The Mindapples campaign

Sleepless? Stressed? Anxious? Exhausted?

13 July 2009

Relentless consumption, spiralling debt, information overload. Is modern life making you ill? William Leith discovers the hidden problems with living in a 24-hour world.

Attitudes to mental health changing ‘for the better’

13 June 2009

Sue Baker, director of the Time to Change programme, which is tackling the stigma around mental health problems, said: “Attitudes towards mental health issues are finally beginning to move in the right direction. Deep-seated prejudices are starting to shift and it’s a further sign that we are heading towards a tipping point in England and […]

The Stresses and Strains of School

9 June 2009

“Laura Liz Partoon is remarkable. While still at school (she’s just left and is hoping to go to Roehampton University), she set up her own campaign,The Stresses and Strains of School. Her aim, as you can see from her short video above is to promote and improve the mental health and wellbeing of students.” “I’ve seen friends […]

Will Happiness Find me?

8 June 2009

A sneaky peak of my new book

Young and ambitious, time for a quarter life crisis then?

1 June 2009

A quarter life crisis happens shortly after a young person – usually an educated professional – enters the “real world”. I don’t know about anybody else, but the “quarterlife crisis” is as real as anything for me. I’m 29, with two degrees, £20,000 of debt, and two part-time jobs to pay it off. Neither earns […]

Mind Orchards

31 May 2009

The gardeners at Mindapples have been thinking about ‘mental spaces’. We want to turn Mindapples into a physical community by tagging places in cities and offices as ‘Mindapples zones’. Basically, places that make you feel more mentally healthy, like a park, a great view, or a really relaxing cupboard. We want to find really beautiful, […]

Get well in the garden

26 May 2009

We’ve always known that fresh air does you good, but now it seems that getting up close and personal with gardening can improve your overall well being. Studies from the University of Bristol indicate that simply touching “friendly bacteria” in soil may alter behaviour in a way similar to that of taking antidepressants. Meanwhile, research […]

Relationships are the only things that matter

24 May 2009

For the first time, a journalist, Joshua Wolshenk, has been given access to the archives of one of the most comprehensive longitutudinal studies in history. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. […]

Psychology and the Economy

21 May 2009

I’m currently sat in the RSA lunchtime lecture with Robert Shiller about how human psychology drives the economy. John Maynard Keynes famously used the term ‘animal spirits’ to refer to the animating forces that drive people to action. He argued that economists were wrong to model human behaviour as rational, an emphasized that no-one can […]

Get excited and make things

29 April 2009

Here’s some beautiful advice from my friend Matt Jones for anyone who’s feeling flat or powerless in these times of economic downturn: