• The Priory opens in City to tackle stress
“The Priory rehabilitation clinic, favoured by drug-addict celebrities, is to open a branch in the City of London, offering psychotherapy to financial workers.” A “well-being centre,” set to open in Fenchurch Street before Christmas, will employ 15 psychotherapists and counselors to cater to city types suffering from anxiety, depression, stress and addiction. The Priory started as a psychiatric hospital in south-west London in 1872.
• Mental health inequality among black people
Lambeth Council launches a new report targeting inequality and discrimination in mental health provision. Writes Edward Davie: “We hope to end a situation which means that while 26% of Lambeth’s population is black, nearly 70% of the borough’s residents in secure psychiatric settings are of African or Caribbean heritage. We also never want to see a repeat of the circumstances that led to the death in 2008 of black musician Sean Rigg who died in police custody after being restrained by officers during a schizophrenic episode.”
• Mind: 'unacceptably low' spending on public mental health
“Mental health charity Mind has found that local authorities in England spend an average of 1.36 per cent of their public health budget on mental health.” Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind, said: “Just like physical health, we all have mental health. Mind’s findings show, however, that while local authorities are happy to spend on preventing physical health problems, their equivalent spending on mental health is unacceptably low.”
• Brain function altered by psychodynamic therapy for depression
“Psychodynamic therapy for depression can change brain function, and can possibly predict how a patient may react to that therapy, according to a study published October 16, 2014, in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.”
• Outlawing “conversion therapy"
Freud believed humans were innately bisexual. Many psychotherapists since, however, have regarded anything other than heterosexuality as aberrant, a pathology, a mental illness. Homosexuality was only removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as recently 1973 (and even made a brief reappearance—“ego-dystonic homosexuality”—in 1980). Beliefs in “conversion therapy” persist today. Now America’s National Center for Lesbian Rights has “announced the formation of the #BornPerfect Advisory Committee, a group of conversion therapy survivors, child welfare and mental health experts, and faith leaders with unique insights into the harms of conversion therapy.” Representatives are scheduled to attend the United Nations Committee Against Torture meeting in Geneva in November to educate the committee about the “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment practice of conversion therapy in the United States.
• Male suicides in England and Wales hit 15-year high
“Suicide statistics for England and Wales, show not just a record number of self-inflicted male deaths in 2013, but also an increasingly marked divergence between the ratio of male to female suicides; almost 80 per cent of all such deaths in England and Wales were male.” Charity CALM “wants the Department of Health finally to recognise the enormity of the problem facing men in particular, and develop a gendered and strategic approach to reducing all male suicide in the UK.”
• Sweden: therapy in the back of a taxi
A taxi company “is offering people who are stressed by work and feeling down because of the cold, grey Swedish winter a chance to speak to a psychologist as they travel.”
“The Priory rehabilitation clinic, favoured by drug-addict celebrities, is to open a branch in the City of London, offering psychotherapy to financial workers.” A “well-being centre,” set to open in Fenchurch Street before Christmas, will employ 15 psychotherapists and counselors to cater to city types suffering from anxiety, depression, stress and addiction. The Priory started as a psychiatric hospital in south-west London in 1872.
• Mental health inequality among black people
Lambeth Council launches a new report targeting inequality and discrimination in mental health provision. Writes Edward Davie: “We hope to end a situation which means that while 26% of Lambeth’s population is black, nearly 70% of the borough’s residents in secure psychiatric settings are of African or Caribbean heritage. We also never want to see a repeat of the circumstances that led to the death in 2008 of black musician Sean Rigg who died in police custody after being restrained by officers during a schizophrenic episode.”
• Mind: 'unacceptably low' spending on public mental health
“Mental health charity Mind has found that local authorities in England spend an average of 1.36 per cent of their public health budget on mental health.” Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind, said: “Just like physical health, we all have mental health. Mind’s findings show, however, that while local authorities are happy to spend on preventing physical health problems, their equivalent spending on mental health is unacceptably low.”
• Brain function altered by psychodynamic therapy for depression
“Psychodynamic therapy for depression can change brain function, and can possibly predict how a patient may react to that therapy, according to a study published October 16, 2014, in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.”
• Outlawing “conversion therapy"
Freud believed humans were innately bisexual. Many psychotherapists since, however, have regarded anything other than heterosexuality as aberrant, a pathology, a mental illness. Homosexuality was only removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as recently 1973 (and even made a brief reappearance—“ego-dystonic homosexuality”—in 1980). Beliefs in “conversion therapy” persist today. Now America’s National Center for Lesbian Rights has “announced the formation of the #BornPerfect Advisory Committee, a group of conversion therapy survivors, child welfare and mental health experts, and faith leaders with unique insights into the harms of conversion therapy.” Representatives are scheduled to attend the United Nations Committee Against Torture meeting in Geneva in November to educate the committee about the “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment practice of conversion therapy in the United States.
• Male suicides in England and Wales hit 15-year high
“Suicide statistics for England and Wales, show not just a record number of self-inflicted male deaths in 2013, but also an increasingly marked divergence between the ratio of male to female suicides; almost 80 per cent of all such deaths in England and Wales were male.” Charity CALM “wants the Department of Health finally to recognise the enormity of the problem facing men in particular, and develop a gendered and strategic approach to reducing all male suicide in the UK.”
• Sweden: therapy in the back of a taxi
A taxi company “is offering people who are stressed by work and feeling down because of the cold, grey Swedish winter a chance to speak to a psychologist as they travel.”
