Ethan Mcguirk

Psychologist in Clinical Training @UCDpsychology.
Interested in Mental Wellbeing, Neuropsych, Trauma & Research.
Faith, Family & Friends.
All views my own.

[Care Champions Ireland @CareChampions2]

Senator Tom Clonan told the Seanad that clinicians in the region faced alleged intimidation after trying to report suspected child abuse to the authorities.

Concerns have been raised over child protection procedures within HSE West and North-West, which includes Leitrim and Roscommon. Senator Tom Clonan told the Seanad that clinicians in the region faced alleged intimidation after trying to report suspected child abuse to the authorities.

He claimed protected disclosures made last year have yet to be fully addressed and called for urgent action to safeguard children:

#ChildProtection #ProtectedDisclosures #NorthWest

https://t.co/4cqcPe8URs

[Middle East Eye @MiddleEastEye]

“By the way, in the country where children are dying, they wear the jerseys of Argentina, Barcelona, Manchester City, and Real Madrid.”

Egypt’s coach Hossam Hassan condemned the football community for their silence regarding the killing of Palestinian children https://t.co/AIgbitqNvE

[Callum @_callumstone]

Iran couldn’t get visas. They didn’t intervene.

A Somalian referee couldn’t get a visa. They didn’t intervene.

Fans of Muslim countries couldn’t get a visa. They didn’t intervene.

Ronaldo got a red card. Intervened.

USA player got a red card. Intervened.

F*** FIFA. Corrupt.

[The Ditch @wereontheditch]

An internal report obtained by The Ditch has exposed hospital consultants prioritising private child patients over those on public lists – with public patients forced to wait significantly longer for vital surgery.

https://t.co/4BMmM2xW8p

[Irish Unity 🇮🇪🇵🇸 @IrishUnity]

most days I’m convinced this is the greatest moment in irish tv

[BPS Pre-Qualification Group @DCPPreQual]

🔈Trainee Clinical Psychologists!
The Alternative Handbook 2026/27 survey is now live.
The link has been emailed to all DClinPsy course centres - keep an eye on your emails

💬 Share your experiences
✅ Help future applicants
📅 Deadline: Friday 10th July 2026

[The Larkinite @Larkinite1913]

Very important that we don't upset this country by renaming a park or refusing to play football against them.

Look how much respect they have for our citizens, we wouldn't want to jeopardise that, would we?

[ADHD Ireland @adhdireland]

The HSE are looking for people to join the Health Services Improvement Board!
If you have lived experience with mental health services and live in North Dublin, Louth, Meath, Monaghan, or Cavan, apply now.
Apply by 9am, 26 May 2026: https://t.co/jq7VKElw9N

[Fiona @FionaSmall]

This would be €2,200 a month to rent in Rathmines

[Adam Hunt @RealAdamHunt]

🚨Just published in the British Journal of Psychiatry!🚨

Evolutionary explanations of anxiety rated as 5x more useful for patients and 3x more useful for clinicians than genetic explanations of anxiety!

Our paper is the largest RCT of evolutionary explanations to date!

[Cahair O'Kane @CahairOKane1]

The full four absolutely chaotic minutes at the end of normal time.

Lesson: Never listen to anyone that tells you there’s no point arguing with a ref because they’ve never seen one change their mind

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

$20 billion. That is what Tom Insel spent over 13 years as the head of America’s mental health research, looking for the biology behind depression and schizophrenia. When he quit in 2015, he admitted: “I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery.”

That came from the man who sat at the top of the field. The reason runs deeper than bad incentives. Cancer has a biopsy. Diabetes has a blood sugar test. A heart attack shows up on a scan. Psychiatry has a thick manual called the DSM, a list of symptoms voted on by committees of psychiatrists. Allen Frances, who chaired the previous version of that book, admitted that not a single biological test made the cut for the latest one. After thirty years of brain scans and gene studies, no blood test or scan can prove a mental illness exists. When the latest DSM was being tested, two doctors looking at the same patient agreed on a depression diagnosis at a rate barely better than chance. You cannot cure something you cannot measure.

The drugs sit on the same shaky ground. For three decades the public was told depression is caused by low serotonin, a brain chemical. In 2022, researchers at University College London reviewed every major study on this and found no convincing evidence it is true. The American Psychiatric Association quietly walked back the claim. SSRIs (the most common antidepressants) do raise serotonin in the brain, but nobody knows why some people feel better on them and most do not.

The numbers from the actual trials are worse than the marketing. The biggest depression drug trial ever run, called STAR*D, tested four different drugs in sequence on more than 4,000 patients. The headline number sold to doctors and journalists was that 67% of patients got better. In 2023, a reanalysis using the trial’s original protocol reached a different number. The true one was 35%. After the first drug, only about 30% of patients reached recovery. The pattern got worse from there. By the fourth drug, the chance of the next one working dropped to 13%. And only 3 to 8% were still well a year later.

Yet the prescriptions keep climbing. Global antidepressant sales hit $17.8 billion in 2024. In the US, more than one in nine adults are on one, and among women it is closer to one in seven. After the pandemic, prescriptions for teen girls accelerated 130% faster than the previous trend.

So the honest answer has two parts. The incentives matter, but they are downstream. The real problem is that psychiatry treats made-up categories with drugs nobody fully understands. The man who ran America’s mental health research budget said as much on his way out the door. Nobody has refuted him since.

[Luke 'Ming' Flanagan @lukeming]

Why are people's basic needs dependent on a charity?

[Poblachtach Sóisialach 🇮🇪 @P_Soisialach]

Found on Reddit. Ireland’s Bus Éireann/Expressway map from the late 1990s.

[BUCHANAN: Dublin Time Machine @RobLooseCannon]

Check out this satellite map of Dublin from 1966! Yep that's right,
on 19 February 1966, a KH-7 GAMBIT reconnaissance satellite operated by the CIA passed over Dublin. This magic window on our city just before things went international. You can zoom in to surprising detail. Go fullscreen then use the transparency slider at the bottom right so you can compare now with 66'!

KH-7s primary purpose was Cold War espionage against Soviet and Chinese nuclear and missile installations. This slice of swinging Dublin was used to calibrate. Mad what I find lying around the Dublin Time Machines magic drawers. The photo below is just a screenshot, you've to click the link

https://t.co/WHToxvbkoO

[Gabbar @Gabbar0099]

One of the most widely shared videos worldwide 💔🇵🇸

Israel did this.

[B.M. @ireallyhateyou]

Wow. Everyone should read this 1983 article by Roald Dahl. Every word of it. It's literally the same fucking shit as now, with the same kind of impunity, only now it's even much worse. He called it. He fucking called it and they just ignored him and called him an antisemite.

[James Leonard @JamesLeonard85]

We can now see how 1930’s German society became genocidal. Israel is no better than 1930’s Germany. The big difference is we see it all in 4k, everyday, but no international action is taken for fear of being called antisemitic.

[Steven C. Hayes @StevenCHayes]

I developed this theory with colleagues starting in the 1980s, and it became the scientific foundation for ACT. I want to explain it plainly, because it answers a question most people have never thought to ask: why does language create suffering?

Relational Frame Theory is a scientific account of how human language and thinking work. The core finding is that humans, uniquely among animals, learn to relate anything to anything else in an almost infinite number of ways: this is like that, this is better than that, this causes that, this is the opposite of that. This ability is what gives us science, art, and civilization. It also means we can never fully escape painful experiences by changing our environment, because any situation, any word, any sunset can trigger an entire network of connected meanings that brings pain back.

A dog can learn to avoid a hot stove by touching it once. A human being who has been hurt by someone named Michael can feel anxious meeting a new Michael who has done nothing wrong, simply because the name carries the relational network forward. That's RFT in action.

[Channel 4 Dispatches @C4Dispatches]

‘There was permission to kill 300 people as collateral damage.’

Israeli intelligence whistleblowers expose the ‘non-human’ targeting system in Gaza, where strikes are approved in minutes, as more than 70,000 have been killed in Gaza since October 7th.