Gillingham woman to hold charity event for men's mental health
"Losing someone when we could have made a change, and we could have helped them, and the society that we live in could've helped, has had a big, big impact on me," she told Stephen Brown on BBC Radio Kent's evening show.Ms Davies said that she first had the idea to host an event when having a drink at the Tudor Rose."I was having a cider and I looked at my friend Joanne and said, 'I want to do a charity event'. She [Joanna] said, 'do it'."From there, Ms Davies contacted the pub landlady, who agreed to let her use the space.Alongside North Kent Mind, the event will also raise funds for the suicide prevention initiative Baton of Hope, MenTalk Health Sittingbourne and a mental health support group for men in Swale.According to a research briefing presented to the House of Commons earlier this year, men are three times more likely to take their own lives than women.For Ms Davies, the statistics made raising awareness more important than ever.She added: "Losing anybody in your lifetime is hard, but losing people because of the things that they couldn't talk about [is especially so]."
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The Guardian
8 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Times change, so do people. So why does the British Museum still think it's ok to display human remains?
I went to the British Museum with my youngest adult daughter and her partner recently – and we were all shocked. I'd been to the institution many times when I lived in London until two decades ago, and let's just say there had never been any shortage of imperial plunder to shock and anger me. But the notable thing about our shared reactions when visiting on a recent late spring day was that the collection that so disconcerted us had not greatly bothered me on my last visit in 2003. Times change. So, too, do people. Human sensitivities evolve with age and self-education and understanding. Unlike some institutions, however, which seem to remain largely intransigent. What shook us all on the recent visit were the collections relating to (in the BM's own words) 'Egyptian death and the afterlife: mummies''. Yep, the mummies. Dead people shrouded in cloth, some in open sarcophagi. The skulls, mandible, ribs and other body parts belonging to ancient people of the Nile valley were also on display. The mummy rooms, as they are known, were certainly popular. Perhaps the busiest rooms we visited, to judge from the hordes of mums, dads, kids and schoolchildren scrambling to get up close and personal to the glass cabinets for a better look – and photograph each other with – were those that contained the dead. 'Mum – get a picture of my head right next to his.'' The British Museum is among many institutions globally that still display human remains, although advances in museological ethics and approaches to how collections of the dead are curated (not to mention repatriation policies) mean the number is dwindling. It is clearly cognisant of the now rapid evolution in attitudes on institutional holdings and display of the dead as evidenced by its website which stresses 'the Museum ensures that the human remains held in its care are always treated and displayed with respect and dignity''. The mummy rooms, with all those people struggling for selfies with dead people, did not entirely exude respect and dignity. Call me old-fashioned. No wait – call me progressive. Actually, no – just call me a regular human with more than a passing unease at the dead ending up anonymised into collection items and how they might have felt about this when they were alive. I've written extensively about collections of human remains in Australian and overseas institutions, not least at the South Australian Museum where body parts belonging to some 4,600 individuals (most of them Aboriginal people) have at times been stored – though not recently displayed. As a kid my dad would take me to the Melbourne Museum. I remember the mummies on display there. I was ghoulishly fascinated – though not shocked. Today I find displays of dead people shocking – and not at all fascinating – even if museums still advance the purported scientific benefits of holding such specimens. As specious as that argument is (advanced, for example, in the explanatory note about the decay of the teeth on skulls from the Nile valley, on display in the BM mummy rooms) it remains to be seen how it is served by the public display of such body parts. Like the SA Museum, which no longer displays remains and has gone to lengths to repatriate and re-bury the dead from its collections where provenance can be determined, a growing number of institutions globally are choosing to no longer display human remains at all. In the UK, an all-party parliamentary group has proposed that the public display of human remains, including the mummies in the BM, be stopped. The chair of the parliamentary group Bell Ribeiro-Addy made the argument succinctly: 'I would like people to imagine taking the remains of our monarchs to another country and putting them on display. Even if they kept them in their coffins, would we think that was acceptable?'' Good question. Many remains (perhaps thousands) belonging to Australian Indigenous people are still in overseas collecting institutions. Anthropologists from across the globe sought them in the 19th century to advance their perverse racially scientific theories (not least the pseudo-science of phrenology, which fallaciously proposed that racial characteristics, intelligence and personality might be determined by skull shape). Some were the victims of colonial massacres. Others were stolen from morgues and hospitals. Even one of the world's most confronting public collections of human remains, the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, is facing a long-overdue reckoning about the future of its gruesome collection (including at one time the skull of an Australian soldier to which I brought global attention in 2017). Times have changed, even if some globally revered organisations haven't. It's beyond time for public collecting institutions, which claim to operate ethically and respectfully, to remove all human remains, including Egyptian mummies, from public display and, where possible, to repatriate them. It is never OK to have them on public view as objects of entertainment. Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Women can now claim almost £1,000 for 'gifting' their eggs and demand has never been greater. But for many the procedure is painful, has been linked to serious health conditions and leaves a lifetime of troubling questions
Leena Khan was a 21-year-old university student when she saw the Facebook advert seeking egg donors: giving would be a selfless act, the fertility clinic said. 'I've always gone out of my way to help people,' says Leena – and with £750 expenses offered, the money would help fund her studies. As far as ideas go, she says, 'it didn't seem crazy'. Within months of donating, however, Leena started suffering painful, heavy periods.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
I forced my reluctant husband to take my placenta home and blend it into a smoothie - I was out of hospital the next day
When I saw DJ Calvin Harris ' picture of his partner and Radio 1 host Vick Hope 's placenta pills on Instagram it brought back so many memories. I was 32 and pregnant with my first baby when I heard about the concept of consuming your placenta after the birth. I was taking birth classes with a midwife who was very into the natural birth movement, and she told me about a theory that eating the placenta could prevent post-partum depression, ease bleeding after delivery and improve your iron levels. Although there is no scientific evidence that eating the placenta after childbirth is beneficial, many animals including cattle, goats, horses and dogs, do it as it's supposedly an amazing source of nutrition. I was intrigued by the idea and figured that anything that might make me feel better or make the early days of life with a newborn easier was worth a try. I already knew the placenta - a temporary body organ that develops during pregnancy - had lots of beneficial ingredients in it as I once got talked into buying a £400 moisturiser which contained sheep's placenta. The midwife leading my birth classes introduced me to a woman who lived nearby who was a doula and birth coach, and she also offered a placenta encapsulation service. For £150 she would take my placenta, dehydrate it and turn it into little vitamin-like pills and a tincture which I could add to water. I'd also heard of people taking their fresh placenta and putting it into smoothies to drink after the birth. Although I'd planned a natural home birth, my waters broke and there was meconium in them, and when I went to the hospital they told me I'd have to stay there and be induced. While we were waiting for the induction, my partner Andy and I went for a walk and I suddenly remembered my plans for my placenta. We popped into a Pound Shop and bought a cool bag to take the placenta home with us. The birth was chaotic and not at all how I'd imagined, but I remember Andy pointing to my placenta and saying to the doctor: 'We need to take that'. When he got home, he stuffed it in the fridge. The days after my birth were really hard and I felt terrible, so while I was still recovering on the ward, I asked Andy to go home and rip off a bit of my placenta and put it into a smoothie for me. I'd read that it was full of stem cells which can help a woman's body to replenish itself after birth. Andy was sceptical, but I felt so rotten I forced him to do it: 'You have to do it for me and the baby'. He later told me that he got the placenta out of a tupperware in the fridge and tried to cut it with a knife but it was too thick, so he just ripped some off with his hands. He put it in the Nutribullet with a load of frozen berries. I drank it in the hospital. It didn't really taste that different from a normal smoothie. I don't know if it was just a placebo effect or if it really helped, but not long afterwards, I stopped bleeding and was allowed to go home the next day. The early days of having my daughter Wren were a blur, but I did take the placenta pills - religiously at first and then less as time went on. I remember there were some moments where I had a bit of a wobble about whether to take them or not, as I'd had drugs to induce labour and did wonder if they'd gone into the placenta. I also had a lot of problems with breastfeeding and there are mixed reports about whether consuming the placenta increases or decreases your milk supply. My family weren't that surprised when they heard I was taking pills made of my placenta - they already think I'm quite hippy and woo woo. But I remember my mother-in-law was shocked and a bit mortified when we told her. I think in other cultures it's a normal practice and people have been doing it for decades. My French friend Alexia told me that her mother made granules of her placenta nearly 40 years ago. Alexia's mother gave them to her when she was a child and told her if she ever felt unwell, she could take them to get better. When I had my daughter Alba two years later, in 2018, I would have done it again, but she was born at 36 weeks so we weren't organised enough. She was born in the bath at home and I do remember looking at my placenta and marvelling at what my body had created. You've grown a baby and a whole new organ. I can see why in many cultures the placenta is treated as a sacred thing. The other day I was having a clear out and I found the little brown bottle of tincture which we'd had made all those years ago. It's supposed to be great for rebalancing hormones, so I've just started taking it again to help with perimenopausal symptoms. I have 10 drops in a glass of water every morning. It's too soon to really feel an effect, but it feels positive to try something. I hope it works for Vick and helps her recover from the birth. There's nothing to be squeamish about. I think anything that makes people feel good is worth the effort.
