Was 2025 the World’s Worst Year Ever?

I fear this post might make me feel a bit better by creating the illusion that I am writing something useful—being useful to others. But here goes.

Writing on New Year’s Day 2026, I feel the need to try to make some sense of the worst year of my 73-year life. I don’t mean worse personally. My close family and I live in the relative safety and affluence of London, England, and we are all healthy and have fulfilling jobs. I mean, worst in the global sense.

When people ask, ‘How are you, John? ’ I usually reply, ‘Well, as long as I don’t think about the world, I’m doing okay, I guess.’

I have spent most of my life feeling that the world, in general, has been continuing its centuries-long struggle, albeit often two steps forward and one step back, towards better lives for most people, and more rights for disadvantaged and oppressed groups. But the last decade or so has felt different, and this year has been truly depressing and frightening, in equal measure.

You will have your own top list of horrors. As of this moment (there are so many more to choose from), mine are:

Earth is hurtling towards a climate catastrophe.
Dysfunction in the White House.
The longstanding unelected presence of dysfunction in the Kremlin.
The growth of the far-right across Europe, including Germany and here in the UK.
A far-right government in Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza and condoning ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
Extremist Islamists, including Hamas, continue to incite violent terrorism internationally.
The strangely exclusive focus of ‘the left’ (my own tribe) on atrocities in Gaza, while ignoring similar abominations in Sudan, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Xinjiang (China), Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Nigeria.
Increased antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry, including here in the UK.
Increased divisiveness and polarization, internationally, are fueled by the grotesque, profit-oriented algorithms of unregulated social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, and X.

If I were allowed another, it would be the national equivalent of shooting oneself in both feet: Brexit and its disastrous, predictable, ongoing aftermath.

How do we understand all of this? How do we remain hopeful? How do we find something to do that might make things better in some small way? What can an aging clinical psychologist contribute, if anything?

I have busied myself, for the past two years, with designing, disseminating, and analysing the results of an international survey of people who have had electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In the last months of this year, we (a team of three psychologists and three ECT recipients) have published six papers from that survey, including on efficacy and adverse effects.

This is just the latest episode in my 45 years of challenging the simplistic (and sometimes dangerous) ‘medical model’ of human distress that, with the influential support of the pharmaceutical industry and biological psychiatry, currently dominates our mental health services, internationally.

I have long believed that this approach, with its focus on unsubstantiated chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions, masks the real causes of human distress, such as poverty, violence (between nations and individuals), child abuse, loneliness, among others, and thereby reduces the chances of our solving those problems. Our most recent paper, for example, showed that most ECT recipients believed their problems were caused by social factors such as abuse and loneliness, but that mental health services had not asked them about such matters before prescribing electricity.

For years, I have managed to convince myself, rightly or wrongly, that this work constitutes a small contribution to making the world a slightly better place. (A few psychiatrists vehemently disagree.) Many of you, I expect, will have a better claim to changing the world, or your little part of it, than I have. Whatever your version of improving things a bit, keep doing it. And, at the risk of sounding trite, find kindred spirits to do it with.

I have written before, with no claim of originality, about how international conflicts are unlikely to be solved, or avoided, until we fully understand the harmful role of trauma in general, and of intergenerational trauma in particular.

I have also written about the need for us all to understand the power of cognitive dissonance, that almost irresistible tendency in all of us to ignore incoming information that challenges our preconceptions, including about ‘other’ groups of people. (As Paul Simon put it, ‘A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.’)

Just when our university psychology departments around the world should be prioritising the teaching of trauma, cognitive dissonance, prejudice, stereotyping, and attitude formation, many are focusing increasingly, in keeping with the current fascination with all things ‘neuro’, on what bit of the brain lights up when we are doing X, thinking Y, or feeling Z.

Cognitive Dissonance Essential Reads

It is easy to get pessimistic, especially as you get a bit older. I was, however, heartened this morning to read two British opinion polls. One found that only 5 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds plan to vote for the far-right Reform party. The other reported that 46 percent of 16- to 34-year-olds are feeling ‘generally optimistic’ about 2026 (versus 19 percent feeling pessimistic).

I end this rambling with the truism that doing something that makes us feel good makes us feel, well, good. This is called behavioural activation therapy by psychologists who sometimes make common sense sound complicated.

The most fun I have had in this annus maximus horribilus was when the local choir, which I nervously joined in the summer, performed for families and friends just before Christmas. The finale was ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ by the Pogues (have a listen). It starts with the men singing “It was Christmas Eve, babe; in the drunk tank.” The five guys belt it out as if drunk, without having to worry about being in tune. With my partner and daughter there to witness the fun, it made me very happy, for a while.

Farewell 2025. You weren’t all bad. And nor will 2026 be.