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Anxiety is one of the most prevalent mental disorders.

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How to cope with anxiety | Olivia Remes | TEDxUHasselt

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Photo: Getty Images

What's normal?

Everyone gets nervous or anxious from time to time-when speaking in public, for instance, or when going through financial difficulty. For some people, however, anxiety becomes so frequent, or so forceful, that it begins to take over their lives.

How can you tell if your everyday anxiety has crossed the line into a disorder? It's not easy. Anxiety comes in many different forms-such as panic attacks, phobia, and social anxiety-and the distinction between an official diagnosis and "normal" anxiety isn't always clear.

Here's a start: If you experience any of the following symptoms on a regular basis, you may want to talk with your doctor.

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12 Signs You May Have an Anxiety Disorder

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Photo: Getty Images Everyone gets nervous or anxious from time to time-when speaking in public, for instance, or when going through financial difficulty. For some people, however, anxiety becomes so frequent, or so forceful, that it begins to take over their lives. How can you tell if your everyday anxiety has crossed the line into a disorder?

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Different Anxiety Disorders Types Exist - Read About OCD, PTSD & GAD - Anxiety Disorders Association of Manitoba

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Read about panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder & social anxiety that affects thousands of Manitobans each year. Discover anxiety types & more.

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Types of bullying.

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Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.

In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power-such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity-to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.

Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.

Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.

Types of Bullying

There are three types of bullying:

Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things. Verbal bullying includes:

Teasing

Name-calling

Inappropriate sexual comments

Taunting

Threatening to cause harm

Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone's reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:

Leaving someone out on purpose

Telling other children not to be friends with someone

Spreading rumors about someone

Embarrassing someone in public

Physical bullying involves hurting a person's body or possessions. Physical bullying includes:

Hitting/kicking/pinching

Spitting

Tripping/pushing

Taking or breaking someone's things

Making mean or rude hand gestures

Where and When Bullying Happens

Bullying can occur during or after school hours. While most reported bullying happens in the school building, a significant percentage also happens in places like on the playground or the bus. It can also happen travelling to or from school, in the youth's neighborhood, or on the Internet.

Frequency of Bullying

There are two sources of federally collected data on youth bullying:

The 2017 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Justice) indicates that, nationwide, about 20% of students ages 12-18 experienced bullying.

The 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) indicates that, nationwide, 19.5% of students in grades 9-12 report being bullied on school property in the 12 months preceding the survey.

See also " Frequency of Cyberbullying."

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Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time.

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A just-published Canadian study has added heft to a provocative new theory about bullying: that the behaviour is literally in the genes, an inherited trait that actually helps build social rank and sex appeal.

If accepted, the hypothesis rooted in evolutionary psychology could transform how schools confront the persistent and often-shattering problem.

Conventional wisdom has long suggested that bullies are "maladapted," troubled people, lashing out because they had been abused or harassed themselves or at least had dysfunctional home lives.

But researchers at Simon Fraser University surveyed a group of Vancouver high school students and found bullies were the least likely to be depressed, had the highest self-esteem and the greatest social status.

"Humans tend to try to establish a rank hierarchy," says Jennifer Wong, the criminology professor who led the study. "When you're in high school, it's a very limited arena in which you can establish your rank, and climbing the social ladder to be on top is one of the main ways ... Bullying is a tool you can use to get there."

Most anti-bullying programs try to change the behaviour of bullies - and they usually don't work, says Wong, who reviewed the literature on program outcomes for her PhD thesis. That's probably because the behaviour is biologically hard-wired, not learned, she says.

Wong recommends that, instead of trying to change how bullies think, schools expand the range of competitive, supervised activities they can participate in - giving them a less harmful channel for their dominating tendencies.

Indeed, fascinating research involving another Canadian expert offers some support for that idea. A pilot project at an Arizona school sought to steer students identified as bullies into high-status "jobs" - like being the school's front-door greeters - to focus their aggression on something less harmful.

Bullying fell "dramatically" in its wake, says Tony Volk, a Brock University psychologist who helped pioneer the genetic theory of bullying and took part in an upcoming study of the Arizona project.

Meanwhile, separate research Volk is working on offers more evidence bolstering the concept: the bullies among 178 teenagers surveyed by the professor and his colleagues got more sex than everyone else.

"The average bully isn't particularly sadistic or even deeply argumentative," he says. "What they really are is people driven for status."

The hypothesis may be a hard sell in the anti-bullying world, however, where the notion that many people bully because it is in their nature - and can't be easily changed - is troublesome.

Rob Frenette, co-founder of the advocacy and support group Bullying Canada, says he has yet to encounter a bully who did not have some underlying issue - such as violence at home - that was a likely environmental trigger for the bullying.

"This is kind of stepping backward and that's concerning," he said of Wong's study. "I don't want parents who have a child who is considered a bully to think, 'Well, it's something they're born with and there's nothing we can do to adjust their behavior.' "

Frenette, who has cerbral palsy, knows bullies, literally. For more than 11 years, he was a frequent victim, receiving death threats, being pushed down stairs and once having the back of his neck burned by girls on a school bus.

[np_storybar title="Some of the best reader comments on a new study about bullying" link=""]

Society tends to be focusing a lot on youth bullying, but you see the same things among adults. This is a societal issue, not just youth. Kid bullies turn into teen bullies and evolve to adult bullies. Adult bullies tend to rise to management, receive status and recognition in the workplace and community for ability to "tackle tough issues and people", and are often celebrated as strong and capable leaders. Hard wired or not, people, of all ages and stages, in our society are rewarded for bully-type behaviour all the time. - Tash Taylor.

You know, I've been hearing this my whole life, that all boys in all schools fight. It was certainly what we were all told from a young age. But truth be told, it never happened in my high school. Nobody got beat up. I can remember maybe one physical fight in five year I was there (which was basically two kids who shoved each other). I was pretty low status socially and I did get bullied - but nobody ever, even once laid a hand on me. The idea of getting shoved into lockers, getting beat up - it was basically something I knew from TV but it never happened in my personal experience. Not questioning your personal experience at all. Just wondering if this is really the inevitability people claim. For disclosure, I went to a private Jewish school, not sex segregated. Make of that what you will. - avatar16

I think the idea of increasing competition in schools is a sound one. It would be interesting to know if there is any correlation (anecdotally, my impression is that there is) between the removal of competitiveness from schools over the last few decades and the apparent increase in bullying. Of course, I suspect there are too many educators that would be too horrified by the notion of increased competition among students for this to actually happen. On the other hand, the increase in bullying, like autism, may also be due to the vast broadening of the definition of the word. What I do know is Frenette's cookie cutter definitions and approaches don't work on bullies but do validate victims very effectively and that Wong's findings make a great deal of sense to me. - SeaChange9898

I have written two books on workplace mobbing (which is what is really going on in most cases of bullying). I like this article because the usual boilerplate on bullying is so useless, both with kids and adults. Bullying is about power and emotion and is incentivized unless those with the greatest power send a clear message that it is intolerable. This study looks like a good start to the extent that it explores alternate approaches to the usual "bad bully/innocent victim" meme. I would also add that with adults "bully" has become a stigmatizing word often applied by actual mob groups to their target. In other words, the term has become useless. - rgschwindt

These comments represent the standard of debate we aspire to on nationalpost.com
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At Bullying Canada, he sees the staggering scope of the problem. The group's 24/7 support line fielded a 312,000 calls and 86,000 emails last year from bullying victims and their parents.

But the type of bullies Frenette cites, and that often are the public face of the problem, form a separate category, well-defined by psychologists, called bully-victims, says Volk, the St. Catharines, Ont., professor. They are the ones who are troubled themselves and strike out in visible, blatant ways that quickly come to the attention of authorities, he said.

Evidence indicates it is the "pure" bullies, however, who account for 80-90% of bullying, yet are more socially adept, more popular and fly more under the radar, says Volk.

They are the focus of the evolutionary psychology theory, which says bullying is an adaptive behavior, a genetic edge to gain better sexual opportunities, physical protection and mental health. Or, as the title of Wong's paper puts it, "survival of the fittest and the sexiest."

Wong and student Jun-Bin Koh surveyed 135 teenagers from a Vancouver high school. A standard questionnaire - asking things like how often they were "hit, kicked or shoved" - divided the students into the categories of bully, bystander, victim or victim-bully.

Some of the differences were not statistically significant, but bullies - about 11% of the group - came out on top on three main outcomes: they scored highest on self-esteem and social status and lowest on depression, says Wong's paper in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

She admits the research is less than definitive, but is now hoping to repeat it with a much larger sample size and more statistical power.

Still, Wong recommends a rethinking of how schools tackle bullying, saying that merely punishing the perpetrators not only fails to work, but in some cases enhances their status.

She concedes, however, that some educators are likely to "vehemently" oppose her suggestion of channeling bullies into "prosocial" behavior by adding more competition into schools.

Frenette certainly rejects the argument that existing programs are not working. They may not be perfect but they do help, and reports of bullying are decreasing across the country, he said.

On the other hand, at a time when society was less attuned to the bullying problem, those girls who burned his neck faced no repercussions - and seem to have changed little since, he says. One was recently charged by police with a slew of criminal offences.

Volk does not believe bullies are exactly "hard-wired," more that they have a genetic predisposition, which could be countered by changes in their environment. Changes like giving them ways to more positively channel their aggressive bent.

"These kids aren't stupid, they know what they're doing, they're doing it for a reason," he says. "We're not saying give up on punishment necessarily, but what about the carrot?"
How do you think society should deal with bullies: the carrot or the stick? Have your say below. As part of an experiment to improve our website, we'll select and highlight exemplary comments later today.

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Provocative new study finds bullies have highest self esteem, social status, lowest rates of depression

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A just-published Canadian study has added heft to a provocative new theory about bullying: that the behaviour is literally in the genes, an inherited trait that actually helps build social rank and sex appeal. If accepted, the hypothesis rooted in evolutionary psychology could transform how schools confront the persistent and often-shattering problem.

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In recent years, one of the most defining elements of the Canadian identity has been the country's social policies - the collection of laws and regulations that govern how Canadians live their lives, and what sorts of individual rights the government is willing to protect and defend.

Given that many Canadians like to focus on how their country is different from the United States, social policy is often seen as a window into the sort of values that make Canada a uniquely progressive country - though it would be a mistake to suggest all social policy is progressive or that progressive social policy has no Canadian critics.

Canadian Health Care

Whenever Canadians are polled about what makes them "proudest to be Canadian," the Canadian health care system often tops the list. Beginning in the 1960s, Canada's provincial governments began introducing government health insurance (sometimes known as medicare), to pay for hospital visits, operations, and other essential medical services. In 1984 the federal government passed the Canada Health Act which forced all provincial health plans to meet certain standards of coverage, and outlawed charging fees for medically-necessary services. Today, all Canadians are provided with comprehensive health insurance from birth through public health plans run by the various provincial governments (with funding help from Ottawa). The provincial governments now generally run most hospitals and clinics as well, with doctors and surgeons charging governments directly for their services. Very few privately-run hospitals or clinics exist in Canada these days.

Canada's public health care system is one of the most generous in the world, but also quite expensive to maintain. In recent years, many provincial governments have started to scale back their scope of insurance coverage in order to make their medicare programs more financially sustainable, and Canadians often purchase supplementary private health insurance to pay for things like dentist trips, eye exams and any operation or treatment the government considers "non-essential." Such plans, sometimes called extended medical coverage are often provided to working Canadians by their employers as a perk of the job. Private health insurance cannot - by law - pay for services covered by a provincial, public health plan, however.

How to guarantee the long-term "survival" of the Canadian health care regime is one of the most heated debates in contemporary Canadian politics. On the right, it's common to advocate greater privatization of medical services, including more privately-run, fee-based clinics and surgeons to give more choice to patients. Folks on the left, in turn, are generally extremely critical of anything that smacks of edging towards a so-called " two-tiered " system, where Canadians with money can buy their way into better medical care than those who use the public system. To the broader public, however, the status quo is considered nearly sacred, which leads most politicians to shy away from proposing dramatic reforms.

Abortion Laws in Canada

In the last couple of decades, Canada has swung from being an aggressively pro-life country to one of the most pro-choice. Owing in part to the pressures of the country's large Catholic population, abortions in Canada were banned entirely until 1969, and then only permitted under narrow conditions when the mother's health could be proven to be in danger. Illegal abortions continued in the background, however, and in 1988, a particularly unapologetic abortion surgeon named Dr. Henry Morgentaler (1923-2013) went before the Supreme Court of Canada to face charges. Siding with Morgentaler, the court ruled the country's existing abortion regulations represented an unconstitutional burden on the rights of women, and the legal restrictions on the procedure were struck down.

Though the Supreme Court's ruling said it would be permissible for the government to place some limitations on abortion, no Canadian government ever has. Canadian women thus have a universal right to abort at any stage of pregnancy - even the final weeks - which is a degree of permissiveness largely unseen elsewhere in the western world.

Abortion is a very controversial topic in contemporary Canada, and tops the list of things to avoid discussing in "polite company." There are a number of passionate pro-life and pro-choice activist groups all over the country, prone to staging aggressive demonstrations and protests in order to ensure their opinions are heard. All of Canada's political parties have pro-life members in their ranks, but they've been mostly unsuccessful in making the issue a mainstream topic of political debate. Since the 1990s, there has been a strong consensus among Canada's party leaders that abortion is a topic too politically explosive to "reopen," so the status quo stays.

Drugs and Alcohol

Liquor was associated with all sorts of social ills in early Canada, and at various times during the early 20th century most provinces experimented with banning the sale and production of alcohol in various ways. This era of so-called prohibition was not the magical solution many had hoped for, however, and by the 1920s, most provinces had changed their laws to re-allow the sale of alcohol, but only within certain tight regulations. To this day, Canadian provinces will often have complicated rules governing just how or where booze can be sold; in some provinces it may only be sold by special government-run liquor stores, in others the law may require hard alcohol and beer to be sold at different locations. Almost all forbid the sale of liquor at 24-hour shops like supermarkets and corner stores. Provinces generally allow citizens to brew (but not sell) their own beer and wine, but it is against federal law to make distilled liquor without a permit.

Canada's legal drinking age is set by the provinces. In Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec the age is 18, everywhere else it is 19. Most provinces also have strict laws against consuming alcohol in public places and low standards for what constitutes " driving while under the influence."

Marijuana was legalized for personal consumption across Canada in the fall of 2018. In theory, there are a lot of strict laws dictating exactly when, where and how marijuana can be bought, sold, and used, but it's unclear to what degree these rules will be enforced. Prior to 2008, Canada's anti-pot laws were rarely enforced and offenders rarely faced serious punishment, particularly in big cities. Since 2001, it has been legal for Canadian doctors to prescribe marijuana for medical reasons, and in 2014 the federal government authorized the licensing of private retail distribution of medicinal marijuana - a decision which triggered a dramatic increase of pot shops in urban centres, most of which promote rather hazy definitions of "medically necessary" pot.

Hard drugs like heroin, cocaine, LSD, and meth are all banned in Canada.

Freedom of Speech in Canada

Canadians generally take their constitutionally-protected right to free expression (the freedom to say or write whatever you want) very seriously, but the privilege is not an absolute one. As discussed in the Canadian Constitution chapter, Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows "reasonable limits" to be placed on most civil rights, and over the years the government has used this authority to pass some legal limits on freedom of speech. Canada has relatively uncontroversial laws that forbid spreading deliberate, malicious lies about other people (known as slander or libel) as well as copying or attempting to profit from other people's ideas ( copyright infringement). It is also generally against the law to use speech to encourage, advise, or provoke the committing of crimes.

It is still technically illegal to sell or produce obscene material in Canada and the Canadian government often bans the import of specific magazines, books, comics, containing very extreme depictions of sexual violence or perverted sex acts like incest or pedophilia. More "mainstream" pornography is only available in specially licensed stores or theaters, though this has obviously become far less relevant in the internet age. Provincial governments have similar laws banning children from buying pornography, excessively violent video games, or tickets for movies with "mature" content

Canada has hate speech laws that make it a crime to publicly incite "hatred against any identifiable group" such as racial, religious, or sexual minorities, through written statements or other forms of media. There are exemptions for matters of sincere opinion or religious belief, and the attorney general of Canada must generally choose to initiate prosecution. More sweeping laws that made it a crime to "expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" on the basis of identity were abolished in 2014. Sentences for the most extreme forms of hate speech, particularly hate speech that "promotes genocide," can reach a maximum of two to five years in prison. New national security legislation makes it a crime to distribute media that "advocates or promotes" terrorism, as well.

Guns in Canada

As a country with long traditions of hunting and trapping, Canada's rate of gun ownership has historically been high, and Canada has some of the most liberal gun laws on earth. According to the Canadian National Firearms Association, there are presently about 21 million guns in Canada owned by about seven million Canadians - or about 20 per cent of the population - the majority of whom are recreational hunters. The most commonly owned guns in Canada are rifles and shotguns.

The Canadian government requires citizens to pass a safety course and undergo a background check before they can get a firearms Possession and Acquisition Licence ( PAL) to legally own or buy arms, and laws governing gun storage and transportation are detailed and strict. Unlike most countries, Canada does not have national gun registry, though handgun owners must obtain a registration certificate to prove they are a legal owner. The government maintains a long list of banned guns, mostly semi-automatic rifles, though they can be rented for use in shooting ranges.

Gun control in Canada has proven to be an issue which sharply divides the country in terms of rural-versus-urban. For those who live in big cities, guns tend to be associated with inner-city crime, particularly gangland murders, and support to severely control or outright ban gun possession is usually high. Canadians who live in more rural parts of the country, in contrast, usually associate guns with hobbies like hunting, sport shooting and collecting, and see gun control as an undue burden that punishes the otherwise law-abiding.

Discrimination Protections

Canada has a fairly robust set of legal protections designed to prevent Canadians from being discriminated against on the basis of things they can't control, such as race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a section of the Canadian Constitution that makes it illegal for the government of Canada, or any provincial government to pass laws that either explicitly discriminate against certain Canadians on the basis of their identity, or simply place an unfair burden on one group over another. The Supreme Court of Canada routinely overturns laws they perceive to be discriminatory on the grounds of Charter protections.

Canada also has a sweeping piece of legislation called the Canadian Human Rights Act that forbids private entities, such as employers, landlords, schools, and stores from discriminating against clients or customers on the basis of identity. Discrimination cases of these sorts are investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and adjudicated by a court-like body known as the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that has the power to issue fines and or other corrective actions. The various provincial governments have their own human rights laws, commissions, and tribunals as well.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights

Canadians' attitudes towards same-sex relationships have greatly liberalized over the last couple decades. Beginning in 1969, most legal bans on " sodomy " were lifted, and since then, more and more Canadians have been comfortable living "out" lives as open homosexuals. Most provincial governments now explicitly prohibit discrimination in employment or housing on the basis of sexual orientation, and the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that it is constitutional to impose fines or bans on those who spread aggressively anti-gay "hate speech." At the same time, homosexuality can still be a slightly taboo topic in day-to-day Canadian life. Many gay or lesbians may experience tension with their families in the aftermath of "coming out" (particularly in more rural or religious parts of the country), and public displays of same-sex affection can be rare, except in known "gay-friendly" venues or neighbourhoods.

After years of opposition from both major parties, in 2005 same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada when the short-lived government of Prime Minister Paul Martin (b. 1938) passed the Civil Marriage Act, which redefined marriage as simply a "lawful union of two persons." The law was opposed, and continues to be opposed, by many Christian groups and political conservatives, but in 2016 the Conservative Party formally abandoned its promise to reverse the legislation.

Transgenderism, the idea that some people were born into a biological sex that does not match their psychological gender identity is a newer concept in Canada, and one more controversial and contested than homosexuality. All provincial health plans recognize gender dysmorphia - the medical name for the state of being transgender - as a legitimate medical condition, and will cover the costs of sex reassignment surgery (also known as gender-confirming surgery). That said, there are almost no surgeons in Canada who actually perform the procedure, and many trans Canadians must travel abroad - and often pay out of pocket - to have it performed.

Prostitution

Selling sex is legal in Canada, but purchasing it is not, a somewhat confusing status quo born from a 2013 Supreme Court ruling holding that previous attempts to outlaw selling represented an undue burden on the safety rights of prostitutes.

Canada's new prostitution laws, passed in 2014, impose tight regulations on precisely how sex can be sold and advertised - generally as far from public view as possible, and only by the prostitute herself (as opposed to a pimp, madam, or brothel).

Gambling in Canada

First legalized in 1969, government-run gambling underwent a dramatic boom in Canada during the 1980s and 1990s, largely as a way for provinces to increase their budget revenues without raising taxes. All provinces are now home to a wide variety of legal games of chance, including slot machines, casinos, lottery tickets, sports bookies, animal racing, and video lottery terminals (or " VLTs"). In 2010, the province of British Columbia went even further and became the first jurisdiction in North America to legalize internet casinos as well. It should be noted that in all these cases gambling services are government-run; it remains illegal in Canada to run a private casino or betting house.

Compared to some of the other issues discussed in this chapter, gambling is generally only a minor controversy in modern Canada. While most Canadians may not want a casino in their neighbourhood and may be aware that there are health problems associated with too much gambling, casual gambling once in a while is a fairly common pastime unlikely to evoke much judgment from others.

Death Penalty in Canada

From 1859 to 1962, the Canadian government executed 710 convicts, mostly by hanging, for various crimes involving murder or treason. After a series of controversial cases, a moratorium on further executions was imposed in 1967, followed by the outright abolishment of the death penalty in 1976, by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (1919-2000).

Despite being execution-free for more than 30 years, public support for executing murderers remains high in Canada, though no Canadian political party officially supports reversing the current ban.

Animal Rights

Though pet ownership (cats and dogs, mostly) is common in Canada, it's not a right, and pet owners are often discriminated against in law. Many public buildings, including apartments, forbid animals and in many parts of the country the types and breeds of animals you're allowed to own is limited by provincial law. The physical abuse of animals remains a crime, however.

Welfare and Pensions in Canada

In response to increasing Canadian life expectancy, the Canadian government has created various pension programs to ensure Canadians will still have access to a livable income even after they stop working. Today, every Canadian's paycheque includes a deduction for the Canadian Pension Plan ( CPP), which is then pooled by the federal government, partially invested in the stock market (via the CPP Investment Board), and then redistributed in the form of pension cheques to citizens over the age of 65. In addition, there is also the similar but optional Old Age Security Pension ( OAS) program, which can be opted into by retirement age seniors who have lived in Canada for a significant period of time. Of course, this is just a broad summary. Both programs are, in fact, extremely complicated and bureaucratic, and likely to get even more so as the government is forced to deal with a rapidly aging population. About half of all Canadians are also part of a private pension plan through their employer.

Welfare is a broad term that basically refers to various forms of financial assistance that are paid by the government to people who, for whatever reason, are not working. Employment Insurance (formerly known by the more dour name Unemployment Insurance) is the most common form of this, and is available to Canadians who have been unexpectedly laid off or forced to quit their jobs for reasons such as pregnancy, illness or injury, or to take care of a sickly loved one. Most provinces offer similar programs known as income assistance for people unable to work, as well as disability assistance programs for people with limiting physical impairments.

In general, welfare programs are fairly controversial in Canada and there are social taboos associated with using them for too long. Since the 1990s, welfare rules have gotten steadily stricter, and now it's usually expected that welfare recipients will be actively seeking jobs or otherwise making plans for their future while on it.

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In recent years, one of the most defining elements of the Canadian identity has been the country's social policies - the collection of laws and regulations that govern how Canadians live their lives, and what sorts of individual rights the government is willing to protect and defend.

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Digital society and Information

"Digital technology, a societal issue" as the main title of the 2012 Annual INRIA Report and " Industry 4.0 - How digital technology will affect all sides of your company" on the cover of the Usine Nouvelle magazine (sept. 2013): two examples to illustrate how much Digital Society is a major challenge for the players of information sciences and technologies in close connection with the human and social sciences. One can understand that this challenge as well as the definition and the resolution of questions about the digitization and/or the effects on privacy, i.e contacts between individuals, relations of the individual and environment, the socio-economic world and the labor organization, etc. This digitization is based on new methods for modeling, capture, treatment, and communication of informations. The collected data could be massive (" big data ") and become a raw material which be processed, unders- tood, analyzed, managed, or created in order to develop new services. Numerous players are concerned from scientists and engineers to decision-makers, employees, and even citizens. INSA Lyon and its partners act on the entire chain of treatment processes of data of different types (measurements, voices, images, texts, etc) from their captures up to the analyses of their uses after processing. The Society based on digital technology implies to work on the issues related to hardware and software as well as using multidisciplinary approaches such as the ones developed with the IMU LabEx " Intelligence of Urban Worlds (Intelligence des Mondes Urbains )".

Energy for a sustainable development

This societal issue is directly linked to the French and European policies related to the energy transition. One has to define the future energy mix which will lead to a lower environmental footprint and a better quality of life. Problems link to energy production (resources, environmental im- pact) will be minimized if the energy consumption is limited. Thus, the challenge for Research is to propose solutions allowing to produce clean energy but also to reduce the energy needs. This energy transition requires basic research which is the source of technological developments (e.g. combustion engines, steam engines at the beginning of the industrial era, nuclear energy, hydroelectricity, solar energy, wind energy, green fuel...) and economic development. INSA's laboratories contribute to this energy transition through research work to meet those needs.

Environment: natural, industrial and urban environments

Environmental issues relate to various scales: products with low environmental footprints and respectful to the users, increasing urbanization, natural and industrial risks, climate change, etc. Education and research activities at INSA Lyon contribute to develop relevant and innovative technical and economical solutions allowing to combine well-being of people and reduced pressures on the environment. Such solutions result from the combination of scientific expertise in multidisciplinary research projects and the development of unique facilities like technological platforms.

Global health and Bioengineering

The main objectives of the researches performed at INSA Lyon in this field are the development of a welfare scheme efficient at different levels (patient care, organization, etc) and accessible for everybody. This is one of the highest priorities in our Society. To answer these societal issues, the INSA Lyon Research offers conceptual and methodological solutions in numerous health and bioengineering fields. Four areas of excellence were identified covering the whole health chain, i.e. from basic researches concerning studies on model organisms such as microorganisms, insects, etc. to the design of new molecules and medical devices, diagnostics, and the organization of the welfare schemes. These researches aim at proposing a more efficient care system at the clinical, social, and economical levels.

Transport: structures, infrastructures, and mobilities

The INSA Lyon expertise in the field of transport was developed in close collaboration with the Industry at the local, national, and European levels. Today, the research in this field is very challenging and diverse for all the partners in the Society. In particular, the reduction of the environmental footprint of transport, the goal to maintain the competitiveness of the transport industry as well as the mobility policies need to be taken into account for development of relevant researches.
Transport combines very different trans-disciplinary approaches for which the technological and management advances will be issued from strong interactions between scientific disciplines.
INSA Lyon offers well-recognized expertise in engineering which could allow to bring additional scientific value from the components and technologies to the management of the transport systems. These competences could be sketched as a triptych: vehicle - infrastructure - uses, illustrating both excellence in scientific disciplines and innovative multidisciplinary approaches.

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"Digital technology, a societal issue" as the main title of the 2012 Annual INRIA Report and " Industry 4.0 - How digital technology will affect all sides of your company" on the cover of the Usine Nouvelle magazine (sept.

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Sendhil Mullainathan: Solving social problems with a nudge

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MacArthur winner Sendhil Mullainathan uses the lens of behavioral economics to study a tricky set of social problems -- those we know how to solve, but don't. We know how to reduce child deaths due to diarrhea, how to prevent diabetes-related blindness and how to implement solar-cell technology ...

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10 reasons as to why people feel lonely. 

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10 reasons as to why people feel lonely. 

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How do you make a film about loneliness that isn't bleak and despairing? It's hugely important subject, and it's reaching such epidemic proportions in Britain that I knew I had to make a film. And somehow make a film people would watch - and not run away from.

The problem I think is that we're all a bit scared of loneliness - of being alone. Of being left. Of not being loved. Or needed. Or cared about. "Lonely" hits a spot of fear in all of us even if we don't acknowledge it. So a year ago, I set out to find people who were brave enough to admit and talk about how lonely they were. But I wanted to find people whose stories offered hope - either because they'd found a way of dealing with loneliness or because they had something in their lives that, even in a small way, alleviated their loneliness.

What was also vital was that the focus moved beyond old people. The loneliness epidemic is affecting people of all ages. It can be as big a problem for young and middle-aged people as for their grandparents.

I wish after making The Age of Loneliness I could identify 10 key reasons people today are lonely. And 10 key things that could be done to help. But it's complex. And lonely people can be hard to do something for because they often don't want to admit they are lonely and need help.

Why are we so lonely? Society has changed - our communities, villages, towns and cities are different. We move away from our support networks - for work, for training, for college, for university. If we have children we are usually no longer surrounded by our relatives. The company of babies and young children may be magical, but it can also make us feel lonely. Then vast numbers of us get divorced so we don't have the companionship of a partner to go through life with. Losing your job or constantly having to move for work makes your rootless.

Mental health can be a factor in loneliness too. In the film, Christine, Martin and Iain talk eloquently about the isolation of living with mental health problems and their different solutions.

And of course as we all start living longer, that means even if we do have a partner one of us will die and the other will spend much of their so-called twilight years alone - at an age when they are least able to fend for themselves.

As we all start living longer, it means we will probably spend much of our so-called twilight years alone

That all sounds a bit bleak. But there are definite glimmers of hope. What I discovered over the last year is an enormous and wonderful network of charities and volunteers - people who talk on the phone to lonely people, who organise parties for them, who befriend or visit, who run groups and outings. When you see what a difference such a small thing as a cup of tea or a chat can make to someone's life it really does make you want to sign up immediately.

I learned from the remarkable 93-year-old Bob that he expects to feel lonely for the rest of his life because his beloved Kath is no longer by his side, though he takes great comfort from her ashes seated in the chair next to him. But equally importantly, he has started volunteering - it gives him a purpose, a reason to get out of bed. He doesn't deny how lonely he is but he's trying his best to keep going.

Olive, at 100, sits there day in day out, craving someone to chat to. The high point of her life is the monthly tea party that brings together lonely over 75s. But it also gives a purpose to lonely younger people like Kylie, who says as a volunteer she gets as much out of the occasion as people like Olive.

Some men can find it hard to talk about their emotions, so it was all the more remarkable that 72-year-old Richard was willing to go on camera and talk about how lonely he was following the death of his wife. Loneliness, he said, scared him more than death and the prospect of another 20-plus years on his own horrified him. He's taken to internet dating with a vengeance, though admits his chances of success are probably slim. In spite of material wealth and a large family, Richard says it just doesn't fill the void in his life. And that is what I heard again and again. People of all ages missed someone to do nothing with. To chat idly. To sit next to. Part of me feels we have to train ourselves to enjoy solitude more. And perhaps also work harder at being kind to others and creating new support networks to replace the traditional ones, now lost.
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10 reasons people are lonely? It's more complicated than that | Sue Bourne

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How do you make a film about loneliness that isn't bleak and despairing? It's hugely important subject, and it's reaching such epidemic proportions in Britain that I knew I had to make a film. And somehow make a film people would watch - and not run away from.

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In 2010, the Mental Health Foundation found that loneliness was a greater concern among 18 to 34-year-olds than over-55s. Last year, VICELAND's UK census revealed that 42 percent of respondents' biggest fear was ending up alone. This data was jarring.

We tend to think of loneliness as something that will take us in its claws when we get old. When companions die, errands are done by 8.45AM and the day is punctuated not by conversations but by ad breaks on daytime TV. When time loses its tautness. It's the part of getting old that scares us shitless.

When you're small, loneliness is an abstract concept. Young brains struggle with abstract thinking. I remember sitting in the back of my dad's Volvo Estate singing along to his Revolver cassette, to "Eleanor Rigby", that weird, funereal-like meditation on human isolation. The song I was named after.
"All the lonely people / Where do they all belong?"
Did I know what Macca was on about? Absolutely not. At six years old, my concept of loneliness could be reduced to the phrase, "No one will play with me."

I'd come to know the topography of loneliness, though. How big a double bed feels when you've shared one for five years and love hasn't been enough. How living by yourself for the first time is to be regularly nudging away despair. How swapping chattery offices for self-employment can make conversations at the newsagent feel like Christmas. I'd know the queasy shame bound up in the words "I'm lonely". Because when you're technically "young" (even if, in your thirties, you don't feel it), while potential still fizzes around you, you're not supposed to feel lonely, are you?

Loneliness among the elderly is improving slowly as charities like Age UK re-link older people with the world. But what about the rest of us? What haven't we seen or talked about? To examine loneliness among this age group - my own - we need to zoom out. Look around.

"Loneliness as an epidemic is inextricably linked to the state of society at any given time," says Dr Jay Watts, a clinical psychologist who regularly writes for the national press. "The neoliberal agenda - common to all governments since Thatcher - has propagated individualism alongside attacks on anything that takes soft relationships seriously." These soft relationships - the GP who has known us for years, the teacher who has time to get to know us as individuals - are, she says, "sacrificed to the god of efficiency and performance".

The emphasis on the importance of "I" is at the root of much of our distress.

The importance placed on self-sufficiency in our society is immense. "Everywhere, we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism," George Monbiot argued last year. He believes neoliberalism has created loneliness, and it's hard to disagree.

Generation Y are stuck in insecure rental contracts, often with strangers. It's a horrible loop. "Millennials are forced to move frequently under the tyranny of landlords who have no interest in recognising that establishing ties to one's local community fosters the everyday social relations which make all the difference to our sense of belonging and thus our feeling of loneliness," says Watts. We can't afford to buy houses or have children and, if we're not unemployed, have entered a job market that's rigged against us and will pay us a hell of a lot less than our predecessors. The result? A perpetual state of adolescence. Often well into our thirties. Some are forced to move back in with their parents. Society compels us to drive for self-sufficiency, but that very society we've evolved in holds us back. It pulls us apart from one another. We forget how to make friends, but there are apps for that. If we need a cuddle, we can pay a stranger to give us one.

Money is a vast barrier, though. Unless you're in a reasonably well-paid gig, have some family gold or a rich partner, it can be a liminal existence. It's easy to see where loneliness creeps in. If parenthood happens, the stakes are even higher. Mumsnet message boards and the many Facebook groups used by young mums reveal the loneliness that burns up and down the country. The consumerist images we're blasted with tell us that having a baby is all twinkly toys, contented gurgles and softness. The reality is often a messy, frustrating and unbelievably lonely one, lived out in living rooms, with this little human being at the centre of it all who you want to do the best for. Particularly if you're a single parent or if you're on welfare, unable to access what the monied can.

The emphasis on the importance of "I" is at the root of much of our distress. Research has shown that loneliness hurts us on a cellular level. Many models of psychology agree that we're born with some biological predisposition to form attachments. Social contact can reduce physical pain, but social pain also serves an evolutionary function in making us seek connection. Survival among social mammals depends on having robust bonds within the pack. Being on the edge, isolated, makes an animal glint in the eyes of its predator.

Even though it goes against how we're wired as a species, it feels like it's become pitiful to admit to disliking being alone. Particularly if we are young and should be "out there" - whatever "out there" means. But if we subscribe to Sartre's belief that loneliness is a fundamental part of the human condition (insert laugh-crying emoji here) then, Christ: why wouldn't we be compelled to dilute the pain with someone? In being so obsessed with individualism are we ignoring a core aspect of what it means to be human?

The sociologist Robert S Weiss identified six social needs that contribute to feelings of loneliness when not met: attachment, social integration, nurturance, reassurance of worth, sense of reliable alliance and guidance in stressful situations. Weiss was influenced by attachment theory and the seminal work of the psychologist John Bowlby in the late 1950s. Bowlby believed that attachment characterises human experience from "the cradle to the grave". The attachments we have as infants, then, inform the ones we have - or don't have - as adults. If we aren't sharing the burdens of life, loneliness is inevitable. We've built towers of stigma around openly recognising this.

Stigma is loneliness' kindling. Although not a mental health issue itself, we know that depression and anxiety increases our chances of feeling lonely, which can in turn have a negative impact on mental health. We know that self-harm is the biggest killer of people in their early twenties in the UK, and that loneliness plays a significant role in a person using their body to communicate emotional pain. Stigma prevents people from talking about mental distress, often with fatal consequences.

It's easy to blame social media for the epidemic of loneliness in the young. We can recreate ourselves over and over, promoting holograms that don't reflect the lived reality of our loneliness. Generation Y has grown up with the internet as part of everyday life, but we don't know enough about how it affects our mental health. The data isn't there yet. The digital revolution means the lonely can connect with one another with a degree of anonymity. For those suffering mental health issues, it can be a first step towards seeking help. When I was writing a book about anxiety I was introduced to football message boards and how, in those anonymous boxes, men felt able to discuss their depression with other like-minded men. They encouraged each other to seek support in the outside world.

Social media, Watts argues, also means that people "find it more and more difficult to tolerate compromise and the frustration of long-term everyday relationships, which can leave us drifting outside the stabilisation which social bonds give us". This displacement, she says, is exaggerated by changing dating patterns. Tinder. "The ease of swiping left, the idea we should not have to compromise, makes these relationships ever more insecure." Of course it does. When did it become gauche to admit to wanting a dependable other?

Being partner-less often means hearing those sermons of how we "need to learn to be by ourselves", particularly if a break-up happened in the recent past. Seeking companionship when we should be "looking after number one" is frowned upon. The single people I know aren't enjoying living in this tyranny of "shoulds". One of my friends told me she exercises hard to be so exhausted that she forgets she's lonely. I identified.

"When we're all cohabiting but not necessarily romantically entwined, it's possible to feel deeply lonely, even when your house is full of people and you're going out all the time," says 28-year-old Rachel, who works in advertising in London - identified by studies as one of the loneliest regions in the UK. "Shagging people you don't love can make you feel lonely," Rachel continues. "Dating apps are bleak. Admitting you're lonely as a single woman is especially noxious. Nobody wants to come across like a desperate, warty old maid, so we pretend we're not lonely."
We pretend.
The stigma of loneliness is so ripe that we lie to each other. But as I've learned recently, saying "I'm lonely" has a domino effect. Others start saying it, too. The success of a show like Fleabag is undoubtedly down to its brazen exploration of the loneliness and anger of a single woman. It legitimised the emotions Fleabag's peers were feeling behind our laptop screens. "I fucking hate being alone," says Rachel, with the caveat that I don't use her real name.

So what do we do? Monbiot says that tackling loneliness would require "the reappraisal of an entire worldview". No biggie, then. But he's right when he says that, of all the fantasies human beings entertain, "the idea that we can go it alone is the most absurd and perhaps the most dangerous".

The MP Jo Cox was known in Westminster for wanting to form coalitions across party lines. Seema Kennedy, a Conservative MP, wanted the same. Together, they planned a commission into loneliness to begin in late 2016 - a call to action rather than politicians saying stuff and doing nothing. On the 16th of June, 2016, Cox's ambition was cut short. She was murdered in her West Yorkshire constituency. Her killer, Thomas Mair, was an extreme right-wing terrorist. A loner.

In the wake of Cox's death, Kennedy and others are taking her plans forward. They have revealed the great work Cox did, gathering data on loneliness to emphatically prove it's not just something that affects older people. Figures collected by 13 charities reveal that over nine million people in the UK - almost a fifth of the population - say they are always or often lonely. Two-thirds feel uncomfortable admitting to it. Cox knew that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK. "She called loneliness the 'silent epidemic'," says Rachel Wicks, who works on the commission's PR. "We want to start conversations," she says.

Our worldview is not going to change overnight. Possibly not in a generation. So we have to think small, of the everyday. Verbalise our own loneliness, be aware of others' circumstances and how loneliness is cultivated. Breaking through our awkwardness and calling people that we know want to hear from us. At the root of our loneliness is what Watts calls "the lost fundamental drive" - that is, belonging to a community that registers and cares about us. That's what we need to remember.
@eleanormorgan

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Why Loneliness Affects So Many Young People

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In 2010, the Mental Health Foundation found that loneliness was a greater concern among 18 to 34-year-olds than over-55s. Last year, VICELAND's UK census revealed that 42 percent of respondents' biggest fear was ending up alone. This data was jarring. We tend to think of loneliness as something that will take us in its claws when we get old.

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Dealing With Depression and Loneliness - Depression Center - Everyday Health

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Depression and loneliness often go hand in hand. Learn strategies to overcome the isolation of depression and other symptoms that can cause you to feel lonely.