Why Love Island is so harmful

LOVE Island is back. As regular readers of this column will know, I’m not a fan of the show. The participants are everything that is wrong about society — ignorant, superficial, vain, arrogant, narcissistic.

I do get that for many viewers it’s just something to gossip about, but I still worry about the impact it has on younger people.

The fact that everyone is so emphatically attractive — the women all have svelte figures with pneumatic breasts; the men chiselled, buff torsos with rippling abs — suggests this kind of physique is normal when it’s not. Worse, the guaranteed fortune in post-show earnings that each participlant will make when they leave the island sends the worst possible message. Character, personality and what you achieve in life through hard work count for little; it is all about how ‘fit’ you look to the opposite sex. Depressing.

■ Random acts of kindness have been shown to help those with depression. Counter-intuitively, new research shows that the benefit goes to the person doing the kind act. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve recommended volunteering to those who have come to me with depression. Showing kindness can be a tremendous boost to your own mood.

I remember one young patient of mine who was so depressed, he could barely get out of bed. He was wary of medication, so I suggested he do some volunteering while he waited for therapy. So he started helping out in an old people’s home. over the months, the transformation I saw in him was incredible. In the end, he was discharged from mental health services altogether. depression is an illness of isolation: a disease of disconnection. When you’re kind to another person, it connects you. It is only part of the arsenal with which to attack depression, but it is undoubtedly a useful tool.