Diary 25th To 30th June 2019

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The final week of the month started off very busily for me. Tuesday 25th June was dominated with a voluntary work assignment helping assess student presentations on their ongoing university research projects in sociology and psychology. The first presentation was concerned with anxiety generated by E-Sports, especially a game called League Of Legends that I am not familiar with. Many participants face brutal trash talk abuse from established elites competitors, including being told to go away and commit suicide. Up to 50% of players have exhibited signs of stress and anxiety. The second presentation assessed the impact of having a brother or sister who has been diagnosed with mental illness. That this can cause the sibling’s own mental distress, plunge them into having to take on huge carer responsibilities and defend the family against social stigma makes this into an area in much more need of research. The third talk addressed the balance between insomnia and other sleeping disorders and eating behaviours as well as emotional problems created by the lack of adequate sleep. It was concluded that it was hard to tell which kind of eating and emotional disorders various levels of sleep related problems relate to. The next student assessed the understanding of mental health issues among international students on British campuses, focusing on Indian students in the UK, finding that many were unaware of the nature of mental illness or its treatment until coming to the UK, with their families often just seeing anyone irrational as ‘nuts’. The final talk addressed research into a deadly condition and practice I have not heard of before, Diabulimia, where mostly young diabetics mess with their insulin intake to be able to hide their diabetes from friends, and attend parties where they can eat high sugar foods, etc. and take shots of insulin at will to control moods. The results can be highly addictive and often fatal. On Wednesday I applied to the library to get them to take my book on pub signs for their shelves. I thought I could just take it in, but there is a whole process of assessment to check it is worthy for inclusion on the shelves. Ridiculous. Thursday involved lots of job searching and photo-scanning images I picked of relating to pubs at the Inn Sign Society AGM. On Friday my welfare payments came through, which is always a relief, and after a very demanding month financially it was good to get some money in again. I got an alarming letter from the council team who supervise the six apartment block I live in, a they found that one of the block has sprung a dangerous sewage leak that could be expensive to repair. A copy of the letter went to all six flats and to our respective landlords. Mine arranged to travel up today (Friday) to check it wasn’t mine. I was confident of this already and we soon saw the leaking water is actually from another flat on the opposite side of the block, not mine. Saturday and today, Sunday, just involved paying bills and catching up on my writings. Arthur Chappell