Anxiety on Love Island: when reality TV stars have mental health problems

Love Island 2018 including Niall Aslam.

Are we putting people at risk for the sake of entertainment?

“You wouldn’t wish those kind of feelings on your worst enemy… It got bad, it got horrible, I was in a proper dark place.”

Three months after coming third on last year’s series of Love Island, contestant Chris Hughes opened up about his anxiety, which he had experienced since the age of 19.

Hughes had previously written an Instagram post about his anxiety and panic attacks in a post on World Mental Health Day in 2016, and appeared to struggle with his emotions when starring on the reality show a year later. (Viewers defended him online when he was told not to “cry again” by his love interest on the programme.)

Since then, he has teamed up with Topman to raise awareness about men’s mental health, and said he still has to focus on coping with the condition.

“About a week ago I was just laying in bed, I know how to cope with it now a lot better than I did, and my breathing went a bit funny and I did get a little anxiety,” he told the Sun last October.

Hughes is not alone.

The winner of last year’s Love Island, Kem Cetinay, has spoken about his post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, and his experience of taking anti-depressants and having therapy.

“I didn’t know what I was suffering, I would hide away and it got worse and worse,” he told Heat magazine in May. “It felt like I was locked in a prison but that was all I could do.”

Jamie Jewitt, the runner-up last year, has also revealed his past struggles with his mental health – crediting the digital detox required on the show for helping tackle his depression.

“You have billions of people at the touch of a button to judge yourself against”

Having been “very depressed” before joining the show – and even “very unsure about going in there” – Jewitt felt he benefited from human bonding, without access to social media and other distractions.

“You have billions of people at the touch of a button to judge yourself against,” the former model told HuffPo last October. “You look on Instagram, and you see a pumped-up version, or rose-tinted version of someone’s life.”

The former model had struggled with the “materialism” and “superficiality” of his job.

Series two contestant Alex Bowen has also spoken about …read more

Source:: New Statesman

      

Dad of slain 19-year-old frustrated with delay in justice as case is on hold again

A trial for Liam McAtasney, who is accused of killing Sarah Stern, was scheduled to start in September. But a judge said on Monday that’s likely not going to happen.

For more than a year, Michael Stern has repeatedly returned to the first row of a dimly lit courtroom in Freehold waiting for justice to be handed down to the man accused of strangling his 19-year-old daughter and then throwing her body off a Jersey Shore bridge in 2016.

On Monday, Stern learned that he’s likely going to have to wait even longer than anticipated to find out if justice will be served.

“It’s frustrating,” Stern told NJ Advance Media outside the courtroom. “Time gets extended. It’s hard. My life stands still.”

Liam McAtasney, a 20-year-old who was one of Sarah Stern’s childhood friends, is accused of killing her during an apparent robbery and then dumping her body off the Route 35 bridge in Belmar in December 2016.

An alleged accomplice and another childhood friend, Preston Taylor, 20, has already admitted his role in the killing and agreed to testify against McAtasney.

McAtasney’s trial was scheduled to start on Sept. 15, but that date will likely be bumped, Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Richard English said.

For one, defense attorney Carlos Diaz-Cobo took over from defense attorney Richard Moriarty in March after months of pre-trial motions had already occurred. And with the state’s new speedy trial laws, other cases have deadlines that will take precedent, English said.

Diaz-Cobo said he needs more times to comb through the evidence against his client and conduct his own investigation.

Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Meghan Doyle said, “it’s not our problem that he is late into this case,” referring to Diaz-Cobo. She then lambasted him for claiming that technical difficulties had made it hard for him to get through the entire discovery file.

“The state is only asking for the court to enforce speedy trial rules which require dates for deadlines,” Doyle said.

The judge was receptive to Diaz-Cobo’s request for more time to review. The two parties will be back in court on July 30 to discuss the progress.

Meanwhile, Michael Stern will be waiting, taking things one day at a time, as he has since the news broke that two of his daughter’s longtime friends were allegedly responsible for his daughter’s death.

“It’s a nice day,” he said, “we’ll try and enjoy it.”

Alex Napoliello may be reached …read more

Source:: New Jersey Real-Time News