Rory Lamont: A shaman cured my depression when I lost rugby career
However, afterwards, at a retreat in the Costa Rican rainforest, he found that his depression had gone. The illness had followed him since the enforced end of his rugby career — a career marred by injury, skull fractures and multiple concussions.
'The suicidal ideation, the repetitive thinking, the ruminating, the constantly being stuck in the past …it just lifted,' he said.
It was why, this week, Lamont was speaking not to Bwiti shamans but to academics at an event at Manchester University investigating whether psychedelics could play a role in helping sportspeople recover from trauma.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Pupils train as 'wellbeing prefects' to provide support for peers
A school in west Belfast is going a step further to help its pupils deal with any mental health issues by training student mentors to talk to their Dominic's Grammar on the Falls Road also runs classes to help pupils with their wellbeing and former Erin took steps to protect her mental health during her A-Levels, such as deleting TikTok off her phone "to quiet down some of that noise".She said her school promises to help if pupils share any issues or problems they are going through."Not just telling us that everything's going to be ok, but actually showing us a way forward," she said. Caitlin, who is also in sixth form with Erin, is a student mentor."Sometimes people feel quite alone," she said."It can be quite difficult for pupils to actually make the first move to go to talk to a teacher or a student mentor like me and Erin."But she said the school had focused on "putting people in a position to take control of their mental health."The girls wear badges on their uniform which identify them as "wellbeing prefects"."If a pupil in our year group or a younger year group wants to speak to us we did receive training in how to go about helping that pupil," Caitlin said."So being able to be a younger friendly face, to make pupils feel just comfortable in being able to speak to a student."The student mentors can then consult an appropriate member of staff so that the "double promise" kicks in. The student mentors are not expected to "solve" anything but do provide guidance, according to teacher Conrad Thomas."Our students are encouraged that if they have an issue and they don't feel comfortable with talking to me about it or one of the other members of staff, we have this team that are very approachable," he said."We're not asking that the pupils solve the problems or provide a solution but they can provide guidance and a listening ear."If there is a more serious issue they will discuss it with staff and we can take it from there."The school also provides advice to parents on talking about mental health with their children. Children 'must think about mental health' St Dominic's is one of many schools taking part in the Education Authority's (EA) Being Well Doing Well programme, which aims to help pupils with their mental health and Primary is also taking part in the programme and its principal Emma Quinn told BBC News NI that it was important to get children to think about their mental health from a young age."I think sometimes families and adults and carers maybe find it very difficult," she said."They think, 'if I talk about these feelings it'll encourage my child to feel a certain way'."It won't, we're all human and noticing that you're feeling angry, you're feeling frustrated, it's a part of life and being very open and honest from the early stages, particularly nursery and even before, is absolutely crucial."
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Multiple sclerosis: 'I was told I was far too young to have MS'
Amy Thompson was only 21 years old and living her dream life working in Paris as an intern for a fashion consultancy when everything "turned upside down".She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) despite being told she was "far too young" to become one of the estimated 150,000 people in the UK living with the incurable years later and Amy, a French and business management graduate from Worsley in Salford, Greater Manchester, is determined to raise awareness of MS, which affects the brain and spinal 28-year-old, who regularly posts updates on her Instagram account But You Don't Look Ill, spoke to BBC North West Tonight as part of a six-part series about invisible disabilities and and in her own words, she shares her story. I don't look ill!I started to experience numbness in my left leg, and I ignored it for a few I went to the doctor, and he kind of dismissed it a little bit.I asked him: "Do you think it could be MS? I'm really concerned as I've now got this other symptom" and he replied: "No - you're far too young."But things progressively got I went to see a neurologist and straight away she said "you've got MS". My main symptom is fatigue - just feeling absolutely exhausted all the time, no matter how much you are other symptoms like eye problems including optic neuritis (inflammation of the optic nerve), some numbness, and unusual sensations in difficult knowing there's no I told people about my diagnosis they said things like:But you don't look illYou look so wellYou're too young to have MSI don't understand - I thought you'd be in a wheelchair?And so I was inspired to start an Instagram account called But You Don't Look I was first diagnosed I could not find anyone that was young that was talking about having I decided to just try and be that person for someone sharing my story I realised there were so many other young people in the same boat that were just looking to find others that they could relate I decided to start looking into the process of setting up a the end of 2022 we got the official registration for MS now provide lots of different services to people and we focus on people aged 18 to 35 who are living with MS. What has been amazing through this whole thing is that I've just found such an amazing purpose that I really didn't I first got diagnosed, I was so terrified about it changing my life in a lot of negative have been a lot of bumps along the road and it hasn't always been easy, but so many amazing things have come from is quite cheesy, but it probably is a bit of a superpower. And I am really grateful for it because I now have such a passion for what I story features in a special six-part BBC North West Tonight series about invisible disabilities and conditions. You can watch it on BBC One in the Northwest of England and the Isle of Man from 18:30 BST on Friday 4 July. It will also be available on the BBC iPlayer. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
After an ADHD and autism diagnosis, I now find the world more confusing. How do I make sense of this?
I received an ADHD and autism diagnosis at the end of 2024 after a period of stress and depression. I thought that my profession was to blame (I work, however unfittingly, in finance) but have come to appreciate that I am sensitive to many kinds of environmental stressors. It has been difficult to navigate the world since the diagnosis. At first I was ecstatic, finding many of my life's complexities could be easily answered by a natural neurodivergence, but have since found the world to be even more confusing, especially where relationship dynamics are concerned. Some people I have told about my diagnosis have started to baby me slightly. Whereas before the diagnosis I might have struggled along in certain social situations, feeling myself a little bit slow off the mark, or bored, now I am starting to notice a pronounced sense of my 'otherness', which is quite scary. Do you have any advice on how to keep things in proportion after receiving news that can force you to look at life through a completely different lens? Eleanor says: What do we learn when we get a diagnosis? You say to a doctor I have experiences A through F. They say, ah, it sounds like you have condition X. And you say interesting, what's condition X? And they say well one important hallmark of condition X is where you have experiences A through F. A diagnosis can be so helpful and so emancipatory, but it doesn't necessarily leave us knowing what causes or explains our experiences. In lots of mental health diagnoses, we still don't know those things. Nor do we learn that we experience the world a particular way – we already knew that. Much of the force of the discovery is learning that the experience isn't universal, that medicine has needed to categorise them so they can be helped, explained, accommodated, and so on. Many of us feel the duality you describe after a diagnosis: understood, since we can finally name the patterns, but isolated, since we learn those names at the cost of learning they're unusual. It feels like good news and bad news at the same time. You mentioned the pronounced sense of otherness. Like being on the outside of a fishbowl looking in. One response is to resist that: othered from whom? Lots of people learn as adults that they're autistic, or have ADHD, or both; lots of people find new ways of understanding their mental experiences. As a result, there's a lot more understanding of these things than maybe ever before. That's not to say you have to take up residence in communities of the literally like-minded. It's just to say that when you meet new people, it may be that their experiences are not so different to yours. We never know what's happening in other people's minds; if it's otherness we're worried about we may be in the company of more others than we realise. Another response, though, is to allow that feeling of otherness. Similarity is helpful for connection, it's true. To that extent, it's frightening to learn that we're not so similar to others. That will make some things harder. But similarity isn't the only way to connect. You can feel reverence, awe, cherishment, for things that aren't much like you at all. Indeed, being in front of things unlike you can make you more aware of and reverent towards the contrasts in yourself. We feel this all the time with the natural world: lots of people feel deep love for, feel most themselves around, the ocean, the night sky, an animal. It's not because they seem the same as us. All that is to say: it can be precisely by standing in contrast, and not similarity, that you can simultaneously appreciate what is true of others and what is true of you. There's a kind of connection available here based on a true vision of each other, not just on being similar.
