Category: Advice
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My cat died. And it feels like a part of my brother died again too.
After a few months of deterioration, the family cat we’ve had for 18 years of our lives had to be put to sleep. In my naivety, I thought I’d be prepared for my cat dying. After all, I had suffered the loss of my younger brother Elliot in 2013. I wrongly assumed, having gone through…
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Living with OCD
I’m insecure about my hands. It seems a strange thing to be insecure about, but it’s the only visible sign of my OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), a condition I’ve struggled with since middle school. I’ve never spoken about it before, mainly because I was in denial for a long time. I was ashamed to admit…
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‘The Last of Us’: How a video game helped me to cope with my grief
“To the edge of the universe and back. Endure and survive.” It’s the words spoken by Ellie, one of the main protagonists from a survival video game called ‘The Last of Us’. It was the first video I played after my brother Elliot passed away in 2013, and in many ways, it helped me cope…
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‘Are you okay?’
When you’re grieving, people will often ask you the same question on a regular basis. ‘Are you okay?’ I get it. It’s a natural reflex, like saying bless you when someone sneezes or nodding politely when you’ve seen someone more than once on the same tour of the local Tesco. It wasn’t until recently that…
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‘How do I become a journalist without a degree?’
I was fifteen when I decided I wanted to be a journalist. I bloody loved the news. I would wake up at 5:30 most mornings to watch it with my dad before school. I also had a fascination for documentaries. Louis Theroux was my icon and I longed to tell stories the way he did…
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Losing my brother: Five years on
Time feels like a strange concept when you’re grieving. It feels fleeting, brief and sudden, like you’re racing against an hourglass, watching each grain of sand as it trickles away. And yet in some moments, it feels like an eternity. I was only ever aware of this after my brother died. In the early days…
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The Inbetweeners of Mental Health
The ‘inbetweeners’ of mental health. They’re young people in the transition stage between childhood and adult mental health services. It is the point in which an existing or newly referred patient (over the age of 16 or 18) is transferred to adult services. The UK’s leading charity in improving young people’s mental health services, YoungMinds,…
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Mental health and young people: Is there a lack of support?
CentreForum, the independent think-tank, published a report which revealed that nearly a quarter of children and teenagers on average are turned away by mental health services after being referred by their GP’s, teachers, or others. CentreForum found that this was due to services having ‘high thresholds’ for access to their services, revealed after analysis of…
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5 Things I’d Tell My Teenage-Self
Growing up is never easy. It’s commonplace to find your teenage years engulfed by angst and raging hormones. Most people will remember those years fondly as they mature into relatively civilised adults. And some may do all they can to avoid reminiscing of such times. But you’ll almost certainly be who you are today thanks…
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The Alone Sibling: Dealing with Sibling Loss
As a child, I couldn’t have imagined what life as an only child would be like. A number of my cousins are only children. And although they knew no different, I almost felt sympathy for them. How lonely they must feel? With no one to play with, no one to tell their secrets to or…
Georgia Coan 