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Psychologist breaks down why cruises are good for our mental health

Popularity has surged since the pandemic. There's a reason why.

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Not a phone in sight. So beautiful.

Cruise life might have taken a hiatus in 2020 (along with everything else), but post-pandemic business is booming. There are more people embarking on cruises than even in 2019, according to the Cruise Lines International Association (TIME). And with overall prices that are lower than a lot of mortgages and rents, many folks opt to cruise full-time.

So…is it just the competitive prices calling us to sea? The promise of adventure, perhaps? Or is it simply the 24-hour buffet that makes it so intriguing?

A psychologist and cruise enthusiast has some compelling thoughts.

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Joy

Caregiver makes $10,000 a year renting out his driveway. You can do it, too.

There are several apps that allow you to make money renting out your parking space.

There are multiple apps that let you rent out your driveway.

With the cost of living skyrocketing, people are looking for clever ways to make an additional buck. The good news is there are many ways to make extra money, whether driving for Lyft, freelancing on Fiverr, babysitting through Care.com, running errands with Task Rabbit or renting your pool out with Swimply.

Joe Gorham, 54, of Brighton, England, told The Mirror that renting out the three parking spaces in front of his home was a low-key way to rake in some passive income with little effort.

He said that renting out the spaces brings in an additional £8,000 ($10,000) annually. The money comes in extra handy because he is a full-time caregiver for his partner.

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Joy

28-year-old buys cruise ship apartment because it's less than renting and he can see the world

An all-expenses-paid life for about $50,000 a year? Sounds like a deal.

A cruise ship floating on azure waters.

Living the rest of your life on a cruise ship seems like the dream of the ultra-rich. You wake up every morning and have an all-you-can-eat breakfast. Spend the afternoon hanging out by the pool or touring a fantastic city such as Rome or Dubrovnik.

At night, have a drink in the lounge watching a comedian or a jazz band, then hit the sack and do it all over again the next day. Seems too good to be true for the average person, right? Think again.

Twenty-eight-year-old Austin Wells of San Diego told CNBC that he can make it happen because it’s cheaper than living onshore in Southern California and he gets to see the world. “The thing that most excites me is I don’t have to upend my daily routine, in order to go see the world,” Wells told CNBC.

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Cruise ships: For passengers, they're a chance to see the world without having to give up constant access to the cheese that makes America so great.

Photo by Jim G/Flickr.

Many of the women who work on board these cruise ships, however, report getting a raw deal.

Image via "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"/YouTube.

Last month, Jezebel reported that, since November 2015, Norwegian Cruise Lines no longer offers employees access to emergency contraceptives (the morning-after pill) unless they've been raped or sexually assaulted, forcing many women who either get pregnant or fear becoming pregnant to quit their jobs if they want to access family planning services.

On an episode of "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee," Bee decided to interview several female former cruise ship employees to find out what was really going on behind the scenes.

What she found was disturbing and, sadly, all too real. 

Image via "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"/YouTube.

All the women she spoke to reported being subject to frequent sexual harassment on board and said that, when they reported it — surprise, surprise — many found their supervisors completely indifferent to their complaints.

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(The cruise ship section starts about 1:45 in, but the whole video is worth a watch.) 

This problem doesn't just happen on cruise ships, unfortunately.

Bee also mentioned park rangers at the Grand Canyon, who reported facing withheld meals and intimidation when they rejected sexual advances from colleagues, and female comedians in Los Angeles, who have started online discussion groups to trade stories of harassment — on stage and off — as well as sexual assault

There are, obviously, depressing statistics about this.

Image via "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"/YouTube.

A Cosmopolitan survey of women in the workplace from 2015 found that an incredible 1 in 3 respondents had been harassed on the job. An ABC/Washington Post poll from four years earlier puts the number at 1 in 4

Can anything be done about it?

While workplace harassment isn't currently on the congressional docket, a bill that seeks to add new protections against sexual assault and violence on college campuses is currently making its way through the House and Senate. There's not much movement on it, however, and unfortunately, a similar bill that sought to make it easier to prosecute rape crimes in the military recently failed. 

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Our representatives won't feel the need to support these (or similar) measures unless we call them on it — and only vote for the ones that do. So let's do that. 

And of course, the obvious...

Men (and women) can just ... stop sexually harassing and sexually assaulting their colleagues. 

It's that simple!

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