The Horror of Eternal Isolation: Apeirophobia in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Pulse’ (2001)

Pulse (Kairo) is a 2001 Japanese techno-horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After having watched Kurosawa’s 1997 psychological thriller Cure (Kyua), widely regarded as a masterpiece, I was keen to check out more of his work. (Cure was inspired by David Fincher’s crime film Se7en; it likewise follows a series of gruesome murders and detectives…

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The Harms of Wellness Culture

Wellness culture is all about healing – healing from stress, dissatisfaction, trauma, toxic relationships, and poor physical health. However, wellness culture can also encourage an obsession with healing that ends up being counterproductive. When you’re constantly focused on healing – getting better, working on yourself, going from one healing modality to another – your mental…

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Veganism, Perfectionism, and Moral Scrupulosity

The intersection between philosophy and mental health is a broad topic, and in one essay I gave some examples of how certain philosophical positions may impact mental health, as well as emphasised that this line of causality – adopting a worldview and then becoming depressed – is not so easy to establish (the direction of…

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‘How to Change Your Mind’ and the Destigmatisation of Psychedelics

The Netflix docuseries How to Change Your Mind, based on Michael Pollan’s book of the same name, explores the history and therapeutic effects of four different psychoactive compounds: LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and mescaline (with the episodes in that order).  Directed by Alison Ellwood and Lucy Walker, and presented by Pollan, How to Change Your Mind…

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Can You Really Change Your Personality?

Whether you’re looking to change your personality to manage a mental health condition or personality disorder, or you’d just like to change some aspects of who you are, you may be wondering if it’s possible. Personality is complex, and there is a huge mental health stigma in regards to personality disorders and behavioural struggles that…

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