Pinned tweet to plug some things: I help run @Xmas4CAMHS charity: blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2019/12/20… I teach on LGBTQ health & trans health. Article by @j_salks, me and others: bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l245 I co-founded @Fy1Buddy to support FY1 doctors. Join! @Genderintell do amazing work.

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The Gaza European Hospital, in Khan Younis, the last facility providing cancer-treatment across the Strip, is now out of service after Israeli forces struck it on 13 May. This was one of the last remaining lifelines in Gaza's shattered healthcare system. MSF-supported Nasser hospital is now the only public hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. It was also hit on the same day a few hours before the Gaza European Hospital for the second time in less than two months. People in Gaza are struggling to access lifesaving care. The remaining hospitals, mostly partially functional, are constantly overwhelmed. Repeated strikes on healthcare facilities are yet more examples of the Israeli authorities making the Strip unlivable.

Dr Sanjay Agrawal describes the lack of support for people with serious mental illness to become smoke free as Structural Violence. “‘Inequality’ is understating the issue”. #QuITT

Verbal communication is really hard now. I wonder if there are episodes of @taskmaster that are particularly visual? Or TM YouTube compilations that are language-light? @AlexHorne @jackbern23 We’ve watched all Wallace & Gromit. Suggestions of other non-verbal TV also welcome. 🙏

That terrifying gov weather alert went off on my phone and watch shortly before 7pm. Phone died around midnight. Once plugged in and turned back on, the foghorn alert went off again!! Is that meant to happen?

It feels incredibly insensitive that it’s not possible to visit the UK’s memorial to the Indian Ocean tsunami on the 20th anniversary of the devastating disaster, because the Natural History Museum is shut on 26th Dec. Survivors & bereaved can’t move the date. @NHM_London

What is odd about the Assisted Dying discussion is the silence around the biggest killer of older people, dementia. Because it is impossible for someone with dementia to give informed consent. But it is also impossible, or very difficult, for them to give consent before their dementia renders them not lucid enough to do so, because the present bill only covers those with no more than six months to live. So at the moment the main issue is not in the conversation.

We’re in the midst of a self sabotaging moral panic over vaping. Let me explain 🧵

We're doing our paper chain project again! We're looking for your cheesiest Christmas Cracker jokes to pop on to each paper chain piece. Reply with your favourite festive joke and we'll try to include it in this year's list! 🎄 christmasforcamhs.org.uk/pap…

Our snoot noodle, our bag of elbows, the silly dog, our fur baby. She may have been the whiniest, but she was also the silliest and bestest good dog, and will stay in our hearts forever. Milou Born 2/7/20 Came home with us 21/1/24 Died 24/9/24 💔

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary It was nicer then 😟

What a strange thing we do to our young people in this culture and time. We make them spend several years learning things which they often have no interest in, which they have not chosen and which they will in many cases never use again. We tell them that these things are vitally important. Then we sit them in rows and make them write about the things they can remember for an intense few hours. We compare what they have written down with everyone else of the same age, and then we rank them. We make them wait a couple of months and then we tell some that they are the successes, and others that they are the failures. We encourage them to hang their self-worth on how they performed. Newspapers publish pictures of the delighted, whilst the disappointed hide their heads in shame. We tell them that these results will determine the rest of their lives – and then we set up systems that make this true. We provide fewer opportunities for those who did not succeed. Those who did well can take their pick of courses, whilst those who did not are made to take the same tests again and again, just to hammer it home. We make sure that young people spend the majority of their adolescence focused on exams and pressure. Every summer, they sit in rows and try to remember. Each year, they’re told that their whole future rests on this. Many of them inevitably cave in under the pressure. They become anxious and depressed. They show signs of burnout by the age of 16. They lose their spark, and just go through the motions. Some of them retreat altogether. Then we pathologise them, say that they need mental health treatment or to become more resilient. We send them for therapy or give them medication. We say that they are the problem, whilst the system carries on unchanged. What if instead we stopped to think about what we are doing to our young people? Adolescence is a time of opportunity and vulnerability. It’s a one-off stage of life. What if we asked ourselves, should our young people really spend these years on a conveyor belt of high stakes exams? Imagine we allowed ourselves to look beyond this time and place, and to see just how strange this really is. What would we offer our young people then?