Latest news with #consultant
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Trump's Anti-Harvard Campaign Fuels Interest in UK Universities
For the past 15 years, Don McMillan, a college-admissions consultant, has worked just down the road from Harvard University, one of the most prestigious schools targeted by his clients from the US and around the globe. This month, he expanded his business 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) and an ocean away to tap into what's becoming a rapidly growing line of work: Advising the students who are souring on America and looking to go to college in the UK instead.
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Rethinking The Meeting In The Age Of AI Assistants
AI bots can now "attend" online and streaming meetings on a user's behalf. For at least 30 years of my career as a tech researcher and consultant, if there was a meeting with a client or meetings in Washington, D.C., where I often worked on government projects, I would have to attend in person. In most cases, it meant getting on a plane to attend those meetings. Over that time, I flew close to four million miles. However, all that travel took its toll on me and impacted my health and, to some degree, my well-being. The first level of relief for me in this area came when we started to get specialty tele-video rooms. HP was one of the first to create these. These rooms cost as much as $100,000 each, so only big companies could afford them. However, I was introduced to them through my work with HP at the time and was able to do many televideo calls with HP staff in various parts of the world. Today, video calls are normal thanks to Zoom and similar video services, which make it possible to attend meetings around the world with ease. The good news is that we can participate in these person-to-person video calls at will, but this also means we have to be present for them to work. However, there are many times when it might be important to have the information from these calls without the need to attend them live. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the nature of meetings is being transformed quietly. AI-powered agents or bots now join these sessions not to speak but to listen, transcribe, and summarize. They never interrupt, yet their presence reshapes the social dynamics in ways we're only beginning to understand. At their best, meeting bots offer real benefits. They free participants from note-taking, enabling deeper focus and richer conversations. In hybrid and remote environments, they serve as silent collaborators, helping ensure that everyone—especially quieter voices—gets heard and remembered. While I have used various AI meeting bots, the one I lean on the most is When it first came out, it recorded the audio and translated it into text. However, that meant I would have to read the entire recorded text to get the gist of the meeting. The newer version of and other meeting bots now also summarize the meeting and give you the main points or highlights of the conversation. This updated version has allowed me to attend many meetings via a bot and not have to be present at the meeting. I get an AI summary of the meeting to stay abreast of what was discussed and get the key data shared in the meeting or presentation. While in-person meetings are still needed occasionally, I now only travel to them for speaking engagements when absolutely necessary. I still need to attend Zoom calls, especially when I am to be involved in the discussion. However, I am finding sending my AI bot to meetings highly attractive in many scenarios, especially ones I attend in listening mode only, and it has simplified my business life significantly. However, some issues with AI bots are coming into focus as more people use them to attend meetings. One interesting question is what the etiquette is for using AI bots in a meeting. Historically, meetings thrived on a shared social contract rooted in trust, attention, and mutual understanding. The introduction of bots disrupts that equilibrium. That's why some organizations, like the EU Council, have moved to exclude AI assistants from sensitive internal discussions. Whether that's overly cautious or forward-thinking depends on the context. The real issue isn't whether bots belong in meetings. We haven't yet defined the norms for how to use them responsibly. I have been in meetings recently where the host banned AI bots up front. But as AI meeting bots continue to weave themselves into the fabric of work, companies will need to intentionally craft new codes of conduct—ones that balance productivity with privacy and automation with authenticity. On the other hand, I expect to see AI bots attend many more meetings in the future. Even with these challenges, it gives us a new alternative way to attend a meeting, if only with our personal AI bot, and still get the information needed from a presentation, lecture, or discussion.
ABC News
7 days ago
- Health
- ABC News
Chronically stressed? These small changes can help
Sana Qadar: I thought I knew what it meant to feel stressed, or overworked, or underslept, or close to burnout. I mean, I feel versions of these often enough. But then Dr Rangan Chatterjee told me a story that's almost unbelievable. It's the story of his father. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: So my dad grew up in India. He came to the UK in 1962. And dad basically worked to give his family in the UK, so my mum, me and my brother, and his family back home, a better life. But the way dad worked, looking back now was mind-blowing, honestly. Like, because for 30 years, my dad only slept three nights a week. Sana Qadar: Did you catch that? Three nights a week. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: So he was a consultant physician at Manchester Royal Infirmary. And I can remember this so clearly. Dad would do his day job in the middle of Manchester. So we lived in a suburb of Manchester. So he'd drive home, maybe take him 40 minutes or so. And he'd come in about 6, 6.15pm. Mum would have dinner ready for him. He'd go to the kitchen, he'd have dinner. He'd go upstairs and shave. And then at 7pm, he'd leave the house to do GP house calls all night. And he'd arrive back again at 7am. When he got in at 7am, he'd have breakfast in the kitchen. He'd go upstairs and shave again. And then he'd drive 45 minutes in traffic back to Manchester to do his day job. So for 30 years, dad was doing both of these jobs, and he only slept three nights a week. And I didn't know this at the time. And there was a lot of stress at home. And of course, there's, you know, he was exhausted all the time. Sana Qadar: At the age of 58, all of that chronic stress and sleep deprivation finally caught up with Rangan's father. First, he was diagnosed with lupus, which is an autoimmune disease where the immune system starts attacking healthy tissues and organs. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: And basically he had to medically retire. His kidneys completely failed. He lost the sight in one of his eyes. And then he was literally chained to a dialysis machine three times a week for 15 years. And so what's really interesting for me is, you know, reflecting back now, although my dad's case might seem quite extreme, I have seen many iterations of that in my practice for years. People think they can keep pushing, pushing for more, better job, a bit more money, another promotion, a nicer holiday, whatever it might be. But yeah, the thing is, that quest for more is driving so many people to stress themselves out in the belief that at some point in the future, everything's going to be okay and I can chill and relax. But I've seen time and time again, people come in wishing they'd stopped earlier. Sana Qadar: Dr Rangan Chatterjee is a GP with more than 20 years experience. And his focus and his passion has long been lifestyle medicine. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: In fact, 80 to 90% of what we see as medical doctors today is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. Sana Qadar: But you might recognize him from his mega popular podcast, Feel Better, Live More, where he delves into the science of lifestyle medicine and wellbeing. And in his experience, one of the biggest lifestyle factors impacting people's health is chronic stress. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: The 53 year old executive who kept pushing and working every weekend and coming back late until he gets the heart attack. The 46 year old mother who never does anything for herself, everything is for her partner, her children, her elderly parents. I've seen this so many times. And for me, it's always trying to get to the root cause. And I would say for so many people, chronic stress is at the root of many of their short term symptoms and their long term health problems. Sana Qadar: So today on All In The Mind, we are focusing on chronic stress, what it's doing to our brains and bodies, everything from our decision making abilities to our libidos. And we're also finding out the signs and red flags to look out for that tell you your stress levels are unhealthily high. We'll also find out what you can do about it. This is All In The Mind. I'm Sana Qadar. Sana Qadar: Just going back to when you were first talking about your dad's story and how he was working for 30 years while you were growing up. I just wondered, like, whether you or your family did anyone think that his pace of work was nuts? Or was it kind of just normalized, the fact that he was only sleeping three days a week? Dr Rangan Chatterjee: I think as a kid, that's just your normal. You're just like, you're used to dad not being around. Oh, dad's working tonight. Dad's working this Sunday, or whatever it might be. So on a personal level, me and my brother, I'm not sure we were aware. I think it was normalized for us. I do remember mum often saying, why are you doing this? You don't need to work on Christmas Day. You don't need to work on Boxing Day to gain even more money to send home. Why don't you just stay? So I don't want to speak about my parents' marriage in the sense that I don't know what went on. But I certainly think as kids, we didn't really see the full impacts of it. I think for us, it was normalized. Sana Qadar: It's such an immigrant thing for especially that generation to want to work so hard and send quite a lot back home to help sisters and brothers. It's a familiar story in a way. Not that anyone in my family was only sleeping three nights a week, but the other details of it are similar. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Yeah, but that's why I feel as I've got older, I've just become, I'm pretty non-judgmental these days. I think I used to be. I just think more and more, none of us know what's going on in someone else's life. I think once you really get that, you just become a lot less judgmental and more compassionate to the world around you. Sana Qadar: Now, you would think watching his father's punishing schedule, the chronic stress, the lack of sleep would put Rangan off a career in medicine. But like I said, he followed in his footsteps and also became a doctor. But early on in his medical training, Rangan started to feel like something pretty important was missing from the medical system. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Yeah, I think when I qualified from Edinburgh Medical School back in 2001, I thought that I'd been taught all the tools that I needed to go out there into the world and help my patients. So when you qualify, you start off in hospitals and I did that for quite a few years. And I think there was a frustration early on in my career that what I'd been taught to do was suppress symptoms often with medications. And that was really front of mind for me when I did move into general practice because I thought a lot of these patients who are coming in, we're not really getting to the root cause of their problems. In fact, 80 to 90% of what we see as medical doctors today is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. Yet not only do we not get trained in how our lifestyle specifically affects different aspects of our health, we're not really taught how we actually put that into practice. So our default as medical doctors often ends up being prescribing pharmaceutical medications for symptoms that are driven by our lifestyle. And for me, that was very unsatisfactory. And I tell you, Sana, one really seminal day for me was when I finished a long day in NHS general practice where I'd probably seen about 50 patients. And I was tired. It was the end of the day. And I looked at my patient list on my computer screen and I asked myself, Rangan, how many patients have you really helped today? Like honestly. And hand on heart, I thought, well, I think I probably helped about 20% of people. The other 80%, sure, I was professional. I listened to them. I might have sent them for a test or given them a medication to help hide a symptom. But I thought, they're going to be back. I didn't really help them get to the root cause of their problem. So that day, I realized that actually I can't do this for the next 40 years of my career. There must be another way. And for me, that way is what we call lifestyle medicine. Sana Qadar: Lifestyle medicine is a relatively new field. It's a branch of evidence-based health care that focuses on trying to prevent diseases before they start, rather than just treating them once they set in. Chronic diseases like Alzheimer's, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and stroke. It's a response to the fact that in the modern post-industrial era, there's been a shift in the kinds of diseases that most affect people in high-income countries. That's a shift from mostly infectious diseases to mostly chronic diseases, which often have lifestyle or environmental drivers. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: I want to be really clear, Sanaa. I'm not blaming people here. I understand that modern life is challenging, and a lot of people are not able to eat as well as they want to. Their jobs mean that they're sedentary for a lot more time than they might choose to be. They're chronically stressed, chronically sleep deprived. I'm not saying that people are doing this to themselves. I'm saying I don't think there's enough awareness that our lifestyle, and if you can personalize and change specific parts, what I call the four key pillars of health, food, movement, sleep, and relaxation, you can have profound impact on all aspects of our health, short-term and long-term. Sana Qadar: And so that brings us back to chronic stress, one of the main lifestyle factors wrecking havoc on people's health. Because stress sets off a whole bunch of responses in the body. It makes your blood pressure rise Dr Rangan Chatterjee: so that more oxygen can be delivered around your body. Sana Qadar: It makes your blood sugar levels rise Dr Rangan Chatterjee: so more glucose can get to your brain. Sana Qadar: It also throws your amygdala, Dr Rangan Chatterjee: which is the emotional reactive part of your brain, into high alert so you're hyper-vigilant. Sana Qadar: And while we evolved this stress response to keep us safe, the problem is our brains can't fully tell the difference between the threat posed by a lion or tiger who wants to eat us versus our email inbox. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Yeah, you know, the email inbox, the children we have to rush to pick up after work, the elderly parents we're having to look after when we don't even have our tribe community around us anymore, the three social media channels we're trying to keep up to date with, the constant bombardment of negativity on the news, whatever it might be, our bodies are responding in very similar ways, whether it is a real physical threat or the emotional, psychological stresses that are coming at us in the 21st century. So just to tie the loop up, blood pressure going up in the short term when you're running away from a tiger or a lion, great. Blood pressure going up temporarily while you're doing a 30-minute spinning workout at the gym, great, no problem. But blood pressure going up day in, day out to the state of your life, well, that's what's going to increase your risk of a heart attack or stroke. And you talk about the brain, the amygdala, the emotional part of our brain. If you think there's a wild predator there, the emotional part of your brain becomes hyper-vigilant. Why is that important? So you can hear everything, a pinprick, or there's a rustling in the bush. If that's happening to the state of your daily life, well, that's what we call anxiety. So once you understand the stress response, you actually understand stress is there for a reason, but we're not designed to be stressed all the time. Sana Qadar: I want to dive deeper into how chronic stress affects our brains, specifically our mood and cognition, because you might have noticed, I definitely have, that when you're super stressed, you are probably more moody and snappy and you struggle to make decisions. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Chronic stress has a huge impact on the way we make decisions. Okay, so think about your brain in two parts. It's a slight oversimplification, but I think it really helps us understand this concept. One part is the front of your brain, the prefrontal cortex at the front of your brain, where you make your logical and rational decisions. And then further back, the emotional part of your brain, where the stress response comes from when you think you're in danger. Ideally, you want both of those parts online and in balance. But when you're chronically stressed, you switch off the prefrontal cortex, that part of your brain that makes logical and rational decisions, it goes offline. So you're left with the emotional brain ruling the roost, which is one of the reasons why we struggle when we're chronically stressed to make good decisions. In fact, many of us know that feeling at the end of the day when we've not taken a lunch break, we're a bit frazzled, and an email comes in and we need to make a decision, and we can't. We don't have the clarity. And that's because our logical brain has gone offline. And that's why stress reduction practices, you know, a bit of breath work, a 10-minute walk at lunchtime, one minute of jumping jacks or moving your body, whatever it might be, just helps to break the cycle, lower the stress response, and then that front part of your brain where you make those logical decisions from starts to come back online. Sana Qadar: And this also explains why when you're stressed, you can be more emotionally dysregulated. And this is a real problem long term, because chronic stress doesn't just change the functioning of the brain, it can change the structure. For example, there is a well-established link between chronic stress and depression, and we also know that chronic stress can shrink the hippocampus, a part of the brain that's critical for learning and memory. I could go on, but I'll stop there because I think you get the point. Chronic stress is bad for many different reasons. But just two other points I do want to briefly make is that, one, there is plenty of research finding that people from poorer backgrounds often experience higher levels of chronic stress because of the precariousness of their lives. That puts them at a higher risk of being impacted by these kinds of changes in the brain. Second, there's also growing research in Australia, the UK, and the US suggesting Gen Z are the most stressed generation, thanks to a combination of factors, including the COVID pandemic, financial insecurity, and the rising cost of living, and the impact of social media and technology. Sana Qadar: Okay, so I want to ask, when should a person start to be worried about the amount of stress they're feeling? Like, when can you know, what are the signs to look out for that you've been chronically stressed for too long? Dr Rangan Chatterjee: I mean, it's highly individual for all of us. And the problem is that the more you get used to chronic stress, the harder it is to tune into your own body and figure out that, oh my God, I need a break. You know, this is going on for too long. One of the big factors is also that these boundaries between work and home have been decimated with technology. Right? So 25 years ago, there were natural endpoints to the working week. You know, when you left the office, you were kind of done. So, you know, how can people know? Well, one good sign is when their mind is racing at night and they can't switch off to fall asleep. That's a good sign that your mind has been overactive and you've not given yourself a chance to sort of wind down. Sana Qadar: Another sign, Rangan says, is stomach problems. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: We know from a bit of research done a few years ago that in the UK at least, and I've no reason to believe that it will be different in Australia, 84% of UK adults have some form of gastrointestinal symptom each year, which is incredible. The number one cause is not, in my view, diet, it's stress. Sana Qadar: The connection between our stress levels and gut health has been well studied and the relationship seems to go both ways. Our gut can influence our mood and stress levels, as well as our stress levels influencing our gut. It's an idea that was popularized in a big way in a book called Gut by Julia Enders back in 2014. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Think about it. If you think there's a predator about to attack and you have to keep yourself safe, your body will switch off functions that are not essential to your survival. You do not need to be able to digest food efficiently if your body thinks it's in danger, which is also why some of the time we're trying to eat our healthy whole food meal, but we're also doing it whilst answering work emails. The reality is you're not going to absorb that food properly. Now, I'm not judging. I will also do this despite knowing it, but the truth is sometimes, and I've had patients who think they're intolerant to certain foods, but once I taught them a simple breathing technique called the 3-4-5 breathing technique to help them downregulate their stress response before they eat, they find, oh man, I'm not getting symptoms anymore. Sana Qadar: If you're wondering how that breathing technique works, keep listening. We'll explain that in a moment. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Now, of course, there are true food allergies. I'm not talking about that, but for some intolerances, you're not actually reacting to the food, you're reacting to the fact that you're eating that food in a stressed out state. So, if you're getting a lot of indigestion, a lot of bloating, constipation, or whatever it might be, that might indicate that you're chronically stressed, right? Sana Qadar: And then just one other sign we'll mention that can tell you you might be chronically stressed is if you find your libido is starting to suffer. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: We, as doctors, are seeing more low libido in younger and younger and age groups than we've ever seen before. Number one factor is chronic stress. Again, think about it through that evolutionary lens. If you think your body's in danger, your body doesn't think, oh, I need to now be able to chill out and procreate with my partner. So, it switches off libido, and this is a massive issue because it affects relationships, it affects how men and women feel about themselves and their vitality. And again, I've treated lots of cases of low libido by helping people lower their stress levels. Sana Qadar: I want to know more about, you mentioned the breathing exercises, I want to know more about tools and tips for de-stressing. What do you advise people do? Because, you know, work is still stressful, the news is stressful, like modern life doesn't fully change, we have to change how we relate to it. What do you suggest people do? Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Yeah, so the first thing I want to say here is that one thing that 23 years of medicine has taught me is there's very rarely one thing that works for everybody. We've all got different gut microbiomes, we've all got different emotional histories, and so we respond to different things. Let me give you a selection of things that I recommend to people and then people can sort of play around and see what works for them. I believe the way you start your day has a huge impact on the rest of your day. So, I think a useful way to look at the way we start the day is through the lens of what I call micro stress doses. Okay, so what's a micro stress dose? It's a little dose of stress that in isolation we can handle just fine, but when those micro stress doses accumulate, they get you closer and closer to what I call your personal stress threshold. And at your personal stress threshold is when things start to go wrong. So, let's say you went to bed late because you were watching Netflix and your alarm goes off on your phone at 6am. That is what I call micro stress dose number one or MSD number one. Okay, because it jolted you out of a deep sleep. You look at it, you go, I'm still tired, you put snooze on. Six minutes later, the alarm goes on again. Micro stress dose number two. Then whilst you're in bed, you open up your email app. Oh man, there's three work emails I didn't do from yesterday. I need to get onto that today. You're nodding your head a lot here at the moment. Sana Qadar: (Laughs) you're describing my mornings pretty much. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: MSD number three. Okay, then you go to the news app and see about some gas explosion that has happened that's killed people, whatever it might be. Okay, and I don't mean that to sound negative. Obviously, if people are dying with something, I'm deeply compassionate about that. The point I'm trying to make is that many people I've seen in practice over the years, in the first hour of the day, they've accumulated 10 to 15 micro stress doses. It means you are very near your personal stress threshold, which means you have less capacity in the day to deal with it. So it won't take much to tip you over. So going back to your question, some of us have got more agency to make decisions and change things than others. I'm saying that for some of us, we don't need to start our day with 10 to 15 micro stress doses. If you had an alarm clock instead of your phone, for example, that can be game changing. Sana Qadar: Simple, but effective. Rangan also recommends a morning routine that he recognizes people can sometimes balk at the idea. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: They're like, oh man, I don't have time for a morning routine. The thing is, everyone already has a morning routine. The question is, are you conscious of that morning routine? Right? You've got a routine, that routine I just mentioned. That's a morning routine (both laughing). Sana Qadar: That's my routine, the emails and the social media. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: You're repeating that routine every day. Fine, but that's going to have an impact on you. So I believe a nice framework to think about a morning routine is what I call the three M's, mindfulness, movement, and mindset. You don't have to do all three, but I think if you have the time, all three can be done quite beautifully in quite a short period of time. So mindfulness could be anything like a bit of meditation, breath work, whatever, drinking a coffee in silence, right? Just paying attention to the coffee and not actually scrolling your emails or Instagram at the same time. Movement can be some stretches, a few weights, whatever it might be. And mindset is something to put you in the positive frame of mind. So it could be reading a little bit or journaling. Now I get it. A lot of people will be going, I don't have time for any of that in the morning. Okay. Let me give you an example of one of my patients who said that to me. She was a single mother. I think she was about early forties from recollection. She had really bad skin that was flaring up lots and it was making her life miserable. And I got a strong sense that chronic stress was driving her skin flare ups. So what I suggested about a little morning routine, she said, I don't have time for any of this stuff. Right. I said, okay, do you have 15 minutes? No. Do you have 10 minutes? No. Do you have five minutes? Well, yeah, I've got five minutes. I said, okay, great. So M number one mindfulness, she did what I call the three, four, five breaths. Let me just explain what that is because I mentioned it before as well. Anytime your out breath is longer than your in breath, you help to switch off the stress part of your nervous system and activate the relaxation part of your nervous system. Okay. So three, four, five breath is simply you breathe in for three, you hold for four and you breathe out for five. One of those breaths takes 12 seconds. Five of them takes simply one minute and it will literally change your physiology in just that one minute. Sana Qadar: And this is something you can do obviously at any time, not just as part of a morning routine before a big meeting, before an exam. But the question I have is, is the breathing exercise or even the routine enough on its own to actually have a long lasting impact? Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Well, it is because I'll tell you why. So let's go back to that patient then. So she did one minute of three, four, five breathing, two minutes of movements, and she used to love yoga, but since she became a mother, she never had time. So she did three or four of her favorite yoga moves and then she did two minutes of mindset. And for her, it was just affirmations. Now, there is quite a bit of research on affirmations and what they can do for our wellbeing and our stress levels. They're a little bit controversial. Not everyone buys into the research, but nonetheless, I think it's a very positive, empowering thing for someone to do. So she would say for two minutes, I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. Remember, this took her five minutes. Sana Qadar: Rangan says that over the next 10 days, this patient's skin flare-ups reduced significantly. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Because it's not just about those five minutes. What do those five minutes do? They remind you of what it feels like to be calm and relaxed. Once you started doing that, she was much more likely to stop at lunch and go for a 10 minute walk around her office block. She was much more likely to pay a bit more attention to her evening meal and make it a bit healthier. Sana Qadar: Basically, that small change had a ripple effect. Now, despite his own busy schedule, there's a lot that Rangan does in his own life as well to keep stress at bay. Things like having a hobby, he plays guitar, journaling daily, making time for some form of physical activity every day. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: I now, at this stage in my career, have quite a bit of autonomy. And I recognize that, okay? Not everyone does. I'm able to structure things so that I can. Sana Qadar: And one of the ways he's restructured his life recently is he quit his medical practice. He did that to free up time to focus on his podcast and his books and his public speaking and his role as a visiting professor of health education and communication at Chester Medical School. It's a very different life to his 30s when he was working full-time, taking care of his young family, and helping to care for his ailing father. Sana Qadar: I'm curious to know, what do you think your father would think about the life you've carved out for yourself and the work life you've carved out for yourself? Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Yeah, that's a great question. I actually think about this quite a lot. You know, dad died, I think, yeah, 12 years ago, just over 12 years ago. One of the things on a personal level that used to make me sad was that all the things that my dad would have been proudest about, you know, as an Indian immigrant to the UK in the 1960s, the fact that, you know, I had my own primetime BBC One TV show. I've had six Sunday Times bestselling books. I have the largest health podcast in Europe, whatever it might be. My dad got to see none of those things. And it used to really upset me. But at the same time, now I realize that if my dad was still alive, I wouldn't be doing any of these things. Because, well, there's two reasons for that. One is, and if there's anyone listening who's a carer, you know, they'll know how stressful life is when you're a carer. You know, I came back to the northwest of England to help my mum and my brother look after my dad. I didn't have time for anything else. You know, it was hard enough just to look after dad, just about keep my job going and see my wife. Right? It was very, very stressful. So number one, if dad was still alive, I don't think I'd have time to do the things that I've done. But secondly, the most important things I've learned have come from my dad's death. And now I've reframed my dad's death to believe that dad actually gave me a gift through him dying. Because the man I am today, the questions I started to ask myself after my dad died, I'm not sure any of those things would have happened until dad had died. So actually, again, I understand the death of a parent is a really challenging time for most people. I'm not expecting or asking anyone else to reframe their own parents' death in this way. But I do believe that life is simply a set of experiences and it's the story we put onto those experiences that ultimately determine the quality of our life. And I'm able to 12 years on now, reframe my dad's death as being, that was a gift to me. Because all this wisdom, I hope that I can share with people that really helps them. A huge part of that has been through my dad's death. Sana Qadar: And you mentioned other patients you've worked with who had also kind of worked themselves to the bone, regretted not stopping earlier. I'm wondering, do you know if your father wished he hadn't worked quite so hard by the time he got sick? Did he wish he had stopped earlier? Dr Rangan Chatterjee: You know, there's only one question I would love to ask my dad if I was still alive. And I don't know the answer. One of the questions, the only question is, dad, was it worth it? Because being truthful, although dad worked himself to ill health, I've changed my view on this over the past years. I now think, Rangan, you have no right to think that your dad made a mistake. You don't know that. Dad may say, if he was alive, he may go, I'd do that all over again. Because my only purpose in life was to look after my family back home and to give you and your brother the very best start in life that I could. Now, if that is true, which I believe it to be true, my dad may say, well, I kind of did that, right? I looked after everyone at home and look at what you're now doing, son. Look at how many people you're helping all over the world with what you do. I would do that all over again. So I'm hypothesizing here. I honestly don't know. Do I believe my dad could have done those things and not got ill at the same time? Yeah, I do believe that was possible. But how can I possibly know? But he never said to me, to be clear, I wish I'd stopped earlier. So I'm speculating. Sana Qadar: Rangan, it's been so lovely chatting to you. Thank you for sharing your family story and the story of your patients and everything you've learned over the course of your career. We really appreciate it. Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. Sana Qadar: That is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, until recently a practicing GP, and he's also the host of the Feel Better Live More podcast. Rangan is going to be touring Australia in mid-July with live events in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. If you want to find out more, just search An Evening with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. He'll be at Melbourne Town Hall, the State Theatre in Sydney and Brisbane City Hall. That is it for All in the Mind this week. Thanks to producer Rose Kerr, senior producer James Bullen, and sound engineer Tegan Nicholls. I'm Sana Qadar. Thank you for listening. I'll catch you next week.
Telegraph
7 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
NHS survey overstates mental health crisis in children, say experts
A leading consultant has criticised official data that claims that more than one in five school children has mental health problems as 'nuts' and 'pernicious'. A new report by the Department for Education on the rise in pupils not attending school links it to increased levels of mental illness among young people. It cites NHS data showing that 21 per cent of children aged eight to 16 have a 'probable mental health problem'. The figure has been widely publicised and is part of the justification for the government's policy to put councillors in every secondary school. But experts warn that the calculation is based on 'subjective' questionnaire data and could be exaggerating the prevalence of mental health issues among young people. The Strengths and Difficulties survey used in the NHS data gives children multiple choice questions on their emotional state, concentration levels, conduct and relationships to assess their mental wellbeing. Pupils are asked questions such as: 'Have you recently felt capable of making decisions about things?'; 'Have you recently felt that you are playing a useful part in things?' and 'Do you sometimes feel anxious in certain situations?'. Response options are 'not true', 'somewhat true', or 'certainly true'. Children who score 17 or above out of 40 are recorded as having 'probable mental health problems'. However, Professor Dr Joanna Moncrieff, an academic at University College London and a practising psychiatrist for the NHS, has questioned the method and the labelling of children as mentally ill. 'Anyone scoring above the average in this survey is deemed to have a probable mental health problem – I mean that's nuts,' she told The Telegraph. 'It is a really good illustration of how misleading this whole mental health debate can be. Saying that the reason children are not going to school is because of mental health problems is oversimplifying to the extent that you are not saying anything. By saying it is a mental health problem, you think you've explained it, but you really haven't.' Dennis Hayes, a professor of education at Derby University and co-author of The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, described the data method as 'shoddy' and 'crude'. 'It is as bad as the little questionnaires in OKAY magazine,' he said. 'I went through some of those questions. One is 'do you sometimes feel anxious in certain situations?' Yes, all the time! So, I don't think this is the way to proceed.' Prof Hayes said children and adults are being taught to see normal anxieties as ' mental health problems '. 'Multiple choice surveys merely confirm a cultural belief that we are all unwell,' he said. 'It's a terrible and destructive thing. It creates introverted children and young people who can't cope.' Prof Moncrieff said labelling children can limit them: 'People think they've found an explanation, but they haven't; they have just acquired a label and labels can be really pernicious because they limit you,' she said. 'You think 'I have this thing, therefore I can't possibly do this and I can't possibly do that'. It is really worrying.' Another academic, Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, argued that children who registered concern about their lives, or the state of the world, were not necessarily exhibiting signs of mental illness. 'What used to be called problems of life, problems of existence, are now framed in the language of psychology, and we tend to medicalise our personal problems,' he said. 'So, we no longer have shy people; we have people with social phobia. We no longer have kids who are just very energetic; we have ADHD. We are inciting young people to feel unwell. To me, the mental health industry is actually complicit in creating a mental health problem.' Long waiting lists Concerns have also been raised that the data method, and others like it, could be leading to a crisis in the already overstretched Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), leaving referrals with the most serious mental health conditions stuck on long waiting lists. Almost one million children and young people had active referrals for CAMHS in England, figures from 2022-23 show. A third were on waiting lists, while 40 per cent had their referral closed before accessing support. Nearly 40,000 children experienced waits of at least two years. The most common reason for a referral for mental health treatment was cited as anxiety. 'I don't work with children, but we have quite a lot of young people coming through from CAMHS and we are absolutely overwhelmed with referrals,' said Prof Moncrieff. 'I would say anecdotally that there are people coming through who are less unwell (than in the past). Then we have the whole question of how we help; is it really helpful or might it be harmful? I don't think it is a good thing for lots of people to be on antidepressants or other forms of drug treatment.' Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has pledged to provide school counsellors in all secondary schools in England. Campaigners say this does not go far enough and want mental health professionals at primary level too. But Prof Moncrieff said the move could have unintended negative consequences. 'The worry is that they could end up identifying and labelling more kids and sending them off to CAMHS,' she said. 'The best case scenario is counsellors reduce the need because pupils have someone to talk to and that helps. But I do worry that we have such a mental health-obsessed culture now that most people think they are doing the right thing by labelling children and referring them.'
Forbes
18-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
GenAI Won't Fix A Broken Cloud
Hrushikesh Deshmukh, Senior Consultant, Fannie Mae. Generative AI (GenAI) has rapidly become the backbone of current digital transformation. This is driving chatbots, automating code and providing predictive insights at scale. If your cloud infrastructure is fragmented, your teams are disjointed or your workflows are patchwork-based, AI will only amplify the dysfunction that exists. As AI is a driver of advancement, organizations first need to address the cultural and architectural flaws that constrain them. Absent this foundation, AI is noise rather than value. Most corporate executives see GenAI as a magic key to increased productivity, creativity and efficiency in operations. There is a common assumption that having AI deployed will yield revolutionary results. But without the right foundations, AI solutions often end up being superficial and unreliable: • Cloud infrastructures are too complex and insufficiently documented to integrate and scale easily. • DevSecOps pipelines are unreliable and lack good observability, which lowers reliability and response time. • Information is still siloed, replicated and stale, compromising AI efficiency and precision. • FinOps processes are reactive instead of proactive, generating runaway expenses and inefficiencies. To truly unlock GenAI's potential, organizations must first address these foundational weaknesses. GenAI can be revolutionary, but it is not a cure-all solution on its own. It is an additional layer on top of all the things that architecture already accomplishes. Only 15% of organizations that deployed AI at scale experienced sustained gains in their operating models, one of the reasons being poor architectural readiness. Businesses need to concentrate on the following architectural pillars: • Modular, API-Driven Microservices: These provide flexibility and interoperability and make it easy for AI components to integrate into current systems. • Event-Driven, Scalable Infrastructure: AI workloads can be unpredictable, spiking without warning. • Unified Observability And AIOps: Unified observability solutions plus AIOps provide real-time monitoring, speed of issue identification and root-cause determination. • Secure Data Governance And Policy-As-Code Enforcement: Data is the main source for GenAI, and its compliance, quality and accessibility all impact model performance. Cloud architecture needs to be viewed as a living, dynamic system—not a fixed deployment. It must be optimized continually to accommodate shifting workloads, governance requirements and new AI tools emerging. While cloud architecture is the body that enables AI, organizational culture is the nervous system that decides how well it works. More than 70% of AI projects fail, most often due to cultural and organizational factors rather than technological issues. Businesses need to go through a cultural shift. This entails changing both mindset and operational behavior: • From Ticket-Based Support To Self-Service And Platform Thinking: Enabling teams to resolve issues on their own and get access to tools without waiting enables faster innovation and less friction. • From Siloed Responsibilities To Cross-Functional Accountability: AI projects need to involve IT, data science, business operations and compliance teams collaborating around common goals. • From "Build Fast, Fix Later" To "Design Smart, Scale Responsibly": Careful planning is required with AI. Short-term thinking can result in badly tested models, breaches and scalability problems. Culture is key to how GenAI is adopted, regulated and scaled. Organizations that value collaboration, exploration and responsibility will be better positioned to develop AI practices that are both successful and sustainable. To provide true value with GenAI, companies can start with a serious evaluation of their cloud infrastructure. AI can flourish only when developed on agile, transparent and scalable infrastructure. Enterprises should pose important questions before implementing GenAI: • Is the cloud architecture optimized for speed, cost management and visibility? • Are CI/CD and MLOps pipelines dynamic enough to accommodate changing AI workloads? • Can teams make AI insights operational fast or are they slowed down by manual work? • Have strong policies for the ethical, explainable and responsible use of AI been put in place? Cloud transformation is not a choice; it is a necessity. Only by restructuring their infrastructure, optimizing operations and building in responsible practices can companies realize the full, sustainable potential of AI. While cultural and organizational factors are a common reason AI projects fail, data-related issues are another major obstacle to success. GenAI systems are only as reliable as the data they're built on. To ensure trustworthy and accurate outputs, organizations must take a disciplined approach to data management, including: • Ensuring data consistency and integrity across sources and systems • Implementing metadata control and maintaining data lineage for traceability • Centralizing data catalogs to support discoverability and reuse • Enforcing access controls and policy-based governance to protect sensitive information • Regularly auditing data for freshness, accuracy and relevance To unlock real value from GenAI, businesses must treat data as a managed, strategic asset—not an afterthought. If your systems are fragmented and your culture lacks cohesion, AI will only accelerate the dysfunction. Organizations must resist the urge to chase AI blindly without first addressing foundational flaws. No level of intelligence, however advanced, can compensate for poor design or a misaligned vision. Build it right first and then let AI amplify your success from there. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
