There was a time when young children were allowed to be children.

​Primary school was about learning how to play, have fun and make friends. Happy children are more likely to learn and make the world a better place than unhappy ones.
Childhood hasn’t been cancelled exactly, but it is under extreme attack, as I’ve written before (“Suffer little children”). Today's subjects: stress, self-harm, suicide.

​This week saw the launch of a campaign for universal access to school-based counselling services.
Reports the story in Schools Week: “A motion being put to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ annual conference in Liverpool, which calls for better promotion of mental health awareness in schools and a campaign for all pupils in England to have access to a counsellor, is expected to pass with the backing of the union’s leadership.”

There is certainly a need:
• One in five children have symptoms of depression and almost a third of the 16-25-year-olds surveyed had thought about or attempted suicide. In Ireland, children as young as five are thinking of suicide.
• A World Health Organisation survey in 2014 revealed a fifth of 15-year-olds in England said they had self-harmed over the previous year.
• An ATL union survey of its own members revealed that 48 per cent of respondents had pupils who had self-harmed, and 20 per cent knew pupils who had attempted suicide “because of the pressure they are under”.
General secretary Mary Bousted said it was “horrifying” that so many young people many are self-harming and contemplating suicide.

Increase paperwork until standards improve!
There is more testing, more homework, and it starts earlier. (Homework for 5-year-olds? Really?). Teachers are overworked and underappreciated (and underpaid), frantically trying to get results, write up reports, check all the boxes and generally enact the latest keep-up-with-China government initiative, all set against a backdrop of cuts in funding and services and in many cases financial hardship at home. The creative, nurturing, qualitative skill of teaching has been turned into a bureaucratic, morale-sapping, quantitative exercise in stress, low-grade trauma and Ofsted reports, one that kills joy in the classroom, erodes resilience and is creating a whole new generation of children who as adults will be susceptible to mental and physical ill-health.
There are roughly 200 governments around the world—200 education policies (or lack thereof), 200 places to look for examples of good ideas and bad ones, 200 petri dishes.
Why fawn over China—do we really want to look to an undemocratic communist government with a terrible human rights record for child-rearing tips? How about looking instead to the more relaxed approach of the Scandinavian countries, especially Finland, where education is free, safe and friendly, school starts at age 7, teachers are allowed to teach, and children are allowed to be children rather than treated as future economic units. Finland’s less-is-more education system has been described as the best in the world.

Mental-health difficulties are the leading causes of disability worldwide—almost a third of people globally will experience mood, anxiety or substance-use problems in their lifetime. The best antidote is a happy childhood.

​As noted philosopher Whitney Houston put it:
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride 
 
--John Barton

Happiest days of your life?
There was a time when young children were allowed to be children.

​Primary school was about learning how to play, have fun and make friends. Happy children are more likely to learn and make the world a better place than unhappy ones.
Childhood hasn’t been cancelled exactly, but it is under extreme attack, as I’ve written before (“Suffer little children”). Today's subjects: stress, self-harm, suicide.

​This week saw the launch of a campaign for universal access to school-based counselling services.
Reports the story in Schools Week: “A motion being put to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ annual conference in Liverpool, which calls for better promotion of mental health awareness in schools and a campaign for all pupils in England to have access to a counsellor, is expected to pass with the backing of the union’s leadership.”

There is certainly a need:
• One in five children have symptoms of depression and almost a third of the 16-25-year-olds surveyed had thought about or attempted suicide. In Ireland, children as young as five are thinking of suicide.
• A World Health Organisation survey in 2014 revealed a fifth of 15-year-olds in England said they had self-harmed over the previous year.
• An ATL union survey of its own members revealed that 48 per cent of respondents had pupils who had self-harmed, and 20 per cent knew pupils who had attempted suicide “because of the pressure they are under”.
General secretary Mary Bousted said it was “horrifying” that so many young people many are self-harming and contemplating suicide.

Increase paperwork until standards improve!
There is more testing, more homework, and it starts earlier. (Homework for 5-year-olds? Really?). Teachers are overworked and underappreciated (and underpaid), frantically trying to get results, write up reports, check all the boxes and generally enact the latest keep-up-with-China government initiative, all set against a backdrop of cuts in funding and services and in many cases financial hardship at home. The creative, nurturing, qualitative skill of teaching has been turned into a bureaucratic, morale-sapping, quantitative exercise in stress, low-grade trauma and Ofsted reports, one that kills joy in the classroom, erodes resilience and is creating a whole new generation of children who as adults will be susceptible to mental and physical ill-health.
There are roughly 200 governments around the world—200 education policies (or lack thereof), 200 places to look for examples of good ideas and bad ones, 200 petri dishes.
Why fawn over China—do we really want to look to an undemocratic communist government with a terrible human rights record for child-rearing tips? How about looking instead to the more relaxed approach of the Scandinavian countries, especially Finland, where education is free, safe and friendly, school starts at age 7, teachers are allowed to teach, and children are allowed to be children rather than treated as future economic units. Finland’s less-is-more education system has been described as the best in the world.

U.S.A. NEWS
 
Beyoncé: 'Women have to take time to focus on our mental health'
USA TODAY
 
A throwaway line becomes a news story when it is uttered by Beyoncé. Here’s the line:
 
"We have to care about our bodies and what we put in them. Women have to take the time to focus on our mental health—take time for self, for the spiritual, without feeling guilty or selfish."

 
Unusual marriage counseling retreats
PR Newswire (press release)
 
Is your marriage all at sea? In turbulent waters? Do you feel as if you are drowning? Maybe this boat in North Carolina could help. But what an unfortunate name! Even Boaty McBoatface would be better!
 
Love Odyssey Charters has announced that it is ready to start booking new marriage counseling retreats. They have re-launched their pilothouse sailboat "Dragon Lady" after its annual maintenance. The company offers an intensive marriage intervention service for couples seeking to revive their troubled relationships. More than a gimmick, the service is based on sound neuroscience according to Dr. Bryce Kaye, psychologist and author of the book "The Marriage First Aid Kit." He explains: "We keep them moving and out of their stuck roles. We sail them from port to port where they stay in quaint B&B's, explore the historic towns and enjoy the down-east restaurants. They are surrounded by beautiful natural scenery on the rivers and sounds of North Carolina. The marriage counseling retreats take place in a cozy teak-lined pilot house of a Finnish-made sailboat. All of this puts them into an exploratory state in which their minds are more receptive to new ideas."


VIEWPOINT
 
Clare Allan:
Why words matter when it comes to mental health
The Guardian
 
It happens all the time. If not every day then at the very least several times a week. Someone describes someone else as a “nutter” or a situation as “mental”, and, listening, I am faced with a choice: to speak or not to speak.
It happens in the media too. And not just in tabloid headlines about “schizos”, “psychos” and so forth. In arts discussions on BBC Radio 4, I regularly hear the word “psychotic” used as a shorthand for lacking in conscience, or “schizophrenic”, when what is meant is in two minds.

Has the dawn of the internet age been good for our mental health? Or really bad?

There is great optimism: the digital revolution heralds a utopian, democratic, postmodern world where we are all connected, resourced, empowered, heard, transparent, authentic and free to be who we are. There was even a theory that the internet might flatten a chronically unlevel playing field, though perhaps only for those that have a smart phone and good wifi.

There is great pessimism: we’re entering a dystopian, virtual world where a person is reduced to an online profile to be swiped left or right, texts replace conversation, virtual friends replace real ones, “likes” replace activism, emoticons replace emotions (except for anxiety—lots more anxiety). Human intelligence outsourced to machines, vast amounts of time wasted, attention spans worse than a goldfish, retrograde evolution. We plug into a world wide web and watch helplessly as our humanity drains away.

To stay alive, and truly connected, we sometimes have to unplug.
​
One story this week highlights the internet as a problem for our inner worlds; another explores its claims to be a solution:

Problem?
Parent Zone’s report, The Perfect Generation: Is the Internet Undermining Young People's Mental Health?, contains the results of a survey of teachers and teenagers. Among the findings:
• 44% of teachers think the internet is bad for young people’s mental health, compared to 28% of young people.
• 91% of teachers believe the frequency of mental health issues among pupils is increasing.
• Of these issues, schools report stress and anxiety (95%), depression (70%) and self-harm (66%) as the most common issues amongst pupils.
• 84% of schools say they do not have adequate resources to deal with pupils’ mental health issues.

Vicki Shotbolt, CEO of Parent Zone, says: “The internet has destroyed any notions we might have had about keeping some things away from children until they were ‘old enough to cope’. 
“All of the indicators suggest that the prevalence of mental health problems and the severity of those problems are increasing. Some people are linking the internet to the increase.”

​The report concludes that new problems require new solutions, that schools need much better resources for responding to mental health issues, and that tech companies “should recognise both their duty of care and their unique opportunity to create online spaces that are positive and inspiring.”

​Long considered a sexist dinosaur with a cocaine habit and some bizarre ideas—does anyone believe that little boys literally fear castration, want to kill their fathers and have sex with their mothers?—Sigmund Freud is enjoying something of a renaissance.

As Oliver Burkeman recently outlined, the therapy Freud invented, psychoanalysis, is at last gaining some much-needed empirical support, while at the same time the default treatment on offer in the U.K., quick fix, symptom-focussed cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), is increasingly looking like some sort of snake oil.

CBT appeals to our common sense. But common sense isn't as common as we'd like to believe.

Freud’s revelation was that we are not necessarily always logical, rational beings making optimal choices as we navigate through life’s vagaries, that we are in fact to a large extent strangers to ourselves.

Therapy today
Freud’s influence was far-reaching and profound. But he was a flawed character. You get the feeling he started to believe in his own myth. Patients often had to fit into his theories rather than the other way round. Any dissent might be met by indignant harrumphing or an ended friendship. He was capable of exploiting his position as a white male authority figure for personal ends. His work was sometimes more to do with furthering the legend of Sigmund Freud than with healing.

Some of his ideas and speculative musings have great metaphorical and symbolic value, yet he invited ridicule by insisting on speaking in absolutes and the rigid certainties of hard science. He was somewhat obsessional, detached, and ironically perhaps not so much of a people person, once writing, “I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience, most of them are trash.” The best they could hope for was “common unhappiness.” In photographs, his facial expressions run the gamut from utter foreboding to grim disdain.

Freud claimed psychoanalysis worked. He would identify unconscious motivations and unhelpful patterns, explain them to the grateful patient and, thus fortified, the patient would make better choices going forward. Except that very often they didn’t.

Today’s therapists who work at any depth will, like Freud, want to uncover your blueprint, your patterns, your unconscious processes. They might explore your childhood, interpret significant memories, analyse your dreams, which for Freud were the “royal road” to the unconscious. But they know that, while self-knowledge is helpful, it only takes a client so far. Lasting change and healing comes from the heart as well as the head, through acceptance, support and love. Research shows it is the therapeutic relationship itself which heals.

Good therapists are not inflated with their own importance, nor blinded by their own certainties. They treat clients ethically, not just because there are codes of ethics to abide by, but because ethical therapy is inherently good therapy. Above all, they are fully engaged with the client, noticing what is happening between them, and always working in partnership with them, in their best interests, rather than lording over them as they lie on the couch, prostrate and exposed (whether as a client or a therapist, I prefer to sit chair to chair and eye to eye). A good therapist cares.

It’s not enough to know and be known. To thrive in this life it helps, too, to love and be loved.

One photograph. A little boy in a red T-shirt, blue shorts and tiny trainers. He is face down on a beach in Turkey. The toddler, just 3 years old, was Aylan Kurdi. He drowned alongside his brother and mother.

Aylan was just one story in the huge current refugee crisis—a mass exodus of 4 million Syrians attempting to flee war and the occupation of their homeland by Islamic fundamentalists. More than 2,600 have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean for the imagined sanctuary of Europe. In stark contrast to countries like Germany and Sweden, the response from the British government has been pitiful: only 216 Syrian refugees have thus far qualified for the official relocation program and Prime Minister David Cameron originally said the total would not rise above 1,000. “I don’t think there is an answer that can be achieved simply by taking more and more refugees,” he said, thereby blithely consigning thousands to staying home to face persecution, torture, imprisonment and death, or else risking escaping on leaky, overcrowded boats.

The number of forcibly displaced people around the world reached a staggering 59.5 million by the end of 2014, compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago. The massive increase in people in search of refuge over past decades is no accident. It is the direct result of globalisation, a Third World crisis born to a significant degree of First World politics. As long as there are great disparities between economic, social and political conditions between countries in the world, migration in large numbers is inevitable.

The easiest way to justify such a profoundly unequal and unfair world order is to blame its victims, through a process of “othering” or what Edward Said calls “Orientalism.” Dominant powers establish “truth” about both themselves and those over whom they exert power. “We” are surely rational, developed, humane and good, while the “other”—foreigner, immigrant, refugee, asylum seeker, eastern European, Muslim, African, Asian, black, nonwhite—is portrayed as inherently barbaric, inferior, backward, aberrant, criminal, corrupt, violent, poor, lazy and dirty. The mobilization of such negative stereotypes by politicians and press in the U.K. has been going on for generations. Both of the two main political parties compete in a dismal race to the bottom for the perceived electoral asset of “toughness” toward outsiders, while sections of the British media, which have a long, horrible history of xenophobia, compete to see which can attract the greatest number of readers by publishing the most hostile, fearmongering stories. A columnist in The Sun recently called the refugees “cockroaches”; the Daily Mail wondered why the government could stop Hitler but not “a few thousand exhausted migrants.”

As Noam Chomsky writes: “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

And then, on Wednesday, a photograph appears, the corpse of a little boy, washed up on the shores of “Fortress Europe.” And through the democracy of social media, the public responds, magnificently, with great humanity, putting the politicians and tabloids to shame with campaigns (eg. #refugeeswelcome), fundraising and relief runs, petitions, marches, banners at football matches and all kinds of extraordinary, individual offers of help.

“I’ve worked for the UNHCR for more than seven years and, to be honest, this is the most generous response I’ve seen in terms of the way it has touched people and their willingness to offer help on a very personal level,” said Laura Padoan of the UN refugee agency.

Therapy—for better or for worse?
In psychological terms, the demonizing “othering” process is called projection. All the unpleasant parts of us are ascribed instead to the “other” such that we can preserve a self-image of purity. This happens individually, between us, and it happens collectively, between nations. What Jung called “the shadow” does not live in foreigners from Third World. It lives in all of us.

Psychotherapy, too, has a tendency to project, to “other,” to blame the victims. Social environment psychologists like Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney have pointed out that so much human psychological distress and suffering is born of dire circumstances, the result of a ravenous capitalism machine that mankind used to master but has now enslaved us.

Rather than looking for insight, the late British psychologist David Smail argued that therapists should look for “outsight”—an awareness of a person’s environment, of the oppressions of a deeply-unfair social order; an indefensible hierarchical power structure that keeps people down.

Not surprisingly, studies have shown considerably higher rates of psychological distress among refugees, including PTSD, depression and somatic complaints compared to the general population or other kinds of migrant. Let’s hope that the traumatized refugees who do manage to arrive at our green and pleasant land aren’t then exposed to the kind of counselling that invites them to consider their dysfunctional “negative automatic thoughts” or unhelpful “repeating patterns” of behaviour.

Writes Smail: “I can think of no mainstream approach to psychological therapy which doesn’t harbour at its core a humourless authoritarianism, a moralistic urge to control, that has the ultimate effect of causing infinitely more pain than it could ever conceivably hope to cure.”

The ways that counsellors and psychotherapists seek and work with both insight and “outsight,” the extent to which they “other” their clients, and the power dynamics in the consulting room determine whether they are part of the problem or part of the solution. Therapy, for better or for worse, operates at the intersection of the personal, the professional and the political,

Togethering
In his 1955 book The Sane Society, Erich Fromm concludes: “In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.” The future, he argued, will either see a grand, mutual destruction—or else a rediscovery of our shared humanity.

Sometimes we are woken up to that shared humanity. We meet someone who rocks us out of our complacency. Or something dreadful happens to us that makes us see things afresh. Or we see a devastating photograph that completely stops us in our tracks.

The image of Aylan’s lifeless little body cuts through all the stereotypes, the xenophobia, the UN reports, the statistics of war (the greater the number of people suffering, the greater the likelihood of a collapse of compassion). He could have been your child, or a friend’s child or any child. He could have been you.

We look at that photograph and we feel outraged. We are impelled to do something. We might not get it right. We might be clumsy and make mistakes. But we try to come out from behind our own borders and boundaries and barricades. We join forces, we connect, we act. We are One World. And so, instead of “othering,” we tiptoe towards some kind of “togethering.”

• How you can help

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• https://instagram.com/world_of_therapy/

Facebook’s bid to help prevent suicides
Facebook is introducing a new initiative aimed at reducing suicides. The social media site is partnering with Now Matters Now, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Save.org and Forefront: Innovations in Suicide Prevention, to offer help and support to Facebook users in distress.
    Here’s how it will work: If someone on Facebook posts something concerning, indicating thoughts of suicidal intent for instance, any of that person’s Facebook friends will be able to click on an icon to contact the friend in need, contact another of their friends for support, or contact a suicide helpline.
     Facebook, too, will be alerted, and if the post is sufficiently distressing, it will send the distressed person messages of support and useful resources.
     It's all a bit Big Brotherly, something devised by the "thought police." And yet, even if it is generated by a programmed bot in a vast, humming underground computer bunker somewhere in Silicon Valley, a well-timed message of hope really can make all the difference. It’s a helping hand, a voice in your darkest hour, a reminder that you’re not alone in this world.
     There are 1.4 billion active Facebook account users. That’s about a fifth of the population of the world.
      From ThinkProgress:
Preventing suicide is a difficult undertaking because it’s an action that’s carried out swiftly and desperately by those struggling to deal with their mental anguish alone, even if they may lead a seemingly normal life. However, not all cries for help are silent — especially on social media, where you may come across melancholic statuses from friends on your newsfeed.
Now, Facebook wants to capitalize on the confessional nature of its platform. The social media giant is rolling out a new suicide prevention tool — which it created in partnership with a few mental health organizations — that allows users to reach out to their troubled loved ones virtually and connect them with online resources after spotting the first sign of trouble.
While mental health experts believe that the app could better help concerned family and friends spark much needed conversations and connect distressed people with resources, some warn against overly depending on the social media platform for help with these sensitive matters when direct contact may prove more effective.
With the suicide prevention app, users who are concerned about a friend’s post can directly “report” it by contacting their friend, another friend for support, or a suicide prevention hotline. Facebook then examines the reported post to see if warrants intervention. If so, the friend in question will receive a message that gives him or her the option of reaching out to a friend, calling a suicide hotline, or looking over a host of suicide prevention materials, including video messages and relaxation techniques.

U.K. news
Julie Andrews: Counselling led me to love
From Film News:
Julie Andrews went to therapy to "get rid of some garbage" and ended up meeting the love of her life.
The actress is famed for her appearance in 1965's The Sound of Music and four years after it was released she married Blake Edwards. The pair met because they were both seeking counselling at the same place, with Julie explaining she needed help coping with her sudden rise to fame.
"We actually, our cars - I was going one way and he was going the other and Blake rolled down the window after smiling a couple of times and said, 'Are you going where I just came from?' And I was going to a therapist and he was coming from. Very corny, sorry about that!" she explained to British TV show Good Morning Britain.

The future of mental health in the UK: an election manifesto
Following on from the Royal College of Psychiatrists mental health manifesto for the next UK Government, Making Parity a Reality, comes this “secret manifesto” in The Lancet with further suggestions:
It is disheartening that half of the things we called for— proper liaison psychiatry services, a minimum unit price for alcohol, and investment in parenting programmes— have such robust evidence bases that they should have happened years ago. It is disgraceful that the remainder— adequate numbers of hospital beds for people with mental health problems, a maximum waiting time of 18 weeks to receive treatment for a mental health problem, and safe and speedy access to quality crisis care that does not often involve police cells—would just lift mental health up to the level of physical health care.

Children's services hit rock bottom – so what's next?
The government has fuelled a rise in mental health problems in children while at the same time dramatically slashing services designed to help them, as I’ve written before. Here Simon Newitt in the Guardian assesses the dire way we are treating our children, our future, concluding: “If we are going to continue to organise our society in such a way as to make the incidence of poor mental health more likely, then we can’t ignore the human and financial cost of not providing adequate public services to mitigate the consequences”:
It’s encouraging to hear leading politicians now talk and pledge openly about mental healthcare. In the past year or so, the state of our services – particularly for children and young people – has slowly risen up the political agenda. It’s a scandal that it has taken near systemic collapse to achieve this, but when even Norman Lamb, minister of state for care and support, is able to conclude that children’s mental health services “are not fit for purpose”, it is clear we’re about to hit bottom. Maybe we already have.
Multiple investigations and reviews have found the same failings, which might be summarised as the result of chronic long-term underinvestment in the face of growing demand. Mental health issues represent about a third of our overall burden of disease in the UK and cost more than £100bn a year.
Spending on services represents only 13% of the total NHS budget, with 67% of clinical commissioning groups spending less than 10% of their budget in this way. Worse, given half of all adult mental health problems (excluding dementia) start before age 15 and three-quarters by 18, it’s hard to understand why only 6% of these already limited funds go toward child and adolescent mental health. These are services which have also had to manage cuts of £50m since 2010. Funding for mental health research represents 5% of overall health research spending.
• Scotland: child mental health wait increases 'are horrifying'
From BBC News:
The number of young people waiting more than a year to be treated by mental health services has increased 10-fold in a year, according to figures released by Scottish Labour.
The party said the Scottish government "is letting down some of the most vulnerable children in Scotland".

“The Troubles” linked to half mental health cases in Northern Ireland
From BBC News:
A new study has claimed the Troubles are linked to half the cases of mental health issues in Northern Ireland.
The research was conducted by Ulster University on behalf of the Commission for Victims and Survivors.
It found almost 30% of the NI population suffer mental health problems, and nearly half of those are directly related to the Troubles.
The Department of Health said it had no official figures on "the level of directly associated mental illness".
However, it said "emerging evidence indicates that Northern Ireland has high levels of, often untreated, post traumatic stress disorder as a result of decades of violence".

USA news
Michelle Obama promotes awareness of mental health
From U.S. News & World Report:
Mental health care is not just a policy and budget issue for America, but also a cultural issue, Michelle Obama said on Wednesday.
The first lady said more than 40 million Americans experience a diagnosable mental health condition— like depression or anxiety— and there should be no stigma around mental health care.
"At the root of this dilemma is the way we view mental health in this country," she said. "Whether an illness affects your heart, your leg or your brain, it's still an illness, and there should be no distinction."
Mrs. Obama spoke at a mental health summit and the national launch of the campaign to "Change Direction."

World news
Kenya: How one woman is “fighting the funk” by helping others
From Public Radio International:
Sitawa Wafula had two strikes against her. But the Kenyan woman is making a huge difference for thousands in her nation in an area that receives scant attention: Mental health. Despite suffering from bipolar disorder and epilepsy herself, Wafula has been able to create a route to help others.
According to the Africa Mental Health Foundation, there are only 79 working psychiatrists in the East African nation. That’s one for every 500,000 people. Short of training more, Wafula wanted to find a way to make mental health resources more widely available.
In September 2014, Wafula launched an SMS-based helpline called “My Mind My Funk.” People can text in for free from any mobile network. General inquiries get an automated response, but desperate or suicidal messages are answered with a call from a licensed therapist.
Wafula knows all too well what it’s like to have no one to turn to for help. She was diagnosed with epilepsy, a condition that's often stigmatized in Kenya, when she was a teenager. Then a sexual assault sent her into a downward spiral.
“I got really, really depressed. I was suicidal. I didn’t have anyone to talk to tell what had happened to me,” Wafula says, speaking at her small, bare office in Ngong, a town on the outskirts of the capital city Nairobi.

Israel: 350 soldiers received psychiatric counseling after Gaza War: report
From Al-Bawaba:
More than 350 Israeli soldiers who took part in last summer's military onslaught on the Gaza Strip have since received psychiatric counseling for post-traumatic stress, an Israeli report has revealed.
The report, published Wednesday in the Israel Today newspaper said that soldiers had undergone treatment for symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress, including disorientation, low productivity and recurring nightmares.
The newspaper quoted a senior Israeli official as saying that the number of soldiers to receive psychiatric treatment following last summer's onslaught on Gaza was higher than those who did so following previous operations.
For 51 days this summer, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip by air, land and sea. More than 2,310 Gazans, 70 percent of them civilians, were killed and 10,626 injured during unrelenting Israeli attacks on the besieged strip this summer.
According to the UN, the Israeli military killed at least 495 Palestinian children in Gaza during “Operation Protective Edge.” The al-Mezan Center for Human Rights puts the number at 518, while the Palestinian Center for Human Rights puts it at 519.
All three figures exceed the total number of Israelis, civilians and soldiers, killed by Palestinians in the last decade. 

Saudi Arabia: counseling helps 2,950 extremists mend ways
From Arab News:
Maj. Gen. Nasser Al-Mutairi, director of the Mohammed bin Nayef Center for Counseling and Care, said that his facility has reformed 2,950 young men who are now all fully integrated in society.
Nasser made these remarks on Monday, during a lecture at the headquarters of the Muslim World League, where several Saudi experts talked about the experience of fighting terrorism in the Kingdom. However, the center's success of retrievals of youth in danger of becoming extremists currently stands at 13 percent.
Despite the grim data, 120 individuals coming from Guantanamo Bay were successfully integrated in society thanks to the center, with 98 percent of them giving up extremist ideas.
Al-Mutairi said the center has a five-year strategy based on three propositions: psychological treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

Australia: Large gap between rich and poor areas in use of mental health services revealed
From The Guardian:
Large socioeconomic and geographical inequality exists in patient use of mental health services, despite Medicare’s aim of providing universal health care.
Using substantial data obtained through freedom of information requests, researchers from Melbourne’s Monash University assessed more than 25m instances of mental health care over the four years to June 2011, undertaking the largest ever national study into mental health services.
The most highly qualified mental health staff – psychiatrists and clinical psychologists – were used up to three times as much by people in wealthier areas compared to those in the most disadvantaged ones, they found. However, use of less qualified mental health staff, like general practitioners, general psychologists and social workers, was more equitable across the country. Out-of-pocket costs to the patient are significantly less for these services compared to that of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, for which a larger co-payment gap exists.
With research consistently showing higher rates of severe mental illness in the most disadvantaged areas, it was concerning that people living in those areas were accessing specialist services less, the authors of the research published in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday said.

The developing world: When mental health is the best investment
Report on the global cost of mental health problems in GOOD Magazine:
Mental health disorders are among the most common debilitating afflictions in the world. This reality is almost certainly exacerbated in poorer countries, given a lack of mental health resources and the demonstrated linkage between poverty and the risk of developing adverse psychological conditions. Yet pervasive social stigmas about mental health still make it difficult to convince governments, businessmen, and donors to invest in campaigns for greater resources, especially in economically struggling countries. Fortunately, there may be a way to convince hardheaded people all over the world that contributing to mental health provision efforts will be in their interest. Even if they don’t participate out of the goodness of their hearts or the recognition of the realities of mental health’s personal ravages, there’s a good argument to be made that providing these service just makes practical business sense. Because these days, a growing body of literature suggests funding improved mental health resources is one of the best economic investments a country or company can make.
Among its constituent countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development conservatively estimates that up to four percent of national GDP can be lost in a given year to mental health’s blow to productivity. In the U.S., these direct and indirect costs make mental health issues perhaps the most expensive chronic health issue in the nation. Thanks to a lack of data or serious investigations in many developing countries, we often don’t know what the equivalent numbers would be. But some estimates put the global costs of mental health at $2.5 trillion per year, with two-thirds of that amount coming from indirect expenses. And up to 45 percent of that global impact seems to be concentrated in the developing world. So the numbers may be fuzzy, but we’re still looking at hundreds of billions of dollars a year in preventable losses to the national economies of a collection of limited, small, and fragile nations. 

Two opposing views
Looking for meaning in your life?
From psychotherapist Dr Aaron Balick on Huffington Post UK:
Finding the right therapist for yourself is important, and your progress with them will depend a lot on chemistry. If you don't click with the first one you meet or speak to, try someone else. If you're meeting a therapist in the real world, you might want to book a session in with a few different people, so you can get a taste before you decide.
And then you can begin your journey - now, more than ever, we need to access the deeper parts of ourselves, so we can operate better and more authentically in this fast moving world. A depth psychotherapy is a bit like slow food in a fast food culture. Once or twice a week you slow down, chew slowly, and taste all the flavours. It's you're life, as far as we know you've only go the one, so make it count and find out who you are.

“It just exacerbates everything”
Creator of Seinfeld, Curb your Enthusiasm, and king of neurosis Larry David, via Mia Farrow (former partner of the kind of neurosis Woody Allen, on twitter.com: 
Larry David on psychotherapy: “I think it just exacerbates everything. Then you just become more focused on yourself. It does no good at all."