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How the stoicism of Roman philosophers can help us deal with depression

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Robert S. Colter, University of Wyoming Depression is on the rise. A study conducted by the World Health Organization found an increase of 20 percent in depression cases within just a decade. I work on a university campus. One might expect such a place to feel vibrant and energetic, but lately there seems to be more fatigue and malaise. Even for me, on some days it can feel hard to face the world. As a scholar of ancient philosophy and a practicing stoic , I have found great solace in the works of Roman stoic philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius , emperor of Rome, and Epictetus , teacher of Stoic philosophy and a former slave. What tools do these ancient thinkers offer to deal with depression? Of course, I must add here that clinical depression, which is a serious health issue and should be treated by a professional, is a different matter than the sort of ordinary depression and fatigue that most of us might feel from time to time. What is stoicism? Stoici
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Brexit will hit Britain's overseas territories hard – why is no one talking about it?

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Paul Hare, Heriot-Watt University When the Brexit referendum result was announced last June, I was working on the Turks and Caicos Islands, one of the UK’s overseas territories in the Caribbean. A collection of about 40 tropical islands, of which eight are inhabited, people there were shocked at the result. They were annoyed they hadn’t had a chance to vote, and concerned about their future. It was all too apparent that neither side in the campaign had given serious thought to the implications for territories like this one, and the situation has not improved since then. There are genuine and serious concerns that need to move up the agenda. The 14 British Overseas Territories (OTs) are remnants of empire, mainly scattered through the tropics. An exception is Gibraltar, the only territory that is also part of the EU. It is facing well documented issues such as a possible closed border with neighbouring Spain and losing the right to provide services such as finance and o
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Children and sleep: How much do they really need?

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Wendy Hall, University of British Columbia How much sleep, and what type of sleep, do our children need to thrive? In parenting, there aren’t often straightforward answers, and sleep tends to be contentious. There are questions about whether we are overstating children’s sleep problems . Yet we all know from experience how much better we feel, and how much more ready we are to take on the day, when we have had an adequate amount of good quality sleep. I was one of a panel of experts at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine to review over 800 academic papers examining relationships between children’s sleep duration and outcomes. Our findings suggested optimal sleep durations to promote children’s health . These are the optimal hours (including naps) that children should sleep in every 24-hour cy And yet these types of sleep recommendations are still controversial. Many of us have friends or acquaintances who say that they can function perfectly on four hours of sl
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