The Oscar nomination for The Whale must mean it’s great, right? Wrong! It is a shallow and stigmatising reflection of thin people’s assumptions about fat bodies

I hadn’t planned on engaging with The Whale. In fact, one of my fat friends and I joked extensively about how much we were not, under any circumstances, going to shine our light on The Whale, no disrespect to the fat writers who chose to do so. Why would we? There is nothing new in it, as much as its director, Darren Aronofsky, believes he has made a novel masterpiece of fat humanity. Every bit of The Whale is old.

However, I changed my mind about watching The Whale when another friend (a thin one, so you can take him seriously!) texted me, fresh out of a pre-release screening, that it was one of the worst, stupidest movies he’d seen in years. Well, now I was intrigued! The hype around The Whale – in particular Brendan Fraser’s Oscar-nominated performance – had been so self-serious, so high-minded, I’d assumed it was a well-made art film whose creators just happened to have chosen a subject matter they likely weren’t equipped to handle. But to find out it was simply bad? The thought of gilded Academy voters weeping over a video of Fraser in a fat suit choking on a meatball sub gave me a strange pleasure. The joke, suddenly, was on them. Delicious as a Cheeto sandwich sprayed with ranch dressing, a meal that The Whale’s protagonist eats while crying. Standing ovation! LOL. You idiots.

Rich Hardisty cut himself, Harriet Dyer numbed her pain with drugs. A new wave of comics are working out their issues in their acts. But is it really helping them? And should we be laughing?

The first and maybe only rule of comedy is that it has to be funny. But how do standups manage to wring laughter from life’s darkest moments? Rich Hardisty’s new show, Silly Boy, tackles his experience of mental illness, self-harm and anorexia. “Who wants to sit and hear a guy talk about that?” he asks. “But if I can tell you something funny, and drip those bits in, you’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, good point!’ You’re more open when you’re laughing.”

Without those laughs, he says, his show would be “an ordeal”. Instead, Silly Boy is an absorbing hour in which Hardisty approaches psychosis and bipolar disorder with a surprising lightness. “I wanted to do a show where I got people to feel what it felt like. I want to show how we’re all just a series of events that shape who we are. We’re not as in control of our brains as we think.” Silly Boy explores how difficult childhood experiences led Hardisty to harbour a “compulsive” urge to hurt himself, escalating from biting the inside of his mouth until it bled to cutting himself so badly he was hospitalised. His mental pain eventually drove him to try heroin, although he avoided becoming addicted.

Organisations including NSPCC say app has chosen to deny the problem and must take meaningful action

TikTok has been urged to strengthen its content moderation policies around suicide and eating disorder material by organisations including the NSPCC and the Molly Rose Foundation.

The groups claimed TikTok had not acted swiftly enough following the publication of research suggesting the app’s recommendation algorithm pushes self-harm and eating disorder content to teenagers within minutes of them expressing interest in the topics.

In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. You can contact the mental health charity Mind by calling 0300 123 3393 or visiting mind.org.uk.

Little progress made within NHS since devastating 2017 report raised concerns, says health ombudsman

Urgent action is needed to prevent people dying from eating disorders, the parliamentary and health service ombudsman for England has warned, as he said those affected are being “repeatedly failed”.

The NHS needs a “complete culture change” in how it approaches the condition, while ministers must make it a “key priority”, according to Rob Behrens.

Exclusive: Study shows social media a ‘significant risk’ to young people’s view of themselves and can provoke mental health distress

Three out of four children as young as 12 dislike their bodies and are embarrassed by the way they look, increasing to eight in 10 young people aged 18 to 21.

The findings come from a major new study warning that social media represents a significant risk to the current and future health of today’s young generations.