HeyJaredHeadstrong | Mark Rice-Oxley
I write about mental health, with a particular focus on hope, optimism and what works.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 25, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 10, 2026
Latest issues
The end of the snowflake (opens the original)
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Which side of the great debate are you on?Not the one about whether there will ever be anyone who can lick their own elbow. Nor that other one about whether snorting nutmeg will ever catch on.This is in fact the great debate that we could sum up as follows:Sickness or Snowflakery? Is the alarming rise in mental health problems over the past 30 years or so a genuine reflection of something badly awry in our state of mind? Or is it just a reflection of a growing ‘softness’ and oversensitivity in s
Bipolar secrets: this is more than just a few ups and downs (opens the original)
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Next time you go to a party, take a good look around the room. If you can’t spot the person with bipolar disorder, then it’s probably you.The original joke is much ruder and funnier than this (substitute the word ‘dickhead’ for ‘person with bipolar disorder’). But I like this variant because a. my mum won’t be cross with me for using rude words and b. it tells us two important things about this strange, shape-shifting condition.Bipolar is now thought to be so common that if you go to a decent pa
I’d rather have cancer than bipolar disorder (opens the original)
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I was talking with a friend a few weeks back about cancer and mental illness. Cheery stuff. Don’t ever get cornered by me at a cocktail party. Anyway, he had been through a rotten 15 months with bowel cancer. And I’d done the same amount of time in the vale of woe. Compare and contrast.We both reckon it was Cancer 6-0 Mental Illness. A proper battering. Here’s why.He got an early diagnosis, serious but clear. I got guesswork, and apologies that science doesnR
Stop comparing yourself to others (opens the original)
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I’m just back from a jazz summer camp in Sussex. If that sounds like hell on earth to you, read on because this piece isn’t about the blues, it’s about the blues.There were half a dozen superb tutors - professional musicians, effortlessly fluent in their instrument as well as in the huge canon of jazz music, from swing and bossa nova to great formless pieces that seemed to have no architecture at all. They were also lovely people.On a couple of occasions, over university coffee, my fellow studen
🧠 Braindrops: the full set of puzzles (opens the original)
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Over many weeks, I have included a small puzzle called ‘Braindrops’ in my mental health newsletter Headstrong, designed to amuse, tax and provoke, as well as to prove beyond all doubt that I am, deep down, an utter nerd. I reckon it’s all good rough-and-tumble for the average brain, and now that I have produced more than 50, (FIFTY!) I am gathering them together in one tiny little corner of the interweb.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EG
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