Latest news with #ThoughtfortheDay
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Mental health podcaster on month of fundraiser runs
The co-founder of a men's mental health podcast is running every day in May to raise money for a charity that supports his daughter. Lee Cadman, who is one half of Black Country Blokes, has run 5km (3.1miles) each day since the start of the month, to raise awareness of a condition called Dravet Syndrome and funds for medical research. He has been posting on social media, having been inspired by his daughter who has the severe neurological condition. Mr Cadman and fellow podcaster Kevin Dillon were recently awarded a King's Award for Voluntary Service. They spoke to BBC WM about men's mental health, highlighting the benefits of writing a gratitude list and doing daily exercise. To anyone dealing with mental issues, Mr Cadman said "you have to open up". "You have to find someone who you trust, who you can open up to," he said. "It doesn't have to be a professional. It can be a friend, it can be your wife, it can be anyone, just find someone who you can open to. "Hopefully, that will be a positive experience for you and that person will listen. For the person who is listening, that's all you've got to do. You've just got to listen. You don't need to solve the problem, you have to listen." Mr Dillon said the "best friend" of any mental health issue was loneliness and he urged people to try to avoid being alone when problematic feelings arose. "By knocking down those walls and showing people you're not alone, it gives them the strength to talk and to be there," he said. "We feel weak for feeling emotional, but we should have emotions, we should be happy and sad - all those wonderful things - because we're human beings." During his fundraising, Mr Cadman has also posted on Facebook that it "isn't just a run". "It's a lifeline. It's a message. It's me saying enough. Enough silence. Enough feeling alone," he wrote. The Black Country Blokes group runs a podcast, radio slot, daily boxing and fitness classes and a Thought for the Day on social media. It evolved from founder Mr Dillon's plans to create a boxing gym where men could open up about their problems and fears. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram. Awards recognise volunteers giving time to others Black Country Blokes Dravet Syndrome UK
BBC News
06-04-2025
- General
- BBC News
West Midlands King's Awards recognise volunteers helping others
Volunteers in areas including conservation, care and mental health support are being award for their contributions. Nineteen community groups from across the West Midlands will be presented with a King's Award for Voluntary Service on Lord Lieutenant of the West Midlands Derrick Anderson said it was to recognise "the many wonderful people who give their precious time to others".The organisations being recognised are based in Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell and elsewhere in the Black Country. Among recipients will be Black Country Blokes, which supports the mental health of men in the group offers a podcast, radio slot, daily boxing and fitness classes and a Thought for the Day on social media, and evolved from founder Kevin Dillon's plans to create a boxing gym where men could open up about their problems and fears."Their approach works and makes talking and connecting accessible," the lieutenancy said. Friends of Di's Kitchen, which delivers meals in Wolverhampton, is also being there deliver food to more than 800 people each week, with extra treats provided on birthdays, Easter and Christmas, especially for children. Warwick Volunteers is offering a "win-win for all" through the support it gives to overseas students, organisers group places students in volunteer positions, working in areas from nature conservation to foodbanks, and also provides language skills for refugees, so that the students gain confidence and Anderson said the groups brought communities together and improved lives, adding the awards would make for an "uplifting and heartwarming" presents the awards on Sunday at the ICC in Birmingham city centre. Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Five years on, we're only just starting to understand how much lockdown damaged our children
One of the lovely things about the breadth of Radio 4 is the station's ability to take a single subject and, via its various programmes, examine it from many different angles. Over the past few days, though mainly on Monday, Radio 4 has been marking five years since the UK's first Covid lockdown and has managed to give us distinct perspectives on that momentous event from children, parents, teachers, doctors, scientists, farmers, arts professionals, dramatists, data crunchers, psychologists and an Icelandic concert pianist. If I have one complaint, it's that the station didn't go the whole hog and make every programme on Monday about the March 2020 restrictions – give us the comedic perspective, the literary perspective, the meteorological perspective, the culinary perspective, the Ambridge perspective. Heck, I'd have even listened to a Thought for the Day on the subject (well, perhaps not). Things kicked off on Saturday with the reliably excellent Archive on 4, which went over the events from December 13, 2019 (Boris Johnson wins a landslide) to March 23, 2020 (Boris Johnson tells us we can't leave the house any more) and stirred up all sorts of repressed memories – Johnson singing Happy Birthday as he washed his hands, racegoers at Cheltenham delighted the event wasn't cancelled, Patrick Vallance. It was a guilty listen in many ways – those poor people we heard in the clips had no idea what was about to hit them. It was hard to know what to do with all that hindsight. Far more illuminating, yet arguably even more depressing, was Monday's analysis of the long-term impacts of lockdown, particularly on children. On Woman's Hour we heard about babies not learning to point or wave; in the trio of reports titled Lockdown's Legacy, children, teachers and medics lined up to lay bare just how scarring that period of isolation was for the young; on Start the Week we learnt that adults whose mental health suffered in lockdown have largely recovered – but children haven't. 'We had this haloed image of kids doing Joe Wicks videos in the garden and sitting doing their homework,' said one doctor, 'but for many children that was just not the case.' Those children, he said, are the ones we should worry about. Later he spoke of seeing 'Victorian levels of abuse and neglect' when lockdown restrictions eased. The day was a parade of anecdotes about stunted development, poor educational attainment, malnutrition, mental health epidemics, spiralling standards of behaviour and a lost generation. We heard statements such as, 'Many believe this [lack of social development in reception-aged children] is because of Covid-19' and, 'It's clear a year out of traditional schooling will have lasting impacts', and while it was all largely convincing you yearned for a bit of roughage in your diet: where was the data to support all this? Step forward the excellent More or Less, Tim Harford's wonderfully clear-eyed, no bulls--t programme that sloughs away anecdote and asks what the numbers are actually telling us. It gave Monday's day of programming a spine of steel. It was, and I mean this as a compliment, quite boring at times. Harford was not about to allow an eye-catching statistic to go unchallenged or a strong statement to be uninspected. He wanted to know what damage we did to our young when, with the lockdown, we sought to protect the adults – the 'intergenerational transfer of harms' as Harford called it. It was bleak. For children who started school in 2020, there's an appreciable drop in learning attainment, just as there was for older primary-aged children (though the data showed the pupils could recover that loss). Absence has rocketed – 10.5 per cent of children missed 10 per cent or more of school days in 2019. In 2023, it was more than 21 per cent. Suspensions have doubled. The truly depressing aspect was how lockdown acted as an 'amplifier', with more affluent children coping well, while the disadvantaged suffered even more. 'A decade of progress in closing the educational attainment gap was wiped out,' said one academic. 'We should never, ever have closed the schools,' said a teacher. More or Less's refusal to supply easy headlines – on lockdown's impact on university students: 'We just don't know yet' – makes it all the more powerful when it finds hard evidence. Throughout the day we heard emotive stories about young people's mental health, and while they were affecting you wondered what the true picture was. More or Less had data to show it's every bit as bad as the anecdotes suggest, and it's getting worse: 'The figures are a gut-punch.' One in 10 young people showed signs of a mental health illness before the pandemic. Now it's one in five – and rising. Radio 4 gave us all sorts of perspectives on lockdown and, in the main, the farmers, parents, teachers, artists and Icelandic concert pianists have managed to roll with the punches. For the young, however, it came at an enormous cost. And we're only just beginning to learn how much. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
23-02-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Comedy might be good for the soul, but it's no substitute for real medicine
A plan to put stand-up comedy shows on the NHS has been welcomed by Stroud MP and GP, Dr Simon Opher, who recently warned in Parliament about the 'pandemic of over-prescription' and outlined how 'making people laugh can avoid the need for medication'. The company that pitched this flamboyant foray into complementary medicine is Craic Comedy, headed up by Louisa Jackson, who has the facts and data at her elegantly manicured finger tips. Comedy-on-prescription, she says, is not just a bit of harmless fun – it could help reduce the costs linked to mental health issues in the country. 'Comedy is a cortisol decreaser, dopamine producer, and a potent releaser of serotonin, endorphins and good neuropeptides.' And no addiction, no adaptation, no shame. Sounds great. I should charge more. My first thought flew to the joke familiar to all stand-ups, and which I first heard, or read, in The Watchmen. 'Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone… Doctor says, 'Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.' Man bursts into tears. Says, 'But doctor...I am Pagliacci.' But even putting that opportunity for dramatic irony aside, I suspect I am not the only stand-up to be feeling somewhat ambivalent about being recruited into a wellness drive. Of course, one likes to think one's rants and musings cheer everyone up on the night, which can even have a knock-on effect on their mood the following day and ripple out to those they live and work with. We have long been proud to be reminded that laughter is the best medicine, which is why it was so jarring to discover during the Covid lockdowns that it was also quite a significant disease vector. But still, stand-up comedy is entertainment, not therapy, and one that is licensed to go dark, if not actually kill. There is nothing that smothers a really good, wicked belly laugh faster than the earnest smile of the comedy facilitator, beaming with the saintly intent of a Thought for the Day. 'Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.' A short verse by Adam Lindsay Gordon, with a glycaemic index that could fell an ox, and was apparently Princess Diana's favourite. But I always preferred Kingsley Amis's parody: 'Life is mainly grief and labour, Two things see you through: Chortling when it hits your neighbour Whingeing when it's you.' And that version, frankly, is much more in tune with the very best, the soul of stand-up comedy. At the moment of conception, Schopenhauer lamented, the Devil's laughter is heard. But if you can't be around for that, the conception of a really vicious punchline is a good second. Of course, I do believe that a really hearty cackle is chicken soup for the soul. It's just that it ideally has to have a little mischief in it really. And that comedy evenings planned as mental health treatment might lack a certain bite, might be a bit too much like getting your haircut by the council, or your lunch delivered by a charity. But who knows? I might be wrong. And after all, a gig's a gig. You know where to find me…
