Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Harper, Lecturer in International Relations, University of East London

As the 14th Dalai Lama celebrates his 90th birthday with thousands of Tibetan Buddhists, there’s already tension over how the next spiritual leader will be selected. Controversially, the Chinese government has suggested it wants more power over who is chosen.

Traditionally, Tibetan leaders and aides seek a young boy who is seen as the chosen reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. It is possible that after they do this, this time Beijing will try to appoint a rival figure.

However, the current Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India, insists that the process of succession will be led by the Swiss-based Gaden Phodrang Trust, which manages his affairs. He said no one else had authority “to interfere in this matter” and that statement is being seen as a strong signal to China.

Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

Throughout the 20th century, Tibetans struggled to create an independent state, as their homeland was fought over by Russia, the UK and China. In 1951, Tibetan leaders signed a treaty with China allowing a Chinese military presence on their land.

China established the Tibetan Autonomous Region in 1965, in name this means that Tibet is an autonomous region within China, but in effect it is tightly controlled. Tibet has a government in exile, based in India, that still wants Tibet to become an independent state.

This is a continuing source of tension between the two countries. India also claims part of Tibet as its own territory.

Beijing sees having more power over the selection of the Dalai Lama as an opportunity to stamp more authority on Tibet. Tibet’s strategic position and its resources are extremely valuable to China, and play a part in Beijing’s wider plans for regional dominance, and in its aim of pushing back against India, its powerful rival in south Asia.

Tibet provides China with a naturally defensive border with the rest of southern Asia, with its mountainous terrain providing a buffer against India. The brief Sino-Indian war of 1962 when the two countries battled for control of the region, still has implications for India and China today, where they continue to dispute border lands.

As with many powerful nations, China has always been concerned about threats, or rival power bases, within its neighbourhood. This is similar to how the US has used the Monroe Doctrine to ensure its dominance over Latin America, and how Russia seeks to maintain its influence over former Soviet states.

Beijing views western criticism of its control of Tibet as interference in its sphere of influence.

Read more:
India and Pakistan tension escalates with suspension of historic water treaty

Another source of contention is that Beijing traditionally views boundaries such as the McMahon line defining the China-India border as lacking legitimacy, a border drawn up when China was at its weakest in the 19th century. Known in China as the “century of humiliation”, this was characterised by a series of unequal treaties, which saw the loss of territory to stronger European powers.

This continues to a source of political tensions in China’s border regions including Tibet. This is a controversial part of China’s historical memory and continues to influence its ongoing relationship with the west.

Demand for natural resources

Tibet’s importance to Beijing also comes from its vast water resources. Access to more water is seen as increasingly important for China’s wider push towards self-sufficiency which has become imperative in the face of climate change. This also provides China with a significant geopolitical tool.

For instance, the Mekong River rises in Tibet and flows through China and along the borders of Myanamar and Laos and onward into Thailand and Cambodia. It is the third longest river in Asia, and is crucial for many of the economies of south-east Asia. It is estimated to sustain 60 million people.

China’s attempts to control water supplies, particularly through the building of huge dams in Tibet, has added to regional tensions. Around 50% of the flow to the Mekong was cut off for part of 2021, after a Chinese mega dam was built. This caused a lot of resentment from other countries which depended on the water.

Moves by other nations to control access to regional water supplies in recent years show how water is now becoming a negotiating tool. India attempted to cut off Pakistan’s water supply in 2025 as part of the conflict between the two. Control of Tibet allows China to pursue a similar strategy, which grants Beijing leverage in its dealings with New Delhi, and other governments.

Another natural resource is also a vital part of China’s planning. Tibet’s significant lithium deposits are crucial for Chinese supply chains, particularly for their use in the electric vehicle industry. Beijing is attempting to reduce its reliance on western firms and supplies, in the face of the present trade tensions between the US and China, and Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.

Tibet’s value to China is a reflection of wider changes in a world where water is increasingly playing an important role in geopolitics. With its valuable natural resources, China’s desire to control Tibet is not likely to decrease.

Tom Harper does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. China’s interest in the next Dalai Lama is also about control of Tibet’s water supply – https://theconversation.com/chinas-interest-in-the-next-dalai-lama-is-also-about-control-of-tibets-water-supply-255843

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Horowitz, Visiting Clinical Research Fellow in Psychiatry, UCL

A new review of antidepressant withdrawal effects – written by academics, many of whom have close ties to drug manufacturers – risks underestimating the potential harms to long-term antidepressant users by focusing on short-term, industry-funded studies.

There is growing recognition that stopping antidepressants – especially after long-term use – can cause severe and sometimes debilitating withdrawal symptoms, and it is now acknowledged by the UK government as a public health issue.

One of the main reasons this issue took decades to recognise after the release of modern antidepressants onto the market is because medical guidelines, such as those produced by Nice (England’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence), had for many years declared withdrawal effects to be “brief and mild”.

This description was based on studies run by drug companies, where people had only taken the medication for eight to 12 weeks. As a result, when patients later showed up with severe, long-lasting symptoms, many doctors didn’t take them seriously because these experiences contradicted what the guidelines led them to expect.

Our recent research helps explain this mismatch. We found a clear link between how long someone takes antidepressants and how likely they are to experience withdrawal symptoms – and how severe these symptoms are.

We surveyed NHS patients and found that people who had used antidepressants for more than two years were ten times more likely to have withdrawal effects, five times more likely for those effects to be severe, and 18 times more likely for them to be long lasting compared with those who had taken the drugs for six months or less.

For patients who used antidepressants for less than six months, withdrawal symptoms were mostly mild and brief. Three-quarters reported no or mild symptoms, most of which lasted less than four weeks.

Only one in four of these patients was unable to stop when they wanted to. However, for long-term users (more than two years), two-thirds reported moderate or severe withdrawal effects, with one-quarter reporting severe withdrawal effects. Almost one-third of long-term users reported symptoms that lasted for more than three months. Four-fifths of these patients were unable to stop their antidepressants despite trying.

About 2 million people on antidepressants in England have been taking them for over five years, according to a BBC investigation. And in the US at least 25 million people have taken antidepressants for more than five years. What happens to people in eight-to-12-week studies is a far cry from what happens to millions of people when they stop.

Studying what happens to people after just eight to 12 weeks on antidepressants is like testing car safety by crashing a vehicle into a wall at 5km/h – ignoring the fact that real drivers are out on the roads doing 60km/h.

History repeating itself?

Against this backdrop, a review has just been published in Jama Psychiatry. Several of the senior authors declare payments from drug companies. In what looks like history repeating itself, the review draws on short-term trials – many funded by the pharmaceutical industry – that were similar to those used to shape early treatment guidelines. The authors conclude that antidepressants do not cause significant withdrawal effects.

Their main analysis is based on eleven trials that compared withdrawal symptoms in people who had stopped antidepressants with those who had continued them or stopped taking a placebo. Six of these trials had people on antidepressants for eight weeks, four for 12 weeks and just one for 26 weeks.

They reported a slightly higher number of withdrawal symptoms in people who had stopped antidepressants, which they say does not constitute a “clinically significant” withdrawal syndrome. They also suggest the symptoms could be explained by the “nocebo effect” – where negative expectations cause people to feel worse.

In our view, the results are likely to greatly underestimate the risk of withdrawal for the millions of people on these drugs for years. The review found no relationship between the duration of use of antidepressants and withdrawal symptoms, but there were too few long-term studies to test this association properly.

The review probably underestimates, in our view, short-term withdrawal effects too by assuming that the fact that people experience withdrawal-like symptoms when stopping a placebo or continuing an antidepressant cancels out withdrawal effects from antidepressants. But this is not a valid assumption.

We know that antidepressant withdrawal effects overlap with side-effects and with everyday symptoms, but this does not mean they are the same thing. People stopping a placebo report symptoms such as dizziness and headache, because these are common occurrences. However, as was shown in another recent review, symptoms following discontinuation of a placebo tend to be milder than those experienced when stopping antidepressants, which can be intense enough to require emergency care.

So deducting the rate of symptoms after stopping a placebo or continuing an antidepressant from antidepressant withdrawal symptoms is likely to underestimate the true extent of withdrawal.

The review also doesn’t include several well-designed drug company studies that found high rates of withdrawal symptoms. For example, an American study found that more than 60% of people who stopped antidepressants (after eleven months) experienced withdrawal symptoms.

The authors suggest that depression after stopping antidepressants is probably a return of the original condition, not withdrawal symptoms, because similar rates of depression were seen in people who stopped taking a placebo. But this conclusion is based on limited and unreliable data (that is, relying on participants in studies to report such events without prompting, rather than assessing them systematically) from just five studies.

We hope uncritical reporting of a review based on the sort of short-term studies that led to under-recognition of withdrawal effects in the first place, does not disrupt the growing acceptance of the problem and slow efforts by the health system to help potentially millions of people who may be severely affected.

The authors and publisher of the new review have been approached for comment.

Mark Horowitz is the author of the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines which outlines how to safely stop antidepressants, benzodiazepines, gabapentinoids and z-drugs, for which he receives royalties. He is co-applicant on the RELEASE and RELEASE+ trials in Australia funded by the NHMRC and MRFF examining hyperbolic tapering of antidepressants. He is co-founder and consultant to Outro Health, a digital clinic which helps people to safely stop no longer needed antidepressants in the US. He is a member of the Critical Psychiatry Network, an informal group of psychiatrists.

Joanna Moncrieff was a co-applicant on a study of antidepressant discontinuation funded by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research. She is co-applicant on the RELEASE and RELEASE+ trials in Australia funded by the NHMRC and MRFF examining hyperbolic tapering of antidepressants. She receives modest royalties for books about psychiatric drugs. She is co-chair person of the Critical Psychiatry Network, an informal group of psychiatrists.

– ref. Antidepressant withdrawal: new review downplays symptoms but misses the mark for long-term use – https://theconversation.com/antidepressant-withdrawal-new-review-downplays-symptoms-but-misses-the-mark-for-long-term-use-260708

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrea Taylor, Associate Professor in Risk Communication, University of Leeds

The UK Met Office has given storms forenames for the past decade as part of an effort to raise public awareness of extreme weather before it strikes. Heatwaves are becoming increasingly frequent and severe due to greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly from burning fossil fuel, which are raising global temperatures by trapping more heat in Earth’s atmosphere.

These extreme heat events aren’t named in the UK. Should that change?

Effective communication strategies are necessary to make people aware of upcoming heatwaves and help them understand how to reduce their risk. Spain started naming them in 2023, with Heatwave Zoe. Italy has a longstanding but unofficial tradition of naming heatwaves according to mythology and classical history.

The results include Lucifero (Lucifer, another name for the devil) and Cerbero (Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the underworld in Greek myth), popularised by the private weather service il Meteo (ilmeteo.it).

Severe heatwaves in summer 2023 and 2024 prompted a campaign to name heatwaves after fossil fuel companies, to increase awareness of their role in climate change.

However, there is limited evidence to indicate whether this would be effective in encouraging people to take proper safety precautions during heatwaves, such as staying in the shade between 11am and 3pm, closing the curtains of sun-facing windows during the day and making sure to have enough water if travelling and looking out for those who may struggle to keep themselves cool and hydrated, such as elderly people living alone.

To explore how effective naming heatwaves might be, my research team conducted online experiments with 2,152 people in England and 1,981 people in Italy.

Lucifer is scarier than Arnold

Participants were asked to imagine that next summer, they were to receive a warning that a heatwave was about to affect their country. Participants were randomly assigned information about an event that was was either unnamed, given a threatening name (Lucifer/Lucifero), or a more neutral name (Arnold).

Then they were asked how much of a risk they though that the event would pose and the actions they would anticipate taking. English participants were also asked about their thoughts on storm-naming practices in the UK and whether they felt that this should be extended to heatwaves.

We found that naming a heatwave had no effect on the intention of people to take protective measures against it in either country. In Italy, there was no difference between how people perceived the unnamed heatwave and Lucifero, but Arnold was judged to be slightly less concerning and severe.

This suggests that, while naming a heatwave does not increase concern, departing from Italy’s established convention of using threatening names does reduce it slightly.

Our participants in England rated Lucifer as more severe and concerning than an unnamed heatwave, though not by much. When asked about their thoughts on naming weather events more broadly, English participants tended to agree that naming storms made people more likely to engage with weather warnings, but only a minority were in favour of naming heatwaves. Overall we found that, while some people were generally supportive of naming weather events, others worried it could sensationalise them.

It probably won’t help much

We did not find enough evidence to support naming heatwaves in the UK.

Despite a large sample, we found only a very small effect on perceived risk and did not detect any greater intention to take safety precautions for a named heatwave. We also found that responses differed between England and Italy.

Heatwaves can cross national borders. The fact that there are national differences in how people respond to naming them could lead to unintended differences in how people interpret the risk in different places.

And unlike storms, which usually take place over a single day with a clearer start and end, heatwaves can last from days to weeks – it’s not always clear whether a prolonged hot spell is one heatwave or a series of them, which could lead to confusion if named.

Heatwaves are an opportunity to discuss the risks posed by climate change. But naming heatwaves risks coming across as sensationalist to some members of the public. This might have the opposite effect, and make people less likely to heed safety messaging about severe heat.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Andrea Taylor receives funding from The Lloyds Register Foundation, UKRI and Horizon Europe.

– ref. Should the UK name heatwaves like storms? It won’t make people take them more seriously – https://theconversation.com/should-the-uk-name-heatwaves-like-storms-it-wont-make-people-take-them-more-seriously-260635

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natalie Hodgson, Assistant Professor in Law, University of Nottingham

The right to trial by jury is a fundamental part of the criminal justice system in England and Wales. But under new proposals to address a record backlog of almost 77,000 Crown Court cases, some cases could now be heard by judge alone.

Sir Brian Leveson has delivered part one of his independent review of the criminal courts, making 45 recommendations to address delays in the criminal justice process. One of his recommendations is that serious offences could be tried by a judge alone without a jury. Our evidence to the review explored how judge-alone trials have been used in other countries.

Currently, a person can only be tried without a jury at Crown Court if there is a risk of jury tampering. Under Leveson’s proposal, judge-alone trials will be expanded to cases where a defendant requests to be tried without a jury, serious and complex fraud offences and where the case is likely to be lengthy or particularly complex.

To understand how this might work, we can to look to other countries where judge-alone trials are used. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US all permit judge-alone trials in circumstances similar to what Leveson is recommending. A defendant can choose to be tried by a judge instead of a jury in certain circumstances.

Defendants tend to express a preference for trial by judge alone if they are concerned that prejudicial media coverage or the nature of the offences might bias jurors against them. Leveson recommends that judges should decide whether a defendant’s request for a judge-alone trial should be granted, but stops short of identifying the factors that a judge should consider.

Leveson leaves open the question of whether judge-alone trials should be available for all offences, or whether certain offences should be exempt. Some countries limit which offences can be heard without a jury. For example, in the Australian Capital Territory, a defendant cannot request a trial without a jury for murder or certain sexual offences.

In New South Wales, judges are advised against permitting a judge-alone trial when the offence involves consideration of “community standards”. This recognises that members of the community have an important role to play in deciding whether a defendant has acted “reasonably”, “negligently” or “dishonestly”. For example, if a person is charged with manslaughter the jury may need to consider whether the defendant’s actions were “unreasonable”, which is best determined by members of the community.

Are judge-alone trials unfair to defendants?

Lawyers often raise concerns about judge-alone trials being unfair to defendants. Based on what we know from other countries, there is no strong evidence that this is the case. However, that is not to say that concerns about unfairness are unwarranted.

If judges convict at higher rates than juries, that might suggest that judge-alone trials are unfair. However, the best available study, conducted in New South Wales, found that judges were actually slightly less likely than juries to find a defendant guilty.

Juries do not explain their verdicts. In all countries which use judge-alone trials, judges must give reasons for their decisions. Knowing why a defendant was found guilty might make trials even more fair, providing a basis for an appeal against conviction if an error was made.

One key issue with judge-alone trials is inadmissible evidence. Ordinarily, jurors are sent out of the courtroom while the judge and lawyers make decisions about what evidence the jury is allowed to hear. Evidence might be excluded because it is irrelevant, prejudicial or was collected in breach of the defendant’s rights. In these scenarios, the jury is never made aware of the evidence.

However, in a judge-alone trial, the judge sees all the evidence, even if they decide that some of it should not be used. There is a risk that judges might be subconsciously impacted by inadmissible evidence in reaching their verdict.

Judge-alone trials also raise issues about diversity of decision-makers. In England and Wales, only 11% of judges are from an ethnic minority background compared to 18% of the population. Ideally, juries contain people from a range of backgrounds. Some defendants might feel more confident that they will be tried fairly by a jury than a judge.

Ultimately, one way to safeguard against concerns about unfairness is to give defendants the ability to choose whether or not they would like to be tried by a judge alone. Leveson’s recommendations suggest that most judge-alone trials would occur at the request of the defendant. However, judge-alone trials could be ordered against the defendant’s wishes in cases involving fraud or that are long and complex.

Juries play an important role in the legal system in England and Wales. Through jury service, members of the community contribute to the administration of justice. The inclusion of a range of viewpoints and experiences in determining criminal verdicts enhances the legitimacy of the justice system.

It is important that we continue to have juries in criminal trials. However, that is not to say that judge-alone trials cannot or should not play a role. The current backlog means that victims and defendants are having to wait years for their day in court. We desperately need to address this, and allowing defendants to elect a judge-alone trial may help to reduce delays to justice.

While judge-alone trials are not inherently unfair, any rollout in England and Wales should be closely monitored and evaluated. It is important that we do not sacrifice fairness for efficiency as we work to address the issues affecting our justice system.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Could England and Wales introduce jury-free trials? Here’s how they work in other countries – https://theconversation.com/could-england-and-wales-introduce-jury-free-trials-heres-how-they-work-in-other-countries-259489