send us “back into the dark ages”, according to England’s chief health-related officer.

How would they do that? By leading to existence-threatening infections that antibiotics can not cure. Five thousand folks die from E coli infections every 12 months in England. Multi-resistant bugs this kind of as MRSA could make routine operations also risky to complete.

How does a superbug turn into resistant? By way of evolution. As we treat infections with antibiotics, people bacteria with genetic resistance thrive and multiply. The more we prescribe – and overprescribe – antibiotics, the more selective stress we put on bacterial populations, encouraging them to adapt.

What doesn’t kill them tends to make them stronger! That’s why you are supposed to maintain taking the capsules even right after you truly feel better.

What can be carried out to stop superbugs? A new generation of antibiotics is essential, but there are not any on the horizon.

Why not? Pharmaceutical companies never have significantly incentive to do the investigation needed. There is no cash in new antibiotics, since men and women wouldn’t taken them frequently enough.

There’s not a lot cash in no a single becoming alive any more either. That is why David Cameron has taken the daring phase of asking an economist to lead an worldwide specialist group to work out how to motivate the pharmaceutical sector to make some new antibiotics.

That does not sound daring to me. How lengthy have we acquired? No time at all, according to the prime minister. “This is not some distant threat,” he stated, “but anything taking place proper now.”

Ahhhh! Will not fret. After a favourable regulatory framework has been established, I am sure everybody will get cracking.

Can we get the pharmaceutical companies to invent new antibiotics if we guarantee to overprescribe them like mad for a couple of decades? Let’s allow the international expert group have that chat.

Do say: “Britain could take a lead on this critical healthcare concern, as it hasn’t ever carried out just before.”

Don’t say: “OMG, we’re all gonna die!”

Superbugs: resistance is not futile but a new generation of antibiotics is necessary

Phone for new generation of antibiotics to fight off superbugs

A bacteria strain of MRSA, which is amongst drug-resistant superbugs. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters

Modern medication will come to an finish except if the globe develops a new generation of antibiotics, the chief health-related officer for England has warned.

The intervention from Prof Dame Sally Davies echoed that of David Cameron, who said antibiotic-resistant superbugs threatened to send medication “back into the dark ages”.

In a series of interviews, Davies said she welcomed the prime minister’s initiative in asking Jim O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs chief economist, to lead an global specialist group to think about how drug businesses can be encouraged to make new antibiotics.

“I am delighted to see the prime minister taking a global lead by commissioning this overview to support new antibiotics to be designed and brought to patients successfully,” she said.

Davies advised BBC Radio 4′s Today programme that antibiotic-resistant infections were a grave problem that was receiving worse. In England, she stated, 5,000 people die from antibiotic-resistant infections a 12 months: “Deaths are increasing and there is an empty pipeline of drugs.”

Davies went on to warn that surgery for hip transplants and caesareans, and treatment method for ailments this kind of as cancer would be tough to carry out if there had been no indicates to kill off random infections in patients. “Contemporary medicine would quickly go out of the window,” she mentioned.

Dr Louise Leong, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Business, stated antibiotics had been a victim of their very own accomplishment by way of overuse and minimal prices, adding there was a need to have for a new financial model bringing together the private and public sectors. Leong informed the Right now programme that this was presently taking place by means of the Progressive Medicines Initiative, Europe’s biggest public-personal sector health care collaboration to tackle huge overall health difficulties, including antibiotic resistance.

The pharmaceutical sector has minor incentive to invest in investigation for medicines that are not taken every day and so do not reap big income. But Davies pointed out that unless the companies deal with antibiotic resistance, their drugs for cancer and other illnesses will not sell if antibiotics no longer function.

The pharmaceutical industry has created 3 generations of antibiotics in the previous 60 years. The 1st incorporated normal penicillins. However, this group became ineffective as bacteria evolved enzymes that broke the medicines apart. The 2nd had been synthetic penicillins, modified in the lab to resist these enzymes, but bugs gained resistance to these as well. The third generation, carbapenems, have been more modified. In 2003, the 1st microbes arrived in Britain that are immune to even these.

Cameron, who this month referred to as for instant action to accelerate the development of medication for dementia, is said to have raised the problem of antibiotic-resistant superbugs throughout last year’s G7 summit.

O’Neil’s review is anticipated to target on the improvement and regulation of antibiotics. The first £500,000 expense of the work will be met by the Wellcome Trust. The Division of Health explained the review will come up with a program for encouraging and accelerating the discovery and advancement of new generations of antibiotics.In certain, it will take into account: how to make investment in new antibiotics far more eye-catching to pharmaceutical firms the stability among powerful and sustainable incentives for investment how governments and other funders can stimulate investment in new antimicrobials and escalating worldwide cooperation, including significantly closer doing work with poor countries.

The overview will current its first findings in the course of 2015 with a final report and suggestions to then stick to in the course of 2016. This procedure will run alongside the Planet Overall health Organisation’s growth of a worldwide action prepare on antimicrobial resistance.

Cameron has described the emergence of untreatable bacteria as one particular of the biggest health threats dealing with the world right now. “This is not some distant threat, but one thing happening proper now,” he told the Times. “If we fail to act, we are looking at an nearly unthinkable scenario where antibiotics no longer operate and we are cast back into the dark ages of medication, where treatable infections and injuries will kill after once again. That simply cannot be allowed to occur and I want to see a stronger, more coherent global response.”

Specialists cautioned, nevertheless, that antibiotic resistance is a normal phenomenon that can not be readily stopped, only managed. “Establishing new antibiotics will aid handle the developing problem of resistance to at the moment offered drugs,” stated Professor Alan Johnson, an skilled in antibiotic resistance surveillance at Public Wellness England.

“Regrettably, it is not the whole solution as resistance to any new medicines is also probably to produce over time. At a international level, we need to have to improve our antibiotic stewardship and infection prevention and manage practices, as effectively as building far better diagnostic tests so that infections are taken care of with the most suitable antibiotic at an early stage. Combined, these actions would assist to stem the speed at which resistance to current and new antibiotics develops and help to prolong the use of these critically important medicines.”

Mark Dosher, secretary to the Bella Moss Basis (BMF), a pet charity, mentioned: “It has to be recognised that new antibiotics could outcome in new resistance pathogens so we have to appear into other places, from hygiene and surroundings to the life style of people and which individuals – and animals – are more prone to infection. David Cameron’s taskforce is a excellent concept – as prolonged as it isn’t going to solely concentrate on the price and regulation of new medication. Just concentrating on financial incentives for wellness businesses to create new drugs would be a mistake in the long-term.”

Phone for new generation of antibiotics to fight off superbugs

What Disneyland Implies To The Video Game Generation

Disney characters are not as familiar to my little ones as they had been to me when I was their age. Possibly it is due to the fact they have tablets, gaming consoles, and laptops. Their pop culture universe is dominated by Minecraft, Mario, Clash of Clans, and Pokemon. YouTube gamers are celebrities to them. While they (and I) enjoy these new Mickey Mouse shorts on the Disney Channel, we hardly ever set out to observe one thing since of the Disney brand.

Things have altered. The release of a new Disney animated attribute utilized to be a massive event. Prior to streaming video, Disney’s each-7-12 months re-release routine employed to be meaningful. Giant cardboard displays at Blockbuster would construct pleasure for remastered versions of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Now, though my kids are acquainted with Mickey and Donald and Goofy, they do not genuinely view the outdated motion pictures. When I planned to get them to Disneyland while we have been in Los Angeles for E3, I asked them what they believed of Disney motion pictures.

“They’re all about princesses,” my six year old stated. I reminded him of Peter Pan and Pinocchio. “Well I really don’t really realize why everyone liked Frozen so a lot.” I reminded him that we all loved Maleficent. He shrugged his shoulders and looked back down at his Nintendo 3DS.

To prepare, each of my sons played Disney Magical World on the 3DS for the duration of the cross-nation flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. The game was very popular in Japan beneath the title Disney Magical Castle – My Happy Existence. The U.S. edition was launched not too long ago. Most reviewers compare the game to existence simulators like Animal Crossing. Players interact with Disney characters, performing duties in a Disney universe and earning stickers for their accomplishments.

My youngsters did not want to perform the game at very first the Disney characters just do not excite them. I informed them it was their task, “you only get to go to Disneyland simply because I’m going to write about the game and the trip. We need to overview both.” They obliged. Though they are not Disney fanatics, they nevertheless seem to be to have picked up the Protestant operate ethic that dominated Walt’s storytelling. Gameplay started out slow, but after they acquired into it, they loved the game. It is 1 of their existing favorites.

I asked my nine 12 months previous for his evaluation:

The game created me more enthusiastic to go to Disneyland. My favourite part is that you can make a cat suit in Daisy’s boutique. And the actually great point about it is that folks have troubles and you have to get the objects for the characters and then they give you other objects that are amazing.

In the old days, we utilised to go to Blockbuster and lease a ton of Disney motion pictures. Now we perform video video games. Disney Magical World offers kids a likelihood to interact with most of the Disney characters. I could easily imagine it turning into one much more essential way to prep kids for a “Disney getaway.”

When it comes to well-known culture, my children reside in a considerably distinct world from the 1 I skilled. We lament youngsters lack of interest in studying &amp books, blaming it on devices (regardless of the lack of any convincing evidence), but we hardly think about the other adjustments. As an alternative, we get caught up in fearing the unfamiliar.

In accordance to folk singer Utah Phillips, Mark Twain as soon as said, “those of you inclined to be concerned have the widest choice in background.” I am not certain exactly where or when Twain mentioned it. In some approaches, Mark Twain was basically an early iteration of the persona brand, touring and speaking, sharing his unique way of getting in the world. Also, Utah Phillips was recognized to make issues up. Irrespective, there is reality in the quotation. Lifestyle is dynamic. Change is the only constant. If you are afraid of a future that doesn’t resemble the previous, you are doomed to a daily life of fear. I’m not interested in worrying.

Be concerned is predicated on the dichotomies amongst correct and wrong or good and bad that normally dominate our discussion of cultural change. It appears like a waste of time to me. I’m much more interested in suspending judgment and pondering about how our popular photos manifest and the methods in which new technologies alter our knowledge of the planet. I choose observation. I like to merely look at the alternatives we have made and accept them at face value rather than blaming our normal human shortcomings on industries, media, and men and women from distant lands. This mindset, even so, leaves me in an paradoxical place: concurrently accepting and crucial about the well-liked narratives that form our worldview.

As a father, I attempt to pass my strategy on to my boys (6 and 9 years outdated). I really don’t want to deny them the pleasures of our consumption culture. Nevertheless, I also want them to see the dark side. For all 3 of us, Disneyland was an possibility for balanced consideration of the American ethos.

Disney’s PR crew only gave us “One Day Park Hopper” passes. I anxious that 1 day wasn’t adequate time to check out each the Magical Kingdom and California Adventure. Everyone recommends at least two or 3 days in a Disney theme park. But it was fine. Disneyland kept us smiling and laughing, but it also felt like we took an exhausting pilgrimage into some strange suburban dream state in which zombies make scheduled monorail commutes from resort hotels.

Beneath the fun, there is a dark twisted shadow of irony. Disneyland itself would seem to contradict the messages of the films I grew up viewing. Where’s the prudence and restraint that keeps Pinocchio from spending his life as a jackass? Disneyland is Pleasure Island. “The happiest location on earth” is defined as thrill rides, animatronic dioramas, sugar highs, junk foods, and temper tantrums. But the Disney narratives all inform us not to be seduced by the temptations of immediate gratification.

I like the contradiction. There is something profound about the tension. It reminds me that Disneyland remains a kind of essential expression of our cultural frame of mind. We adore to turn identity, happiness, spirituality and psychological stability into a commodity. I challenge readers to discover one particular well-liked psychology or new age book that does not, on some degree, basically reframe a platitude that Disney has previously addressed.

The notion that you know what’s correct for oneself, that you have a deep internal capability to make selections that resonate with your true nature in spite of the messaging you get from the mainstream globe, is simply: “Always let your conscience be your guide.”

Most of the princess movies explicitly say that it is what’s on the within that issues, not appearance, not wealth, not who you marry. Alternatively, Disney values true really like and self really worth. It is the often the gold digging, insecure, materialistic and opportunistic villains and evil step sisters that endure. It is challenging to think about Snow White increasing up to think about Disneyland as the best loved ones trip.

The notion that you ought to adhere to a path, profession or otherwise, 1 that’s aligned with your unique person comportment, is exactly what Jasmine learns in Aladdin. Ariel learns, in The Tiny Mermaid, that regardless of the pressures exerted on her by her father and the general construction of the mer-planet, she’s often identified who she truly is it is why she’s been collecting human stuff. She requirements to serve her destiny, not the social buy. And Aladdin, like Pinocchio, learns that you shouldn’t pretend to be anything you’re not. There are no short-cuts. Be real to your self by obtaining the conviction to persevere.

One particular could make a convincing argument that Disney invented the big business of self-help. The Disney version comes with ice cream, singing robots, chicken fingers, live musical performances, and fireworks. The psychological/spiritual model comes with psychology books, webinars, bodywork, nutrition, and inspirational weekend conferences featuring higher profile keynote speakers.

The carnies still dominate healing and enjoyment. I guess it can make sense. Contemporary psychology can trace its roots to Franz Mesmer’s 18th century animal magnetism and the travelling “mesmerists” that practiced his healing crafts. Present day postural yoga and its psycho-spiritual offshoots can be traced to the connection between Swami Vivekananda and New Believed Movement, the two of which utilized the ‘tour’ as a main approach for proselytization. Tradition is challenging to escape, our worry of the unfamiliar holds us captive.

For far better or worse, the carnival, the theme park, the convention, and the conference are all tantamount to evangelism. They are temples to certain methods of currently being. That’s not a criticism it is just an observation. Strategy each and every manifestation with equal reverence, an opened thoughts, and a willingness to see each the light and the shadows. I like Disney. I have read through every single main biography written about Walt. What’s more, I understand that most criticisms I could toss at the Disney corporation could just as simply apply to myself.

My kids loved Disneyland. But on the last day of our trip to California as we sat on the beach–they built sand forts for the surf to wash away, I laid on my back and listened to the waves–my six 12 months old looked at me. “Dad, Disneyland was truly wonderful. I’m glad we went,” he said, “But I believe the beach is really the happiest spot on earth.”

Jordan Shapiro is writer of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Manual to Optimum Euphoric Bliss, and MindShift’s Guidebook To Video games And Learning For information on Jordan’s upcoming books and events click here.

What Disneyland Implies To The Video Game Generation

The influence of the elder generation on England"s healthcare technique

The proportion of England aged above 65 has improved dramatically above the previous 50 years and looks set to expand even more in the coming decades

In 1951, eleven% of individuals were aged 65 and much less than 1% were in excess of 85. In 2011, people proportions had elevated to 16% and two% respectively. Government projections propose that by 2051, 1 in four will be in excess of 65 while seven% of the population will be 85 and over.

An older England means that the way healthcare is delivered (and the cost) will modify because of the various demands that age groups have. The Well being and Social Care Data Centre (HSCIC) have released a report compiling several of the statistics around the topic. We run via some of the essential figures below.

In 2012, people aged 65 plus produced up 17% of the population but more than half (54%) of the bed days (24 hours invested in a hospital). Although men and women aged 85 plus produced up just 2% of the population they took up almost 1 in 5 (18%) of bed days.

The number of these bed days for every single age group has declined in excess of the previous 20 many years except for these in that 85 plus bracket, who in fact took a tenth much more (even though the amount has truly decreased given that a higher in 2002-03).

In an indication of the differing care demands of older people, 65% of hospital admissions for individuals aged 85 plus had been emergencies in 2012-13 in contrast to 32% for those aged 64 and below.

A single in five of people aged 85 and over accessed all three of emergency, inpatient and outpatient care services in 2012, in contrast to just four% of those aged 64 and beneath for the 65 to 74 age bracket the proportion was 8%.

Prescriptions are also weighted towards the older generation with 600m of the 1bn (60%) of drug products dispensed in the neighborhood in the course of 2013 going to the 65 and ups. When that is adjusted for cost, as in the chart above, it still falls in direction of the increased age groups in terms of total prescription allocations.

In spite of warnings about weight problems in young children, 7 out of 10 of those aged 45 and over are obese or overweight. That compares to 36% of those in the 16-24 bracket.

There are also certain illnesses more most likely to be suffered by folks in older generations, like ones linked to being overweight this kind of as diabetes. The above chart displays how the proportion of men and women struggling the illness improved with age in 2012.

However the report did not go into any costings. Earlier this year, the former head of the NHS warned that there was most likely to be a crisis if funding was not elevated to the system.

With the improved demands that an older population will place on English healthcare, it appears that planning will be needed to make certain these demand can be met.

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The influence of the elder generation on England"s healthcare technique

Next generation pacemaker will "revolutionise" patients" lives, scientists say

The new pacemaker employs synthetic neural technology to restore this normal variation of heart charge with lung inflation – modulating its pulses to matching breathing prices.

Researchers say the device operates by saving the heart energy, strengthening its pumping efficiency and enhancing blood movement to the heart muscle itself.

Pre-clinical trials recommend the gadget gives a 25% enhance in the pumping capability, which is expected to lengthen the lives of individuals with heart failure.

The venture, which is currently being awarded funding by the British Heart Foundation, aims to miniaturise the gadget to the size of a postage stamp.

Dr Alain Nogaret, senior lecturer in physics at the University of Bath, mentioned the team aim to build an implant that can be used within people inside of five years.

“Our operate to produce a new kind of pacemaker will considerably improve the lives of sufferers struggling with heart failure, both in the Uk and internationally,” Dr Nogaret said.

“Making use of state of the artwork nanotechnology, the new pacemaker will reply to patients’ breathing rate to improve the pumping efficiency of the diseased heart.

“This is a distinctive therapy for heart failure which will complement current therapies for cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac resynchronisation which are addressed by present pacemakers.”

Dr Nogaret stated the pacemaker delivered remedy “not presently addressed by mainstream cardiac rhythm management units.”

The study staff has patented the technology and is doing work with NHS consultants at the Bristol Heart Institute, the University of California at San Diego and the University of Auckland.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate healthcare director at the British Heart Foundation, explained: “This examine is a novel and thrilling first stage towards a new generation of smarter pacemakers. Far more and more men and women are residing with heart failure so our funding in this area is vital.

“The perform from this progressive research group could have a true influence on heart failure patients’ lives in the potential.”

It is hoped the technologies can also be applied to other locations of brain research, which includes prosthetics and potentially to stimulate the rebuilding of nerves following a stroke.

The findings of the analysis have been published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

Next generation pacemaker will "revolutionise" patients" lives, scientists say

Generation Selfie may hold the secret to conserving the NHS

At a time when the NHS is struggling to survive – never mind evolve to meet the needs of a society undreamed-of at its inception – as far as Generation Selfie is concerned, if you caused your illness, you pay for your treatment. End of.

None of this bleeding-heart, touchy- feely stuff acknowledging the poverty trap or ignorance or bog-standard depression or just plain bad luck.

It might be a bit hardline, but it comes as something of a tonic after the acquired helplessness created by a broken welfare system.

As Benefits Street so deftly demonstrated, for too many people, working still doesn’t pay, despite Iain Duncan Smith’s ongoing attempts to reform the welfare state, a process he has compared with William Wilberforce’s 18th-century campaign against the slave trade; by which I take it he means, “This is going to be bloody difficult”.

But having said that, the oversimplistic “fat people should pay for their own gastric bands because they are greedy” and “alcoholics should stump up for their own liver transplants” lead to further moral judgments.

“You should have thought about the risk of skin cancer before you booked that villa in Greece”, and “You’re old, it makes more sense to spend all the resources on babies, who, let’s face it, are also cuter”, is the kneejerk response of those of an age when they, quite rightly, consider themselves immortal.

But I think I speak for everyone planning to live beyond 70 when I say we’d prefer a more compassionate National Health Service, thanks.

Shocking figures newly released by the Office for National Statistics show an abrupt rise in “lifestyle” cancers. Liver cancer leapt by 66 per cent from 2003 to 2012, cancers of the mouth are up by 48 per cent, cancer of the womb by 31 per cent and kidney cancer by 46 per cent.

While some of the increase is due to our ageing population, there is no denying that over-consumption of food and booze, cigarettes and sun exposure are doing their worst.

We’re all accustomed to the “how many units of alcohol do you drink a week?” question and the “do you smoke?” inquiry. It’s no exaggeration to say we can expect a questionnaire longer than the average A-level paper. How many pizzas do you eat a month? What’s your daily biscuit intake? Please list the destination of all holidays taken from the age of 11. Include all sun factors used and details of your working.

Can it really be so difficult to change our lifestyles in a bid to not just stay alive, but to feel alive?

Eat less, exercise more. Drink in moderation. Don’t smoke. It’s hardly rocket science, but according to the World Cancer Research Fund, around 80,000 cancer cases could be prevented in this country every year.

I hope it’s not too late for my generation, but for Generation Right, perhaps there’s an upside to their unsentimentality about the NHS.

Their sense of personal responsibility, coupled with a collective agreement that the NHS can’t and won’t fix everyone, might just be enough to prompt them to turn away from excess and choose a healthier path.

Man and mobile are one at last

Hailing, as he does, from north of the border, my husband is not given to public displays of emotion over anything but the really important stuff: Culloden, Tunnock’s teacakes, England losing to Uruguay.

So when on Thursday this week he turned to me and confirmed, misty-eyed as MacDiarmid’s Drunk Man Looking at the Thistle, that he had just undergone the biggest epiphany since the Act of Union, he meant it.

Don’t panic, he wasn’t suddenly persuaded to vote Yes in the forthcoming J  K Rowling referendum on economic disas… sorry, independence. No, on Thursday he went and got himself a mobile phone.

I say “got himself”, but I orchestrated his smartphone rite of passage by selflessly gifting him my sleek new iPhone upgrade.

It was heartbreaking (technologically speaking), but worth it just to witness the conversation in the Carphone Warehouse when my spouse strode in, brandishing a goose quill and asking to place his signature on a contract.

“How many, like, minutes do you spend on your mobile every day?” asked the assistant.

“None. I’ve never had a mobile before.”

“Yeah, but like, how many texts do you send every day?”

“None. I’ve never had a mobile before.”

“Yeah, but like, how many gigs do you use every day?”

And so on.

So he has a phone. For him, it’s Year Zero. And for me?

People, the waiting – in car parks and shops, railway stations and foreign ports, in hospitals and hotels – is finally over. I only hope it was worth it.

Give me some of what you’re on, Victoria, even if it is pink quartz

The future’s bright. In fact, the future’s glittering. Put down your entrepreurial manuals! Bin your business books! Regift that new-and-still-reproachfully-unread Thomas Piketty economics hardback!

Victoria Beckham has spoken. And what has she said? She has said she uses crystals to promote success when she stages her fashion shows.

Yes folks, pink quartz is the new black tourmaline; pop them in your handbag and fame and a photogenic family fathered by a hot husband will be yours, too. Possibly.

It’s easy to laugh. So I do. But I shouldn’t. I, too, have had recourse to the realms of the bizarre and the bonkers.

To wit: I have bought (white) witches’ herbs online and hidden them beneath my daughter’s pillow in an attempt to cure her chronic insomnia.

When faced with paralysis after an accident, my first response (after chanting a decade of the rosary) was to insist my husband contact a faith healer. Oh, and I telephoned a diviner and asked him for help in finding my lost wedding ring and my vintage Cartier watch.

And I bought a money plant in order to – well, that one speaks for itself, really. I initially kept it outdoors, where it failed to thrive in the cold. Two days after I moved it indoors, I won £1,350 worth of premium bonds. Yay! Sadly, it has since died.

I like to think all this reflects a laudable “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio” open-mindedness rather than out-and-out lunacy.

I’m a practising Catholic, but I still believe the Holy Ghost isn’t necessarily the only one. When we moved into our house, 11 years ago, there was a crystal hanging from a nail and I haven’t dared move it.

So Victoria, whether you are harnessing the spiritual power of pink quartz or just fiddling about with it in your expensively tailored pocket, I salute you. Or I would, if my fingers weren’t permanently crossed.

Coffee bars are not for kids

From the moment my younger daughter could reach out and grab a wooden brick, she would extend her arm right past it and strain towards my coffee mug instead.

By the time she was cruising round the furniture, her mission wasn’t to strengthen her chubby toddler legs, but to seek out and drink any cold dregs she could find.

Now aged five, she has an illicit passion for strong coffee that would put the Brazilian national team to shame. Three heaped spoonfuls of Nescafé? That’ll do nicely.

I certainly don’t let her drink coffee often. But if she could, she’d be a little caffeine junkie, while her 12-year-old sister has a crippling mocha-latta-chocca-frappuccino habit that costs £3.10 a go.

Maybe this is why I feel uncomfortable about Costa opening small coffee bars in secondary schools, even though it is my favourite of the high street chains. On the scale of stimulants, moreover, the caffeine in coffee is hardly a huge concern; there are 40mg of it in a 100g cup of filtered coffee.

That’s twice the caffeine content of 100g of brewed tea, but “energy shots” such as Ammo contain 570mg per 100g and Jolt Endurance shots have a caffeine level of 339mg per 100g.

But there’s a world of difference between sixth- formers carefully budgeting for coffee in the common room and schoolchildren splashing their (or rather our) cash on the sort of high-end, bespoke beverages most of us couldn’t have afforded in our first jobs. Possibly even our second.

There are so few pleasures that are the exclusive domain of grown-ups. Please let’s keep good coffee one of them.

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