Mental health

When words fail: Meet the Bristol group nurturing male musicians’ mental health

The Seed Sessions project combines counselling and music mentoring to help young men express themselves. We heard from its founder, one of the participants and a counsellor working with the group about the power of music as a therapeutic tool.

How talking clubs are getting Bristol blokes to open up and be vulnerable

I joined Talk Club and learned I can’t regulate my emotions. Then I got schooled by a therapist on toxic masculinity and dangerous role models. But how are you doing, out of 10?

Lost opportunities: are inquests failing to prevent future deaths?

Jess Durdy’s death followed clear failings by those charged with caring for her, her mother believes, but a coroner didn’t see it that way. Bereaved families, campaigners and lawyers say an opaque, inconsistent system needs change.

‘I was finally diagnosed with ADHD at 25. Would I have got this sooner if I was a boy?’

After years of being misdiagnosed and incorrectly medicated, Dolores has finally got an ADHD diagnosis. But how different could her childhood have been if she’d been diagnosed sooner, like boys often are?

‘I needed therapy after I gave birth, but now I’m going it alone’

Steph experienced a mental health crisis while having her second child. Therapy saved her, but when it ended she felt loss.

Bristol mental health patients are still being sent miles from home. How are local services trying to eliminate the damaging practice?

The city’s mental health trust is failing to stop out of area placements, but it's an uphill battle amid high demand for treatment, limited funding and staffing shortages.

Autistic woman wins damages after police put ‘false and misleading’ information on her record

In the latest in a series of payouts from the force, Avon and Somerset Police were found to hold records incorrectly describing her as having 'split personality, violent when not medicated'.

Bristol student who took her own life had mental health disorder ignored, judge rules

Natasha Abrahart’s parents argued that her university failed to make allowances for her social anxiety disorder.

‘Simply inconceivable’ university didn’t owe duty of care to student with severe social anxiety, court told

Natasha Abrahart, a physics undergraduate at the University of Bristol, took her own life the day before she was due to give a presentation.

Laughing it off: how comedy can aid recovery from trauma

A new free art therapy course aims to help people work through mental ill-health through the medium of standup.

Revealed: Bristol Mind loses core mental health service it has run for 25 years

Whistleblowers from the advocacy service, which has now transferred to new providers, allege mismanagement by the board of trustees.

Young woman took her own life at psychiatric hospital following series of failings by NHS Trust, inquest concludes

Zoe Wilson, 22, was not transferred to an acute ward despite telling staff she was hearing voices that told her to kill herself