Max Pemberton

Doctor and Daily Mail columnist. Spectator and Reader's Digest. Latest book: The Marvellous Adventure of Being Human

[Michael Inzlicht @minzlicht]

Imagine a 19-year-old scrolling TikTok. She watches a creator list five "signs you have undiagnosed anxiety." She recognizes three in herself. By the end of the week, she's describing herself as anxious to her friends. A month later, she's avoiding situations she used to handle fine.

What went wrong?

In a new paper by my PhD student Dasha Sandra, titled "Why mental health awareness can harm: Converging explanations for a societal problem", we argue that well-meaning mental health awareness can backfire, and we identify how. Four separate literatures (concept creep, nocebo effects, prevalence inflation, and illness self-labeling) have been circling the same problem from different angles. We show they converge on three mechanisms:

1.Awareness lowers the threshold for what counts as a disorder.
2. It trains people to scan their inner lives for symptoms and reinterpret normal distress as pathology.
3. Once someone adopts an illness identity, they behave in ways that confirm and deepen it.

The evidence is wide. Learning that loneliness is harmful makes solitude feel worse. Learning that stress is harmful worsens well-being and performance. Awareness videos about fake conditions like "wind turbine syndrome" produce real headaches. Trigger warnings raise anticipatory anxiety without reducing distress.

This does not mean awareness should stop. It means awareness can have unintended consequences, including manufacturing the suffering it tries to prevent. Inoculating people against these mechanisms works, and we already have evidence it does.

Link to paper: https://t.co/ucoGyhEuAj

[Professor Alice Sullivan @ProfAliceS]

Academics: please consider signing the open letter in support of Prof Michael Ben-Gad https://t.co/aJCyo5QMbi

[Omid Djalili @omid9]

This week is the 42nd anniversary of one of the most shameful days in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran when 10 Bahá’í women were hanged in Shiraz simply for their faith. The online photo of the the event, itself a reconstruction by a French photographer, is too horrific to share. Two years ago the #OurStoryIsOne campaign was launched connecting it directly to the #WomanLifeFreedom movement to remind the people that all minorities inside and outside Iran are united against this terror driven by an ideology that thinks so little of women and the sanctity of life. #Iran #IsraeliranWar

[Max Pemberton @MaxPemberton]

@triggerpod A small point but absolutely untrue that the West gave Aboriginal people bacterial infections and before that they didn’t need antibiotics. Laughably inaccurate. They had bacteria before the West turned up! It’s also mainly viruses that wipe out indigenous populations (eg, flu).

[Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1]

A Palestinian man who joined protests against Hamas in Gaza is tortured and murdered by Hamas.

I expect we'll be seeing a lot of pro-Palestinian marchers in London and on university campuses, and plenty of condemnation on the BBC about that, won't we? 🤔
https://t.co/gYoFwnGpcl

[Tracy-Ann Oberman MBE @TracyAnnO]

How and why do @metpoliceuk and @SadiqKhan think that allowing so much jew hate to fester unchecked wouldnt end in acts like this . I feel sick . im steeped in anti jewish hatred of 1936 in Londons East End with my @MOV1936 - whats changed. Do we have ANY allies ? Will this just get worse ?

[Shomrim (London North & East) @Shomrim]

🚨 #HateCrime #Antisemitism

👧 14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.

�� Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.

💔 This attack on innocent young Jewish girls has shocked the community.

🚑 1 girl was badly injured and rushed to @NHSUK Royal London Hospital by @Hatzola Ambulance volunteers.

🛡️@Shomrim are supporting the victims & their families whilst @MPSHackney investigate this abhorrent HateCrime.

📞 CAD 9166 25/11/24.

[Dominic Cavendish @domcavendish]

Still the most important Shakespeare production around. It forces us to look at homegrown mob-like anti-Semitism.

[Calev Ben-Dor @Fathom_Editor]

This is where we are at in the UK. The July 2024 riot by Romanians in Harehills, Leeds - a bus was set alight, Police cars were bricked, etc - has been redefined by the Police as "a Romanian vigil", while a local woman - Nicky Wilcox had lived there for 16 years, she was very active in her community and cared about it - was arrested for causing the rioters "distress" because she came out in her slippers and told the rioters to "go home" and stop causing damage to the area. I'm not sure 'two tier' is an adequate descriptor for whatever tf that is. I do know that if you want to lose a country this is the way to go about it.

[Max Pemberton @MaxPemberton]

@SalfordMH Hi Michael, yes I’ve been following it very closely actually. I, and many others in mental health, are worried about the over diagnosis and medicalisation of normal feelings. I very concerned about diagnosis creep and the impact this has on the poorest and disenfranchised

[Max Pemberton @MaxPemberton]

@liammb1984 If you’re interested in the disease model debate do let me know and I can recommend some academic reading

[Max Pemberton @MaxPemberton]

@liammb1984 ..as I believe it’s disempowering and unhelpful in recovery. The idea also comes from private medicine/US system and pharma. Different doctors have different views about this and I think this is fine.

[Max Pemberton @MaxPemberton]

@liammb1984 @Dr_BellaR Hi Liam, I saw you messaged me. It came across as quite unpleasant which I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be. You might not like the publication I write for, but that doesn’t mean I’ve sold my soul to the devil. I don’t believe in the disease model of addiction…

[Max Pemberton @MaxPemberton]

@KeepGoinEoin And Max is my ‘real’ name - it’s my middle name. And Pemberton is my surname.
Also I’m not a Tory. I did vote for Brexit.

[Max Pemberton @MaxPemberton]

@KeepGoinEoin Hi Eoin Yes I do not believe in the disease model of addiction and believe it is disempowering and unhelpful in terms of recovery. It comes from private medicine and pharma. Far from the choice model being depressing, many find it liberating and empowering.

[The NHS Whistleblower @ItsnotrightUK]

Unemployed doctors and we are still training PAs as fake doctors

[Azat @AzatAlsalim]

2 years ago, 16 years old Nils Shakarami was sexually assaulted and killed by lslamic regime in Iran.
Never forget that those in the west shedding tears for Hezbollah terrorists stayed silent when brave Iranian girls were killed for protesting for human and women’s rights.

[Helen Lewis @helenlewis]

If my country had a rule that all women have to be swathed in a black veil to even go outside, I probably wouldn’t have gone with this visual.

[Charlotte Gill @CharlotteCGill]

Why does the NHS have a CEO and leadership team when they are treated as immaterial to its performance?

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

Vaping is the single best way to stop people smoking. All the polling evidence is that far too many smokers don’t actually know how much safer it is. This kind of language is not just stupid, but lethal.