Depression Awareness Week
We’re coming to the end of “Depression Awareness Week.” 
In the UK, depression has now overtaken lower back pain as the leading cause of lost workdays, according to a 2014 report by the Health and Safety Executive.
It is estimated that in the US, about 200 million workdays are lost to depression each year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the cost of this depression-related absenteeism at $44 billion.
What on earth is this “depression,” this blight on our human existence, this disease that turns light into darkness, hope into despair?
Depression is not any one thing. It comes in many guises, with many origins. (Ideally it should have variety in treatment options, too; it doesnt.) It is deeply personal—there are as many different types as there are people walking this earth.
If you're depressed, don't suffer in silence. Ask for help, loudly if need be.
This week especially there are lots of stories and guidance available online. Here's a small selection.


An Awareness Week to be aware of
A moving personal account in from a mental health nurse who became a patient. From Huffington Post UK:

As a mental health nurse, I never thought that depression would never happen to me and that if it did, I'd know what to do. Alas the reality was a total shock. I actually had no idea about what it would be like or what to do. Imagine a life in monochrome where the colour, light, and life has been sucked out. Imagine it hurting to breathe, hurting to move, the notion of opening one's eyes or getting up feeling utterly impossible. Imagine a shuffling grey foggy existence where the mere act of existence is a battle, where your favourite things, your passions, your memories, the best meal or piece of music or whatever floats your boat looks and feels like a lump of soggy cardboard. Imagine being trapped in a bubble where you can see and hear the world around you but you cannot connect with it. Where even the loved ones in your life feel like blurred figures on a bleak horizon. And then contemplate how you'd react to being told that you just needed to pull yourself together, that you were being self indulgent, or selfish, or in need of a kick up the arse or to get a grip. If only it was that easy eh?


'My life feels bleak, but should I dig up a painful past?'
In The Independent, Agony Aunt Virginia Ironside answers a question from a depressed young woman with a difficult past who is condering counselling—her boyfriend advises against it. Writes Ironside:

Your boyfriend makes an excellent point. An enormous number of people are able either to bury horrible experiences for good, or park them conveniently on a shelf so high up that they’re never in the field of vision. I imagine that most people going about their daily business perfectly happily have had the odd unspeakable experience in their childhoods, but for some reason they’ve dealt with it in such a manner that it’s never bothered them again. For those people, it would be a great mistake to start burrowing and staring and analysing; far from being helpful, it could just traumatise them all over again, and there’s no use in that.

But from what you say, it sounds, from your symptoms, as though something’s going on in your psyche that needs some attention. The depression is the rumbling of an old injustice or pain that, far from being buried, is shoving its way to the surface, demanding to be heard. It’s easy for your boyfriend to say that you should put things behind you, but what if they refuse to be ignored? What if you can’t put them behind you?


The double life of someone with depression
A typical local interest story, from the North Devon Journal‎:

With Depression Awareness Week running until April 26 - and with one in four people set to experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives - a member of a self-help group has spoken about of her battle with the illness.

Depression affects around one in 12 people, regardless of age or class. Yet the stigma and discrimination associated with it means that few people feel comfortable about admitting to being a sufferer.

The Journal's sister paper, the Exeter Express and Echo, spoke to a volunteer who helps run the Depression Alliance group.

"I can be feeling like I'm dying inside, but I put on a brave face and smile and then no one knows I have depression."

The admission comes from a 34-year-old woman who lives and works in Exeter, and chooses to hide her health problems from colleagues and friends because of the stigma associated with depression.
Her secret was even kept from her family until recently and it was only through talking openly that she realised depression was also experienced by other members of her family.

• What is depression? (Depression Alliance)

• Depression Awareness Week 2015: 10 facts about depression (International Business Times)

• Is mindfulness cognitive therapy as good as medicine for treating depression? (Science World Report)

• Are you depressed? Take the NHS self-assessment test. (NHS)


 
U.K. news

Out of the shadows
A crisp report on the diminishing stigma of mental ill-health—and diminishing resources for care. From The Economist:

More people from all walks of life are opening up about mental illness, says Sophie Corlett of MIND, a British mental-health advocacy group. Campaigns by many governments and charities to get rid of the stigma are part of a virtuous circle in which each person who speaks out lessens ignorance and makes it easier for other sufferers to do so too. Only 13% of Britons surveyed in 2013 agreed that a history of mental illness should bar someone from public office, down from 21% five years earlier. The number who said that they would be willing to have a mentally ill co-worker or neighbour went up.

With greater openness comes more understanding of just how common mental illness is. One in five working-age people in rich countries suffer from a mental condition each year. About a quarter of those suffer from severe illnesses, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and the rest from less debilitating ones, such as mild depression or anxiety. But mental ailments are far less likely to receive treatment than physical ones. Over three-quarters of those suffering severe conditions, and over 90% of those with moderate ones, are treated by non-specialists or not at all (see chart 1). Lack of training means primary-care doctors miss some cases. Others go untreated because their conditions make it hard to push for referrals or deal with the insurance paperwork.

The resulting misery is huge.


Another Tory government will lead to a mental health services crisis, warn top health staff
From mirror.co.uk:

 Another Tory government would put mental health services at “serious risk”, a coalition of nurses, doctors and therapists will warn.

In a letter to the Daily Mirror more than 100 mental health workers say the Coalition have conducted a “sustained and vicious” attack on frontline services.

“We believe that this has put any member of the public with mental health needs at serious risk.

"We cannot continue to work under this intolerable stress as a result of cuts to our services.

“We are at risk of becoming (or in some cases already have become) mentally unwell ourselves.

"We believe that a serious change of course is desperately needed in order for us to do our jobs effectively and to prevent losing saveable lives.

"That is why none of us will be voting for the Conservative Party on 7th May,” the letter says.

Those signing the letter include mental health nurses, clinical psychologists, occupational health workers, support staff and social workers who between them have more than 2,180 years of NHS service.

• Hundreds of mental health experts issue rallying call against austerity (The Guardian)


Mental health and learning disabilities statistics monthly report
Key facts from Gov.UK:

At the end of January 2015:

◦      970,229 people were in contact with mental health or learning disabilties services. Of these, 927,717 people were in contact with mental health services and 54,143 people were in contact with learning disabilities services. These two figures combined are higher than the total, as a person may be in contact with both services.

◦      23,985 people were inpatients in hospital (2.5 per cent). 1,543 people were in hospital on wards for people with learning disabilities. The remaining 22,442 people were in hospital on wards for people with mental health needs.

◦      17,163 people were subject to the Mental Health Act 1983 and of these 12,707 were detained in hospital (74.0 per cent) and 4,335 were subject to a CTO (25.3 per cent).

◦      61.1 per cent people aged 18-69, who were being treated under the Care Programme Approach, were recorded as being in settled accommodation, while 6.8 per cent were recorded as being employed.

 
U.S.A. news

A surge in federal funding for Mental Health First Aid could make it popular
What a good idea. Too bad the U.K.’s grim age of austerity makes an initiative like this happening here seem unlikely. From the San Jose Mercury News:
 
It's not very often that someone can say he talked a person out of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Gary Scheppke can.
Scheppke, a member of the Marin County Board of Mental Health, credits completing a certified course that trains a broad spectrum of people to identify and respond to mental illness.
The Mental Health First Aid course, advocates say, could grow to be what CPR is to heart attack victims.
The federal government has spent more than $20 million since 2013 to make the course available in local communities, and thousands of people around the Bay Area have completed it. It received financial and political backing after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a mentally disturbed man killed 20 children and six adults.
"You are far more likely to come across someone having a mental health crisis or substance abuse disorder than a heart attack or choking on the piece of food at a restaurant," said Bryan Gibb, director of public education for the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, which manages the course nationwide. About 20 percent of people have a mental health issue. Less than 1 percent have a heart attack each year.


World news
 
Vanuatu: Churches train for disaster counselling
From Radio New Zealand:

Reverend Dr Stephen Robinson of the Uniting Church is in Vanuatu conducting disaster awareness training for priests and pastors of the Anglican and Presbyterian churches.

"Pastors needed to understand how people who have been traumatised how it affects the way they are thinking and also what the needs will be for him. What special needs will be emerging that they will need to address or work with."

Reverend Robinson says it is great that donor countries and agencies tend to the physical and material needs of disaster victims. But he believes Churches have an important role in tending to the spiritual and emotional trauma that disaster stricken communities face.

U.K. news

The death of the “headclutcher” picture of mental ill-health
From BBC News:

A campaign backed by Stephen Fry has been launched to try to change the type of images used by the media for stories about mental health. But what is wrong with the ones currently used?

A solitary figure, with their head in their hands, more often than not cast in dark, sombre lighting. These stock images, often termed the "headclutcher", have become a familiar sight in media portrayals of mental illness.

Charities and campaigners have, for many years, lamented the use of such imagery, arguing that people with mental illnesses do not always "look" depressed.

Charlotte Walker, who has bipolar disorder, says these pictures can be harmful, and that images of people in distress have become synonymous with mental illness.

"It's the only image we see of mental distress," she says, "unless it's about obsessive compulsive disorder, in which case you always get someone washing their hands, or self-harm, where you get the obvious. It's too reductionist."

• How a visual cliche about mental health can slip through (The Guardian)


Wristbands for the mentally ill?!
From The Guardian:

If you’re wondering how much work is still left to do in dissipating stigma around mental illness, look no further than recent comments made by Chamali Fernando, the Tory parliamentary candidate for Cambridge.

When asked at hustings how authorities, such as the police, could better help those with mental health requirements, Fernando apparently suggested that vulnerable people could wear colour-coded wristbands denoting their condition, immediately alerting public figures to any special needs they might have.

When this statement hit Twitter, it was immediately seized upon and ridiculed by opponents, and with good reason: the last thing sufferers of any form of ill-health want is to make everyone they meet aware of their condition. It’s hard enough when Katie Hopkins is calling your debilitating mental illness “a passport to self obsession” without hanging a sign around your neck declaring: “I AM MEDICALLY SAD, PLEASE BEAR THIS IN MIND WHEN DEALING WITH ME.” Fernando’s main competition for the seat, incumbent Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert, wasted no time in making political capital from the comments, pointing out – correctly – that singling mentally ill people out with wristbands would only exacerbate the continual stigma that surrounds mental health issues.


Hundreds of mental health experts issue rallying call against austerity
From The Guardian:

Austerity cuts are having a “profoundly disturbing” impact on people’s psychological wellbeing and the emotional state of the nation, hundreds of counsellors, psychotherapists and mental health experts have said in a letter to the Guardian.

They said an “intimidatory disciplinary regime” facing benefits claimants would be made worse by further “unacceptable” proposals outlined in the budget.

These amounted to state “get to work” therapy and were both damaging and professionally unethical, they said.

Increasing inequality and poverty, families being moved out of their homes and new systems determining benefit levels were part of “a wider reality of a society thrown completely off balance by the emotional toxicity of neoliberal thinking”, according to more than 400 signatories to the letter. The consequences were “most visible in the therapist’s consulting room”.

The letter’s writers said it “sounds the starting bell for a broadly based campaign of organisations and professionals against the damage that neoliberalism is doing to the nation’s mental health”.


New review recognises the importance of counselling in those affected by infertility
From the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists:

The psychological impact and private agony of infertility must be carefully considered by healthcare professionals, suggests a new review, published today (Friday 10 April) in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG). The review identifies infertility as a complex state and life crisis and sets out the dangers of neglecting the emotional impact of involuntary childlessness and viewing it solely in biological or medical terms.1

The article provides an introduction to infertility counselling in the UK, within the context of fertility treatment. This includes an explanation of the differences between the three main types of counselling, implications, support, and therapeutic counselling, and the role of various bodies, including the Counselling Service, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and British Infertility Counselling Association.
 

TfL spends millions on counselling for 'stressed' staff
From the Evening Standard:

London transport chiefs are spending millions of pounds to pay for counselling for stressed employees, it has been revealed.

Transport for London spent £3.1m on staff counselling from 2010 to 2014 in what union bosses said was a reflection of the "massive pressure" faced by employees.

Almost 5,000 staff members were given counselling for causes including stress, anxiety, train suicides and harassment, a Freedom of Information request by London Loves Business showed.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash told the website: "These figures are a reflection of the massive pressure that staff find themselves under against a background of cuts to numbers, services and safety.

“They serve as the clearest evidence that staff are bearing the brunt of Boris Johnson’s cash-led attacks across the London Underground network and reinforce the unions determination to fight his plans.”

And Finn Brennan, from the Aslef rail union, added: "The £3m spent on counselling is money that is extremely well spent.

"TfL employees do a very important yet difficult and stressful job. One of the big worries is the closure of ticket offices which will lead to reduction in staff. This will definitely leave staff more vulnerable."

Responding to the Freedom of Information request, TfL said the health and wellbeing of its staff is "paramount".


U.S.A. news

Obama calls for end to 'gay conversion therapies'
Following a massive petition and commentary in support of a ban, including this one from world of therapy, President Barack Obama has denounced the so-called “pray the gay away” practice of conversion therapy. From the BBC News:

US President Barack Obama has condemned psychiatric therapies designed to "repair" gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.

Mr Obama's statement was in response to an online petition calling for a ban on conversion therapies. It gained over 120,000 signatures in three months.

The petition was inspired by Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender youth who killed herself in December.

Some conservative groups and religious doctors support conversion therapy.

"We share your concern about its potentially devastating effects on the lives of transgender as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer youth," White House adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote in response to the petition.

"As part of our dedication to protecting America's youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors."


Baseball teams nurture players' mental health
From The New York Times:

For Cubs General Manager Jed Hoyer, Josh Lifrak is just like the hitting coach John Mallee or the pitching coach Chris Bosio.

Lifrak is the director of the team’s mental-skills program, while Mallee and Bosio are two vital members of Manager Joe Maddon’s coaching staff. Hoyer looks at each of them in a similar way, and he knows what that means in terms of a shift in thinking when it comes to mental health and major league baseball.

“I think that it used to be the kind of thing that people would talk to people. They didn’t, like, advertise it,” Hoyer said. “Some guys were ashamed of it, and some people didn’t want to have any part of it. I think now it’s almost impossible to find someone who doesn’t understand that your mental-skills coach is no different than a hitting coach or a pitching coach. He’s a guy that can really help your players get better.

“That’s a shift from, like, partial acceptance to, like, total acceptance in a very short amount of time.”

Lena Dunham’s mental health “workout selfie”
From Huffington Post:

Lena Dunham shared a powerful "workout selfie" on Instagram yesterday. "To those struggling with anxiety, OCD, depression: I know it's mad annoying when people tell you to exercise, and it took me about 16 medicated years to listen," she wrote. "I'm glad I did. It ain't about the ass, it's about the brain." There's a lot to take from this selfie, beyond her "slim figure" and the fact that she is wearing a sports bra. Yet again, Dunham is working to combat the stigma surrounding mental health.


World news

Germany: Psychotherapy proven to normalize brain activity
From Medical Daily:

For years, psychiatrists and psychologists have lacked physiological proof of the "disordered" mentalities they diagnosed. Brain imaging technologies changed all that by offering hard evidence of the differences between the brains of patients and of people without mental illness. Now, a recent study from German scientists confirms theories of mental dysfunction underlying depression, while the research also shows how depressed brain activity can be normalized following psychotherapy — minus any form of drug therapy.

For some time now, neuroscientists using brain imaging technologies have been able to examine the changes that occur in the brains of patients as a result of mental illness. Depression, in particular, marks the brain in a particular way.

“The human brain responds to depression,” Dr. Svenja Taubner, lead author and professor in the department of psychology at the University of Kassel, explained in a press release. “Patients typically show hyperactivity particularly in the amygdala, the striatum, and other limbic regions.”

Along with this characteristic hyperactivity, depression also produces generalized network dysfunction, as neuroscientists conceptualize it, in the cortico-limbic loops. Since depression affects the functioning of the brain, it only stands to reason that successful treatment would impact the brain as well. In other words, patterns of hyperactivity should normalize as a patient’s mood stabilizes.

However, this is where brain imaging studies fall short — some studies show increased hyperactivity in limbic and subcortical regions following psychotherapy treatment, while others show decreased hyperactivity. Taken together, the studies did not prove psychotherapy could normalize the brain of a patient. For the current study, then, the researchers wanted to confirm the positive effects of psychotherapy.


Australia: Refugee experiences of mental health services
From the Australian Institute of Family Studies:

It can be challenging for anyone to attend a mental health service.

But for a young person who has fled a war-torn homeland, is currently learning the language, culture and systems of a very different country, and who is anxious about what their family and friends will think of him or her for attending a mental health service – it can be a very difficult experience indeed.

The stigma around mental health problems is often greater within refugee communities, with a common perception being that only those who are seriously disturbed or “crazy” use mental health services.

These are some of the barriers that young people from refugee backgrounds face in accessing and using mental health services. For the small number of this population who do access these services, no previous research has explored their experiences.

In order to address this need, we conducted in-depth interviews with 16 young people (aged 18-25) who were refugees. We asked them a range of questions about being clients of Australian mental health services.


Botswana: Pre-marital counselling critical
From AllAfrica.com:

Lack of pre-marital counselling leads to families and marriage disintegration in Botswana.

This was said by the chairperson of the newly found The Family Institute Trust, Mr Tebogo Duna, when briefing the media in Francistown on April 10.

He said given the rising divorce rates, one of the best things they could do to help save marriages was pre-marital counselling. Mr Duna said couples who attended pre-marital counselling had the opportunity to discuss issues that most couples argued about and most of these often led to divorce or separation.

Kurt Cobain remembered

Kurt Cobain, Nirvana’s lead singer, took his own life 21 years ago this week. And today sees the U.K. release of a new documentary about him, Montage of Heck, made in cooperation with his family and Courtney Love (their daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was an executive producer).

Cobain is supposedly another exemplar of the “tortured artist” theory of creativity. Someone who felt too much, who burned too brightly, who flew too close to the sun. When he killed himself in his Seattle apartment with a shotgun, he joined the infamous “27 club” of tortured artists who succumbed to their demons—he, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Amy Whitehouse all died at 27. They became immortal through their untimely departure from the stage. Only the good die young, friends, family and fans might say.

But the mentally ill often die young, too. There is nothing rock and roll about chronic depression and a suicidal mindset. These mind monsters are indiscriminate in hunting their prey, and are just as dreadful and terrifying and unglamorous for musicians, artists and writers as for the rest of our species. You can be tortured and not an artist. Conversely, too, you can be an artist who is untortured, untroubled and free. Misery is not a prerequisite for masterpiece. You don’t have to be Touched with Fire to feel the electricity and wonder and mystery of our world, and harness that energy to create something beautiful. And to live it, too.

Writes novelist Matt Haig in The Telegraph:
The tortured rock star is only the most recent incarnation of the troubled artist cliché that has been around for centuries. From troubled painters like Caravaggio and Van Gogh and Rothko to poets and writers like Plath and Sexton and Hemingway. Creative talent and tormented minds, we are told, are sides of the same coin.

I hate this idea. The idea that creativity is the bedfellow of misery. I have also come to hate my own former silent glorifying of Cobain’s death. When I was 24 I nearly took my own life, not because I’d listened to too much Nirvana, but because I was ill.

From the moment depression and anxiety smashed into me, derailing me completely for a few years, I realised that there was nothing glamorous about mental illness. It was exactly as glamorous as physical illness. Not long before Cobain shot himself he had been hospitalised due to bronchitis. Cobain had suffered from bronchitis. Bronchitis, in almost all our minds, remains as unglamorous as ever, no matter how many rock stars suffer from it.

I would love it if death-by-depression was seen in exactly the same way as death-by-bronchitis. It should be. Because glamorising suicide is almost as unhealthy as demonising it. It inhibits our understanding.

So, let’s be clear. Depression is an illness. It is not a ticket to genius. It is not an interesting personality quirk. It is horrible and all-consuming and really hurts. Depression is not the person, it is something that happens to a person. And when that person feels no way out, they sometimes take their life.

From RYOT:
Fans were of course disheartened by the death of Cobain, as they were when Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison died. But there was a sentiment that at least these artists truly lived the lives they had, succeeding at doing what they loved, which is what most people want, but only the rare few get ... Cobain’s death was not the cliché of a tormented rock star; it was mental illness.
Robin Williams’ death was the most recent manifestation of the alleged creative talent-suicide archetype. Always smiling and making people laugh, Williams’ depression was a major shock to everyone. But experts believe something good came of it: Creativity was finally separated from misery, the stigma surrounding mental illness began to subside, and the floor opened up for discussion about mental health, Mashable reports.

• Kurt Cobain: One heck of a life (BBC News)‎
• Kurt Cobain fans pay tribute to late Nirvana star on the anniversary of his death (mirror.co.uk‎)

U.K. news

Myths and realities of mental health
From The Guardian:
A friend tells me that well-meaning people often ask her what the special talent of her son with autism is. She tends to answers: “Gabriel’s special talent is having a meltdown in the supermarket because the flicker of the fluorescent lights bothers him so much.” The question my friend is asked is born of the Rain Man effect; fiction and the media are full of cases of art/maths/music savants with autism. But such coverage of autism doesn’t help my friend much. In the supermarket she’s still the recipient of disapproving looks when Gabriel, now 11, is screaming on the floor.
The Germanwings tragedy has brought mental health on to the front pages. More attention on the impact of mental illnesses is warranted; far less is spent on care of these than of physical conditions. However, it also highlights the tendency for myths and rare but salient incidents to colour public perception in unhelpful ways.
People with developmental disabilities and their families are disadvantaged socially (divorce rates and isolation are high) and economically (family income is significantly lower). Society’s attitudes to disability and to mental illness are critical to their quality of life and we have a long way to go.

Jump in counselling for UK transgender children wins LGBT praise
From Reuters UK:
A growing number of children in Britain are being referred to the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) for counselling for transgender feelings, a development activists hailed on Wednesday as a sign of greater awareness of transgender issues.
The number of children - under 11 and some as young as three - being treated at the country's only specialist centre for children with gender issues has quadrupled in the past six years, rising to 77 this year from 19 in 2009, NHS figures show.
Experts say up to 1 percent of the world's population are transgender - a term used to describe people who feel they have been born with the wrong gender.
The rise in child referrals shows a greater understanding of transgender issues, said Richard Köhler, senior policy officer at human rights organisation Transgender Europe (TGEU).
"Transgender people now tend to be much younger when they come out, which is positive because they don't have to go through years of denial, and it means they have a supportive family," Köhler told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. A growing number of children in Britain are being referred to the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) for counselling for transgender feelings, a development activists hailed on Wednesday as a sign of greater awareness of transgender issues.
The number of children - under 11 and some as young as three - being treated at the country's only specialist centre for children with gender issues has quadrupled in the past six years, rising to 77 this year from 19 in 2009, NHS figures show.
Experts say up to 1 percent of the world's population are transgender - a term used to describe people who feel they have been born with the wrong gender.
The rise in child referrals shows a greater understanding of transgender issues, said Richard Köhler, senior policy officer at human rights organisation Transgender Europe (TGEU).
"Transgender people now tend to be much younger when they come out, which is positive because they don't have to go through years of denial, and it means they have a supportive family," Köhler told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Protecting mental health must begin in Britain's schools
From The Times:
Matthew Elvidge was a bright pupil, a scholarship student at Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire. Good A-level results, via a gap year in Africa, took him to Newcastle University, which he left with a 2:1 in politics and economics.
That was in 2008, straight out into the straitened jobs market of a post-Lehman Brothers economic downturn. A year later, he landed a position in insurance.
Yet in the weeks running up to the start of the job, he began showing signs of anxiety and depression. He found it difficult to make decisions, he couldn’t sleep, he lost energy, his mood was low.
Neither he nor his family could understand why. Referred by his GP to the local mental health crisis team, he was assessed as anxious, low-risk but in need of counselling — and was discharged. That Sunday, the day before he was due to start his job, he took his own life. It was September 20, 2009. He was 23.
To this day no one knows why. Like many teenagers, he had experienced times of stress, but he had no visible signs of mental illness.

Education doesn't guarantee happiness
More research to “prove” what is surely blindingly obvious. From HealthDay:
Being well-educated doesn't necessarily mean you'll be happy with your life, a new British study suggests.
Previous research has found a strong link between low levels of education and mental illness, the authors of the new study said. So, they wanted to find out if levels of education were associated with mental well-being, defined as "feeling good and functioning well."
People with high levels of mental well-being are more likely to feel happy and contented with their lives because of the way they deal with problems and challenges, particularly relationship issues, the University of Warwick researchers explained.
The researchers analyzed the responses of more than 17,000 people in England. They were surveyed in 2010 and 2011.
People with varying levels of education had similar odds of having high levels of mental well-being.


U.S.A. news

Will the Germanwings crash affect how employers approach mental health?
From Forbes:
When news broke March 24 that a young co-pilot for Lufthansa’s low cost-airline Germanwings had intentionally crashed a passenger jet into the French Alps, killing himself and 149 others, people struggled for answers. What would make someone take his own life along with those of so many innocent people?
One possible answer came this past week when the airline revealed that the pilot, Andreas Lubitz, had previously suffered from deep depression. Debates began about how Lubitz’s mental health played into the tragedy, what treatment he might have received, and whether Lufthansa should have let him fly at all.
That discussion is a rare surfacing of an issue too often ignored—the problem of mental health in the workplace.
“To date, companies have focused on physical health much more than they have on mental health,” says Professor John A. Quelch, Charles Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. In collaboration with Carin-Isabel Knoop, executive director of the HBS Case Research & Writing Group, he recently wrote the note, Mental Health and the American Workplace, exploring the extent of the phenomenon, its cost to organizations and employees, and some managerial responses.
In some ways, it makes sense that mental health issues get buried. “Most physical conditions are visible, either to the naked eye or on an X-ray,” says Quelch, who holds a joint appointment as Professor in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Mental health conditions aren’t so readily identifiable.”
It’s clear from Quelch and Knoop’s research that most companies treat mental health as an afterthought.

9% of Americans are angry, impulsive...and have a gun
The right to bear arms and kill people with them in a moment of madness is apparently enshrined in the Consitution. Click here for a previous rant about guns. From Medical Daily:
Gun violence remains a prevailing and controversial issue in the United States, especially when coupled with mental health. Although criminal and mental health-related gun ownership restrictions do exist, withholding access to guns from people with anger issues would be a dubious proposition, at best. A team of researchers from Duke, Harvard, and Columbia universities have found that one out of every 10 Americans has a history of impulsive and angry behavior, as well as access to a gun.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 59,000 people were injured by the intentional use of a firearm in 2012, along with 11,622 people who died as the result of a violent gun incident.
"As we try to balance constitutional rights and public safety regarding people with mental illness, the traditional legal approach has been to prohibit firearms from involuntarily-committed psychiatric patients," Dr. Jeffrey Swanson, professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke Medicine, said in a statement. "But now we have more evidence that current laws don't necessarily keep firearms out of the hands of a lot of potentially dangerous individuals."

California to provide counseling to mentally ill inmates
From Correctional News:
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials announced recently that mentally ill inmates in the state’s prison system will now receive more humane treatment. The state filed a new policy earlier this month to allow mentally ill inmates to participate in counseling after an incident as opposed to receiving extended sentences or being sent directly to isolation cells.
"This is a very significant reform of the disciplinary process for prisoners with mental illness," Michael Bien, an attorney representing the state’s mentally ill inmates, told the Associated Press on April 3. "What's the point of punishing someone who's psychotic? When you bang on your cell or mouth off at your custody officer, let's talk about that. ... Don't punish [the inmate] and send him somewhere else.”

Children of undocumented immigrants face crisis
From DiversityInc:
In the midst of continual debate between political parties on establishing effective immigration reform, little attention is given to the fact the mental health of thousands of Latino youth, born in the United States and whose parents are undocumented immigrants, is being compromised.
“Anxiety and PTSD in Latino Children of Immigrants: The INS Raid Connection to the Development of These Disorders,” is a report by María Elisa Cuadra, a licensed social worker and Executive Director/CEO, COPAY Inc., a bilingual professional out-patient treatment and prevention care facility located in Great Neck, N.Y.
She discusses the plight of Latino children and adolescents, born in the U.S., whose parents are foreign born, living in constant fear and terror of INS raids.  And this fear is expressed verbally and behaviorally potentially leading to disorders.

Michelle Obama, Kerry Washington and Sarah Jessica Parker talk mental health
From the Huffington Post:
First Lady Michelle Obama and actresses Kerry Washington and Sarah Jessica Parker are here to drop some knowledge on Hollywood and the rest of the world: It's time to start prioritizing mental health.
The women discussed de-stigmatizing mental illness -- particularly for veterans struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder -- in Glamour magazine's May issue. While many service members return home completely healthy, Obama noted, for the 11 to 20 percent of recent veterans who suffer from PTSD, it can be challenging to seek treatment due to fear of judgment.
"[W[hen we do come across someone who is struggling ... we have to develop a culture of open arms and acceptance so that they feel comfortable saying, 'I'm a veteran. And by the way, I need little help,'" she said. "This is something we need to do in this country around mental health as a whole -- de-stigmatizing mental health."
Washington also opened up about seeing a therapist in the magazine, citing that keeping tabs on mental illness is just as important as monitoring physical illness.
"I say that publicly because I think it's really important to take the stigma away from mental health," she said. "My brain and my heart are really important to me. I don't know why I wouldn't seek help to have those things be as healthy as my teeth. I go to the dentist. So why wouldn't I go to a shrink?"


World news

Saudi Arabia: Treating jihadists with art therapy
From NPR:
There are golf carts and palm trees and an Olympic-sized pool at the Mohammed Bin Naif Counseling and Care Center, a sprawling complex on the outskirts of Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh.
Once a holiday resort, the walled compound still looks like one — and not a rehabilitation center for convicted terrorists.
In the past year, the country has expanded counter-terrorism laws that make it illegal for Saudis to fight in Syria and Iraq. The kingdom has also expanded the terrorism rehab centers.
More than 3,000 young Saudi men graduated from the program since it began in 2008, including 120 former prisoners from a U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay.
The centers only work with inmates not convicted for violent crimes. The Saudis claim a success rate of more than 80 percent of the detainees returning to their families as well-adjusted members of Saudi society.

Jamaica: Signs you need to get divorced now
Kimberley Hibbert of the Jamaica Observer lists 4 no-return circumstances that in her opinion should have you marching straight toward the exit sign that hangs in the background of all marriages, no discussion, no negotiation:
Both of you stood before the pastor at the altar and recited your marriage vows; you made a pact to remain through the worst conditions and stay together until death. But when the rubber hits the road, it's usually a different ball game, which more often ends in divorce.
From a biblical perspective you are allowed two exception clauses -- sexual immorality and abandonment by an unbeliever -- but forgiveness and counselling is also encouraged. But when not in the church, other factors also play a part in divorce.
Whichever side you're on, when faced with a difficult situation in a marriage, oftentimes couples end up playing the guessing game as to whether they should try to mend the broken pieces of their relationship or just call it quits.
Below are the signs you definitely need to call it quits.

She then outlines the 4 signs. They are:
1. Your partner is abusive
2. Infidelity
3. Homosexuality
4. No more love

I certainly agree with no. 1. But as for the others, her argument is perhaps a little too stridently hard core. People get or stay married for any number of reasons, which change and evolve over time. There are all kinds of nontraditional arrangements. Who is to say that whatever works between two consenting adults is right or wrong?

 

Don't forget, world of therapy is now on Instagram, too--you can follow world_of_therapy at instagram.com/world_of_therapy and receive a steady stream of soothing images for the soul. Feel free, too, to share your inspiring pictures, or photographs that describe your distress, by tagging them with the hashtag #worldoftherapy.

• Click here for a previous best of #mental heath Instagram collection.

Autism awareness

It’s either World Autism Day (April 2) or World Autism Awareness Week (March 27-April 2) or Autism Awareness Month (April). Or all three.

From the National Autistic Society:
• Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. It also affects how they make sense of the world around them.

• It is a spectrum condition, which means that, while all people with autism share certain difficulties, their condition will affect them in different ways. Some people with autism are able to live relatively independent lives but others may have accompanying learning disabilities and need a lifetime of specialist support. People with autism may also experience over- or under-sensitivity to sounds, touch, tastes, smells, light or colours.

• Asperger syndrome is a form of autism. People with Asperger syndrome are often of average or above average intelligence. They have fewer problems with speech but may still have difficulties with understanding and processing language.

• Autism is much more common than many people think. There are around 700,000 people in the UK with autism - that's more than 1 in 100.

• Five times as many males as females are diagnosed with autism.

• Over 40% of children with autism have been bullied at school.

• Only 15% of adults with autism in the UK are in full-time paid employment.

About World Autism Awareness Week
World Autism Awareness Week (WAAW) is all about doing something to stand out for autism! 

This week, you can raise funds to support people with autism to live the lives they choose, spread the word about autism, and have a fantastic time!
The money you raise will make a huge difference. By standing out and raising funds during WAAW, you could help The National Autistic Society deliver vital services to support over 700,000 people with autism and their families across the UK.

World Autism Awareness Day, 2 April
The United Nations:
2015 Theme: Employment: The Autism Advantage
It is estimated that more than 80% of adults with autism are unemployed.
Research suggests that employers are missing out on abilities that that people on the autism spectrum have in greater abundance than “neurotypical” workers do – such as, heightened abilities in pattern recognition and logical reasoning, as well as a greater attention to detail.
These qualities make them ideally suited to certain kinds of employment, such as software testing, data entry, lab work and proofreading, to name just a few examples. </p>
The hurdles that need to be overcome to unleash this potential include: a shortage of vocational training, inadequate support with job placement, and pervasive discrimination.

• My Autism Awareness Month playlist (Age of Autism)
• Apple highlights selection of Autism-related apps (MobileSyrup.com)
• My three daughters are autistic. I despise Autism Awareness Month. (Washington Post)


U.K. news

General Election 2015: Improving mental health should be a priority in this election
Alastair Campbell writes in The Guardian:

To be fair to Nick Clegg … you won’t find me saying these words too often, what with his broken promises and his propping up of one of the nastiest, most rightwing and incompetent Tory governments we have known. But – to be fair to Clegg – he has at least helped drive mental health and mental illness up the political agenda. He has been a consistent supporter of the Time to Change campaign. He made mental health the centrepiece of his conference speech, and the subject of his first major outing of the election campaign, with a Lib Dem manifesto commitment pledge of £3.5bn funding for mental health over the next parliament.

So Clegg has talked the talk, and that is a good thing. But over the course of this parliament, though we have made some progress in the anti-stigma campaign – if not enough to prevent some awful reporting of the Germanwings tragedy – on services I believe we have gone backwards. Indeed, there is a danger that politicians see improvement in attitudes as a substitute for the need for services when in fact improved awareness and understanding will lead to more reporting of mental health problems, and therefore the need for more not less resources within the NHS for mental health.

Mental health has long been the Cinderella service. NHS managers and commissioners, confronted with the reality of austerity policies, have to make tough judgments. When it comes to a choice between, say, cancer, A&E, and mental health, we all know where they find it easier to make the cuts.

I sometimes crowdsource before making speeches and when doing one such speech on mental health, I asked people to tweet me telling me what was going on in their area and I was deluged by people saying “we used to have this service and now it’s gone”.

The last Labour government did good things such as introduce IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies), which signalled an understanding of the role that talking and counselling can play in helping people improve their own mental wellbeing. If Ed Miliband becomes prime minister, I hope he can put mental health right at the heart of the NHS agenda where it needs to be. And I hope the NHS can involve mental health patients more in their own care, and also integrate physical and mental care better for the individual patient.

I don’t think the Conservative part of the Department of Health gets it at all. When I met the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, he said he didn’t understand how someone like me could get depression, because from the outside it looked like I had a great life. To be fair to him – something else I don’t say too often – he did at least seem embarrassed when I pointed out that I didn’t choose to be depressed, any more than I choose to be asthmatic, or would choose to have cancer.

• General Election 2015: Nick Clegg pledges improvements to mental health care (The Independent)
• Politicians say all the right things about mental health – but where's the action? (The Guardian)
• The General Election: Anyone but “Camilibegg”


Children with mental health problems can wait for more than three years to be assessed
From The Independent:
Children with mental health problems can wait for more than three years to be assessed and up to nearly two years to receive treatment, according to a report.
Freedom of Information requests submitted by The Times newspaper found that the longest wait from first referral to being formally assessed since 2012 was at the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, where this took three years and 20 weeks in one case.
The longest wait from being assessed to getting treatment was found at the South London and Maudsley Trust in which a child waited a year and nearly 42 weeks.
Sarah Brennan, chief executive of the charity Young Minds, said: “Children’s and adolescent mental health services are creaking at the seams as they are being hit with increased referrals at the same time as cutbacks to their services.”
The number of children being sent to mental health service rose by more than 6 per cent between 2013 and 2014, according to information about 26 mental health trusts.  In some cases children had to travel hundreds of miles from one trust to another because of a lack of beds.
Norman Lamb, the care and support minister, said: “It’s completely unacceptable for children and young people to wait years for treatment sometimes hundreds of miles from home — we wouldn’t accept this for physical health.”


Veterans' mental health: Referrals rise by 26%
From BBC News:
Mental health referrals for ex-servicemen and women have increased by 26% in the last year, says a specialist mental health charity for veterans.
Combat Stress said referrals for ill mental health or post-traumatic stress disorder rose from 1,802 to 2,264.
It said an increase in veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan seeking help was the main reason for the rise.
The charity said it wanted to increase its clinical resources to meet the rising demand.


Wales: Counselling service launched for clergy
From Anglicannews:
Clergy are often turned to when people need help but now a new counselling service will support clergy when they face difficulties themselves.
From money worries to family crises or addictions – the new Cynnal Churches’ Counselling Service was launched today to provide a free confidential counselling service available throughout Wales for all members of the clergy and their families who might be facing challenging times in their personal lives.

Is a 'marriage MOT' the key to a happy relationship? Ben and Marina Fogle say yes
From the Daily Mail:
Adventurer Ben Fogle and his wife Marina have said that regular 'MOT' therapy sessions with a marriage counsellor have helped them to cope with the pressures of childcare and strengthen their relationship.
The pair, who married in 2006 and have two children, have urged other couples to invest time in their marriage as a preemptive measure 'before it's too late'. 
Marina, who is founder of antenatal courses The Bump Class, told The Telegraph, 'The most compatible couples will struggle when into the mix you throw an exhausted, emotionally volatile woman who is physically vulnerable after giving birth, and a new father, equally tired and overwhelmed by his new responsibility.
'Wrapped up in just getting through each day, the parents have little time left for each other, and the communication breakdown begins.'
Marina has been keen to stress the importance of communication in a successful marriage, and has said she can see how couples can easily get so busy that they leave no time for each other.
Whilst many of her toddler-raising friends agree that marriage counselling is a good idea, Marina suggested that most couples who receive therapy make the decision too late.

U.S.A. news

Texas state trooper ordered to undergo counselling over Snoop Dogg photo
From The Guardian:
A state trooper has been reprimanded – and will be required to undergo counselling – after posing for a photo with Snoop Dogg at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, because the rapper has several convictions for drug possession.
Billy Spears was working security at the March event when Snoop Dogg asked to take a picture with him. The artist posted the image to Instagram with the comment, “Me n my deputy dogg”.
Department of Public Safety and Transportation officials saw the posting and cited Spears for deficiencies that require counselling by a supervisor.
Spears’s attorney says his client didn’t know about the rapper’s criminal record. Spears cannot appeal the citation because it isn’t a formal disciplinary action.
 

Trauma-informed psychotherapy puts the body – and love – back in mental healthcare
A good summary of trauma by Laura K Kerr, Ph.D, in in Social Justice Solutions:
For the past 50 years, psychotherapy has taken a back seat to biomedical psychiatry, largely due to reliance on medications for the treatment of mental disorders. Yet clinical evidence increasingly points to chronic, unresolved traumatic stress as the source of many — if not most — mental disorders. Furthermore, longitudinal analyses show continued use of psychotropic medications is bad for the body, even causing chronic diseases. Granted, medications can stabilize a body wracked by recurrent distress, but such an approach is hardly a long-term cure. According to psychiatrist and trauma specialist Bessel Van der Kolk, “dramatic advances in pharmacotherapy have helped enormously to control some of the neurochemical abnormalities caused by trauma, but they obviously are not capable of correcting the imbalance.” To correct the “imbalance” often requires learning to inhabit one’s body and relationships in new ways.
Fortunately, the psychotherapeutic treatment of psychological trauma has advanced significantly the past several decades. In part, this is due to scientific discoveries of how the body and relationships naturally defend against traumatic stress. In particular, trauma-informed psychotherapies that draw from neuroscience and attachment studies are more holistic and scientifically based than ever before, although they often support the intuitions held by originators of psychotherapy such as Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud, and C. G. Jung.


Chicago: Deerfield woman mixes dance, psychotherapy in unique sessions
From Chicago Tribune:
She's been dancing since she was 3, so it was a natural step for Erica Hornthal of Deerfield to make dancing her career. Hornthal, a licensed clinical professional counselor and board certified dance therapist, assists people of all ages who have movement disorders.
She's the founder of North Shore Dance Therapy, a business that since 2011 has provided holistic counseling and psychotherapy for individuals, families, couples and groups impacted by movement disorders such as Parkinson's and dementia. She has been practicing her specialty since 2009.


Phone counseling reduces pain, disability after back surgery
From Medical Xpress:
Research by Johns Hopkins scientists suggests that having a short series of phone conversations with trained counselors can substantially boost recovery and reduce pain in patients after spinal surgery.
The phone calls, designed to enrich standard pre- and post-operative care by reinforcing the value of sticking with physical therapy and back-strengthening exercise regimens, are a relatively inexpensive and simple intervention that can maximize surgical outcomes for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who undergo spinal surgeries every year, the investigators say.
A report on the findings of the federally funded research is published online March 28 in the journal Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
"Phone counseling appears to be an easy, low-cost strategy that yields meaningful results by improving patient engagement in physical therapy and at-home exercise programs that are so vital for their recovery," says study lead investigator Richard Skolasky Jr., Sc.D., associate professor of orthopedic surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Approaches like this one will play an important role in improving patient outcomes and reducing health care spending in an era when hospitals are increasingly being judged on the quality rather than quantity of care they provide."


World news

Jamaica: relatives of those killed need special attention
From Jamaica Gleaner:
Dr Beverly Scott, arguably western Jamaica's best known family therapist, is calling for special counselling to be provided for the relatives of young people whose lives are violently snuffed out.
Scott's comments were made against the background of a spate of cases of children being murdered across the island since the beginning of the year.
"When you look at the stress scale, the loss of a child is 100 per cent on the scale, so it is very difficult for the surviving relatives to cope," Scott told Western Focus in a recent interview. "For the rest of their lives, they will not be the same. They need real professionals, who know about grieving and how to get people through the grief process."


Sri Lanka: common mental disorders among adult members of ‘left-behind’
From BioMed Central:
Nearly one-in-ten Sri Lankans are employed abroad as International migrant workers (IMW). Very little is known about the mental health of adult members in families left-behind. This study aimed to explore the impact of economic migration on mental health (common mental disorders) of left-behind families in Sri Lanka ... Negative impact of economic migration is highlighted by the considerably high prevalence of CMD [depression, somatoform disorder, anxiety] among adults in left-behind families. A policy framework that enables health protection whilst promoting migration for development remains a key challenge for labour-sending nations.


Uganda: Group support psychotherapy for depression treatment in people with HIV/AIDS
The Lancet:
Group support psychotherapy (GSP) is a culturally sensitive intervention that aims to treat depression by enhancing social support, teaching coping skills, and income-generating skills. We compared GSP with group HIV education (GHE) for treatment of depression in people with HIV in Uganda ... The benefits of existing HIV educational interventions in HIV care services could be improved by the addition of GSP content. Potential benefits of the integration of GSP into existing HIV interventions, such as adherence counselling or group HIV educational programmes, should be addressed in future studies.

Last word

No, Psychiatry Could Not Have Prevented the Germanwings Disaster
Psychotherapist Gary Greenberg, author of “The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry,” writes in The New Yorker:
While some Germanwings Flight 9525 investigators sorted through debris in the Alps, others were in apartments and hospitals and doctors’ offices, seeking fragments of Andreas Lubitz’s life. As details leaked out—a doctor’s note, a depression diagnosis, a prescription, thoughts of suicide, a broken heart, an eye problem—they seemed to add up to the story of a mentally ill young man driven to commit mass murder and suicide. They also added up to trouble for Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, which, according to some experts, could now face damages in excess of an initial estimate of three hundred million dollars. The airline, the experts argue, should have known that Lubitz was not someone who should have had the lives of a hundred and fifty people in his hands.
As had happened in the cases of Jared Loughner and Adam Lanza, the attribution of the disaster to mental illness has spurred calls for more thorough mental-health screenings of people seeking access to instruments of mayhem, and for more restrictions on those diagnosed with a mental illness. But as any mental-health professional will tell you (and as many did in the wake of the crash), nearly one in three Americans meets the criteria for a mental-disorder diagnosis in any year, and more than half of us will qualify at some point in our lives. Once diagnosed, people with mental illnesses, even severe psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, do not commit violent crimes at higher rates than the rest of the population. And most people who have had suicidal thoughts do not go on to kill themselves, let alone a planeload of strangers. More intense psychological scrutiny coupled with the possibility of getting fired, as the head of an organization of German flight attendants warned, could easily backfire. “I would warn against making the crew into completely transparent people,” he said. “That would just mean that someone would not go to a doctor.” Or, since diagnosis is almost entirely dependent on self-reporting, the pilot could evade mandatory diagnostic scrutiny by lying—or, as Lubitz apparently did, by confining his queries about cockpit doors and suicide methods to a search engine.