Showing results for "The Stranger" in Mental Health

Strangers to Ourselves is a compassionate, courageous and riveting look at the ways we talk about and understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on unpublished journals and letters, along with deep reporting, it follows people who feel as if they have reached the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. Their diagnosis, while giving their experiences a name, also shapes their sense of what their future may look like—and their identities, too.

In 2008, 20-year-old Jonny Benjamin stood on Waterloo Bridge, about to jump. A stranger saw his distress and stopped to talk with him - a decision that saved Jonny's life. Fast-forward to 2014 and Jonny, together with Rethink Mental Illness, launched a campaign with a short video clip so that Jonny could finally thank that stranger who put him on the path to recovery. More than 319 million people around the world followed the search. ITV's breakfast shows picked up the story until the stranger was found, and the pair reunited and have remained firm friends ever since.

Dear stranger, I don’t know much about you, but I do know how you feel. You are feeling lost, lonely and misunderstood. You are tired of pain and suffering. Depression, anxiety and negativity chase you. You don’t know where to find hope and how to heal yourself. Trust me, I have been there myself, and I know it’s not easy. So, I am sending these 30 letters and poems to you, to let you know that you are not alone and that you are understood. You are still cared for. Please listen to one of these letters every day, and I promise you, together we will get through this.

As Roseann Sdoia waited to watch her friend cross the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013, she had no idea her life was about to change - that in a matter of minutes she would look up from the sidewalk, burned and deaf, staring at her detached foot, screaming for help amid the smoke and blood. In the chaos of the minutes that followed, three people would enter Roseann's life and change it forever.

After decades of affluence, we’re busy renovating our homes, buffing and botoxing our bodies and losing ourselves in passive entertainment and shopping, as depression and anxiety soar. And with the arrival of Netflix and Uber Eats, there’s less and less incentive to leave home. Could our constant need for connection be messing with our brains? Is this why we’re losing our ability to strike up a conversation with anyone we don’t know? And given that so many of our kids lack one-on-one attention and regular touch, are we raising this new generation to be profoundly lonely?

A strange person is a person that momma likely told you to avoid while you were growing up. In this short listen, we will discuss why society's forever taught stigma about strangers may be hampering our ability to widen out, how to break free from it, and conquer your fears!