​Forecast: Unexpected outbreaks of sunny spells in remote Scottish islands. Fair becoming good in Cornwall. Unending downpours in Liverpool and London.
 
The Office of National Statistics last week released its figures on the state of the nation’s emotional weather: happiness, anxiety, life satisfaction and how worthwhile life seems. It’s the culmination of three years of data collection.
 
The highlights
• Liverpool and Wolverhampton are supposedly the unhappiest places in Britain (average happiness scores of 6.96 and 6.99 out of 10)
Wolverhampton also has the second-lowest “life satisfaction” score. The lowest life satisfaction—where life is also ranked the least “worthwhile”—is in Harlow, just off the M11 in Essex, famous for being the site of Britain’s first modern residential tower block and first pedestrian precinct.
 
• Derry and Strabane in Northern Ireland have the highest levels of anxiety in the U.K. with a score of 3.73 out of 10, closely followed by and Belfast, Liverpool and a string of London boroughs
Northern Ireland is however the happiest part of the U.K, followed by Scotland, Wales and England. Is it possible to be anxious and happy? It is. Chesterton wrote of the Irish: “All their wars are merry / And all their songs are sad.”
And the converse is true also: you can be free of stress yet really miserable—unhappy Wolverhampton has the lowest levels of anxiety in all of Britain (1.95 out of 10). This perhaps suggests that trying to eliminate stress from your life in order to be happier may not work—you may just get depressed instead. People who achieve their dream of early retirement often make this confounding discovery: six months down the road they are bored and fed up. A certain amount of stress sharpens the focus, motivates people, boosts the heart and immune system—it enlivens. Too much of the wrong kind for too long, however—you get fried rather than fired up. This is the principle of hormesis—a little bit of hardship is good. In one experiment, mice that were given a small dose of poison outlived those who were given none. We are drawn to our cities not in spite of their stressful demands but because of them.
 
• Top of the happiness table—and the “life satisfaction” and “worthwhile” rankings, too—is Eilean Siar: the Outer Hebrides
The sample sizes for various remote Scottish islands were too small to be statistically significant, yet places like the Hebrides, Shetland and Orkney consistently crowd the opposite ends of these kinds of rankings from the likes of Liverpool, Wolverhampton and London.
The Eilean Siar tourism website says: “This is a lively and challenging place. It’s a place where community matters...The sheer diversity of the landscape is remarkable. Endless machairs and dunes. Mountains and stunning beaches. Vast expanses of moor and lochs. Vertical sea cliffs and stacks... Little wonder that visitors to our islands are enchanted by what they find here.”
Where incidentally should you be living? The BBC has devised a quick personality test which tells you where in Britain you would be happiest, and where you would be least happy. It’s nonsense of course but fun. You can take the test here. I was advised to move to somewhere called Craven, and to avoid at all costs relocating to somewhere called Spelthorne, where I could expect a life satisfaction score of only 32 percent, whatever that means.

​• Women are slightly happier than men (7.41 versus 7.35)
Women are also almost twice as likely to seek psychological help than men, who are conditioned instead to do a Clint Eastwood impersonation if ever they feel anxious or sad. Men are more than three times as likely than women in the U.K. to be alcohol-dependent, or commit suicide. Plus, women in the U.K. live on average four years longer than men. The debate about gender equality quite rightly focuses on gross injustices in terms of violence and sexual violence, pay, political and corporate power, and cultural representation, but those four lost years—four summers, birthdays, anniversaries; a thousand nights to sleep perchance to dream—rarely warrant a mention.
 
• Married people are happier than singletons (7.67 versus 7.11); the divorced or separated are the least happy (6.89)
Does marriage make you happy—or are happy people more likely to get married? A review of the literature from the National Bureau of Economic Research claims that there really is a cause-and-effect relationship between marriage and happiness. Marry, live happily ever after, right?
The authors of the report suggest that this is especially true if you marry someone who, you know, you actually like: “We explore friendship as a mechanism which could help explain a causal relationship between marriage and life satisfaction, and find that well-being effects of marriage are about twice as large for those whose spouse is also their best friend.”
On the other hand, marriage is the source of much misery for many. Untold sleepless nights lie behind the fact that 42 percent of marriages end in divorce in the U.K. There is some old evidence that marriage is good for men and bad for women. There is other evidence that nowadays the happiness boost from marriage is identical for both genders—feminism has redefined married life.
For all its ups and downs, imperfections and frustrations, marriage for most is better than the modern-day scourge of loneliness. Humans need other humans as much as they need food and water.

​• Life satisfaction and happiness on average are lowest in the 45-59-year-old age bracket; Those aged 65-79 tended to report the highest levels of well-being
This is in accord with the “U-bend of happiness” pattern across the lifespan, which I have written about before: one day you find yourself trapped in an unsatisfying job, marriage or town, struggling to pay the bills, stressed, sandwiched between looking after your kids and looking after your parents. You are miserable. You are at the bottom of the U-bend. “And you may ask yourself,” as the Talking Heads song goes, “how did I get here?” One study of happiness data in 72 countries reported that the global average bottom of the U-bend is 46 years old (though this of course masks enormous variety and individual differences). But then, after a midlife crisis or two, things get better.
Midlife is an opportunity to return to the changing room, review what went wrong in the first half of the match, chat with coaches, colleagues and counsellors, attend to any bruises, fortify yourself and then, renewed, refreshed and utterly changed, charge back out into the pitch for the second half. You might play a quite different game until the final whistle.
 
• The employed are quite a bit happier than the unemployed (7.42 versus 6.89)
This is hardly surprising—so much unhappiness is dictated by socioeconomic misfortune. Western governments tend to blame the poor and the unwell for their fate so as to divert attention away from their own policies that maintain poverty and inequality. Corporate happiness is top of the agenda. If you’re a divorced, unemployed, middle-aged man in Liverpool, with your dreams tossed and blown, it would be insulting in the extreme to suggest happiness can be achieved with a few sessions of CBT. It’s not his thoughts that need changing so much as his economic environment. The happiest countries, of course, are egalitarian, truly democratic and with high levels of social capital.
 
• The happiest religion is Hindu, followed by Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim (the happiest ethnicity is Indian; the least happy is “Gypsy / Traveller / Irish Traveller”). People with no religion are the least happy.
A conviction that you’ve been pencilled in for a good karmic afterlife or a place in heaven probably does make a lot of people quite happy. Atheists might regard such believers as deluded, cocooned in blissful ignorance. In the film “The Truman Show,” Jim Carrey would have stayed blissfully happy if he’d never discovered he was living in an entirely artificial town—an unwitting pawn in a reality TV show. Buddha became very unhappy when he left the palace to discover a world beyond the confines of his walls of privilege—a world that included poverty, illness and suffering—but thank goodness he did or the valuable philosophy, art and culture of Buddhism wouldn’t have happened. The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is not that life is about happiness. It is that life is suffering.
 
Questions for you
What to make of all this?
Is it meaningless—just an example of “lies, damn lies, statistics”—and, worse still, happiness statistics? Or is this an opportunity to take stock and maybe make some changes? How happy are you—how “worthwhile” is your life? Do you have good stress to contend with, or bad? If your new year’s resolutions didn’t work out, should you come up with new ones today, the first day of the Chinese New Year?
Should you marry your best friend, join the Hare Krishna, move to Stornaway and find a job? Or stay exactly where you are but change your attitude—turn your own personal Wolverhampton into some kind of heaven on earth?
Should you talk things through with a therapist?
Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll live the life you imagined, or maybe your dreams will forever elude you. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Your glass is neither half empty or half full.
The existentialists believe life is not about the pursuit of happiness. It is the pursuit of itself—to live to the full. Nietzsche famously argued that “god is dead”—there is no heaven, no afterlife, so you might as well throw caution to the wind and live intensely, making brave choices, feeling deeply, fully present, right here, right now.
Get to grips with the ups and downs, advise Echo & The Bunnymen, "because there's nothing in between." Or as Anaïs Nin wrote: "I must be a mermaid ... I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living."

Whatever happiness is for you, here are 5 tips to pump it up:

• Change your attitude. Happiness is a choice. You can be bitter about all the terrible things that have happened to you. Or you can think good thoughts and feel good feelings about yourself and others by fostering an attitude of compassion. When your best-laid plans end up in tatters, laugh. Raise your game by all means, but lower your expectations, too—being a perfectionist is a recipe for disappointment and unhappiness. Count your blessings: cultivating a stance of gratitude really helps. Appreciate everything around you, right here, right now. Be generous. Give people a break; the benefit of the doubt. Smile. Feel the love. As Victor Frankl wrote in a supreme book on his experiences in the Holocaust, Man’s Search for Meaning: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

• Be around happy people. For better and for worse, emotions are contagious, and you reap what you sow. Seek out people who make you feel good.

By the same token, avoid unhappy people, or people who put bad energy and unhappiness into the world, or indeed advice from such people, including dog-torturer turned U.S. Army dark arts coach Martin Seligman who churns out self-help books on “positive psychology” and professes to be an expert on “authentic happiness.”

This calls for a random quote from Immanuel Kant: “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”

The kind of energy you put forth into the world is exactly the kind of energy you shall attract and receive.

• Go to happy places. What is your happiest place on earth? How often do you go there? You can take yourself there anytime at all with a safe place mindfulness meditation. And go to actual happy places, too, such as inspirational, wild landscapes. In nature, we can find our true nature. So go green.

Or go to Switzerland. In May I wrote about the World Happiness Report, which declared the 10 happiest countries in the world to be:

1. Switzerland
2. Iceland
3. Denmark
4. Norway
5. Canada 
6. Finland 
7. Netherlands 
8. Sweden 
9. New Zealand 
10. Australia 

The U.S. is 15th on the list; the U.K. 21st. On the bottom of the pile are Syria, Burundi and Togo.

The 10 happiest nations are generally egalitarian and collectively-minded in spirit--inequality breeds discontent.

As Hector astutely notes in the whimsical novel Hector and the Search for Happiness: “It’s harder to be happy in a country run by bad people.”

• Grow old. Countless studies show that in general, happiness follows a U-bend across the adult life span, regardless of factors like wealth, employment status, presence or absence of children and so on. Perhaps you set out on your grown-up journey in reasonably good cheer, full of hopes and dreams. But sooner or later all that potential and possibility gets mugged by reality. And one day you find yourself trapped in an unsatisfying job, marriage or town, struggling to pay the bills, stressed, sandwiched between looking after your kids and looking after your parents. You are miserable. You are at the bottom of the U-bend. “And you may ask yourself,” as the Talking Heads song goes, “how did I get here?”

One study of happiness data in 72 countries reported that the global average bottom of the U-bend is 46 years old (though this of course masks enormous variety and individual differences).

But then, after a midlife crisis or two, things get better. Your physiological decline is outweighed by your psychological advance. The death of ambition is outweighed by the birth of acceptance. Instead of trying to live up to other people’s standards or expectations, you fully accept who you are. What Jungian James Hollis calls your “provisional personality” fades away, along with all the delusions of grandeur and internalised “rules” about how you, others and life “should” be. You start to play your own game. You start to love life again.

I see lots of clients going through the vortex of these kinds of transformations, painful breakdowns of various kinds that in the end turn out to be profound breakthroughs. I believe a “midlife crisis” can happen at any age, once in a lifetime or many times. Or, for the unfortunate few, never at all.

• Stop trying to be happy all the time. It’ll only make you unhappy. As Oliver Burkeman writes in The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking: “In order to be truly happy, it turns out, we might actually need to be willing to experience more negative emotions—or, at the very least, to stop running quite so hard from them.”

And anyway, is that what you really want, to be nothing more than a big yellow smiley face? There is so much more to life than being only happy.

BIPOLAR TIMES

A triumph of marketing

We can't tell our left from right
But we know we love extremes
Getting to grips with the ups and downs
Because there's nothing in between
—Echo & The Bunnymen

In his excellent slim tome Strictly Bipolar, Darian Leader says the postwar period was the “age of anxiety,” the 1980s and ’90s were the “antidepressant era,” while now, today, “we live in bipolar times.”

For people with the genuine, extreme symptoms of what is called “bipolar disorder,” the too-high highs and the too-low lows can make for an extremely difficult, roller-coaster life with times of great recklessness and wretchedness, danger and despair, and only fleeting glimpses of the straight and narrow.

The diagnosis formerly known as manic depression has, says Leader, increased 4,000 percent in the past 20 years. Why?

Partly because the definition has expanded to include broader categories that accommodate many more people, pathologising everyday human reactions such as “responding strongly to losses.” Anyone who has ups and downs in life, which is to say anyone, could choose to identify with the label “bipolar.”

Increasingly, it has become a designer label, with some “celebrities” seeming to regard bipolarity as a lifestyle choice, a creed, an accessory to match the Hermes bag.

The manic highs—like real life but with the wattage turned up all the way—are portrayed as thrilling interludes of high-intensity work, love, creativity in keeping with the frenetic pace of modern life.

Stephen Fry, diagnosed at 37, says of his mania (it’s obligatory to include a quote from Stephen Fry in any story about bipolarity): “We are kings of the world, nothing is beyond us, society is too slow for our racing minds, everything is connected in a web of glorious colour, creativity and meaning.”

Who wouldn’t want some of that now and again?

On screens large and small, bipolarity looks rather attractive. Whether you agree with him or not, Stephen Fry’s star burns brightly, such as when he denounces religion. If you’re CIA agent Carrie Mathison in Homeland, played by Claire Danes, bipolarity makes you passionate and intrepid. If you’re Cameron Stuart in the new movie Infinitely Polar Bear, played by Mark Rufallo, being bipolar makes you an eccentric, lovable rogue (to be fair I haven’t seen the film—I’m just judging from the trailer).

The too-low lows barely get a look-in.

Is bipolar’s boom a sign of the times? Or is it a triumph of marketing fuelled by big—and big profit-seeking—pharmaceutical companies?

As Leader points out: “Historians of psychiatry have all made the same observation: it was precisely when patents ran out on the big-selling tricyclic antidepressants in the mid-90s that bipolar suddenly became the recipient of Big Pharma marketing budgets. Websites helped people to diagnose themselves; articles and supplements appeared all referring to bipolar as if it were a fact; and nearly all of these were funded by the industry.”

The system is predisposed to tell you that you are sick, and that there are pills to make you better. In fact, the pills might not work. And you might not even be sick. You might be simply human.
—John Barton


U.K. NEWS

Cuts to UK mental health services are destroying lives and families
The Guardian:

In the UK, we have some of the best emergency medicine in the world for physical health. But when it comes to emergency mental health we can make no such boast. In fact the system is in crisis.

Last year nearly two million people in this country sought help for mental health problems. But many didn’t get the what they needed. In June a report by the Care Quality Commission revealed thousands of people in urgent need of care received “inadequate support”.

My own family experience in the last couple of years has persuaded me that those with mental illness, particularly the young, get a raw deal. Early intervention can make a vast difference and yet there is no easy way to get help. It is haphazard. You may get help or you may not. It may happen quickly or it may not. Teenagers may be in a children’s unit or thrown into an adult one. Worse still, you may be sent hundreds of miles from home, where your parents struggle to be with you. It is absurd – no wonder the outcomes are so poor.

It is why on ITV News this week we are running a series of reports on the state of mental health care in Britain. An investigation by ITV News and the charity Young Minds has revealed that in the last year alone £35m has been cut from children and adolescent services, £80m in the past four years.


Independent report calls for more 'balanced' and 'truthful' reporting of mental health issues
Mirror.co.uk:

A new front opened this week in the battle to improve media coverage of mental health problems.

The Mental Health Foundation (MHF) has launched a report on what society should expect from psychiatry and vice versa.

The report, entitled "A Better Understanding, Psychiatry’s Social Contract’", explains that society must support doctors in delivering high quality mental health care.

Along with an appeal for government to tackle issues like unemployment, which contribute to mental illness, there is a powerful call out to the media.

The MHF is asking the press to report on mental health issues in a ‘truthful' and ‘balanced’ way.

If we want a caring society, we need to combat ‘irresponsible' newspaper reports that reinforce stigma and negative stereotypes. And the MHF says “journalists who work on mental health stories should have at least a basic understanding of the role and responsibilities of psychiatric services”.


U.S.A. NEWS

Juvenile detention centers actually suck for kids with mental health issues, study finds
MTV.com:

In 2011, more than 60,000 young people were placed into juvenile detention centers, and new data is raising questions as to the efficacy of the system when dealing with mental health issues. A new study from Stanford University School of Medicine looked further into the mental health of kids in the juvenile justice system, and found that “juvenile inmates are much more likely to be hospitalized for mental health problems than children and teenagers who are not incarcerated.”

The study, which tracked roughly 2,000,000 hospitalizations of California boys and girls over 15 years, suggests that these detention centers probably aren’t helping kids who are already struggling with mental health. To put that into perspective, according to the study, “Mental health diagnoses were responsible for 63 percent of hospital stays by young people in the juvenile justice system, compared to 19 percent for those not in the system.”
 

US schools introduce mental health programs to address teen cutting problem
Fox News:

Schools around the country have begun offering new classes and mental-health programs to help stem a sharp rise in the number of adolescents found to be engaging in self injury, especially cutting. 

School officials, from high school to elementary levels, are working with adolescent psychologists to train their mental-health staff and teachers to counsel at-risk teens and to educate all students in dealing with stressful emotions. A growing number of the programs are based on a treatment called dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, which aims to help people regulate their emotions and teach skills for avoiding self-injury when the urge arises.

What is believed to be the first randomized, controlled study of DBT in self-injuring adolescents was published in October and showed the treatment significantly lowered the frequency of self-injury in 77 teens compared with other common therapies.


WORLD NEWS

Preventing long-term mental health issues in Nepal
Aljazeera.com:

More than 8,700 people have died since the April 25 earthquake struck Nepal. As the country begins to rebuild, mental health professionals are reaching out to those in need. 

"I saw a lot of grief in people," says counsellor Dristy Gurung.

"If it doesn't get treated or if you don't intervene in such grief or trauma, in the long run it might create some mental health issues for people."

According to the UN Resident Coordinator in Nepal, 2.8 million people are still in need of some form of assistance. 

Gurung works for Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO) Nepal, one of the country's leading psychosocial associations.

While the organisation advocates for mental health laws and acts, Gurung says the country always puts physical health first and that mental health is put in the shadow.

Gurung and other mental health professionals in Nepal say this can have major repercussions after a natural disaster of this scale. Gurung says they have already heard of cases of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder.


Qatar: counselling centres urged for expats
Gulf Times:

In view of the stress felt by expatriate workers who have to live away from their families for long durations, some residents have called for counselling centres across the country, especially in areas with a high concentration of single workers.

Besides low-income workers, many middle-income expatriates - particularly those facing financial problems - may also require psychological support, say residents.

The counselling centres should be staffed by specialists who can effectively address the problems faced by workers, including depression and stress, they pointed out.

“As there has been a huge increase in the number of workers in recent years and many more are expected to come in the next few years, there should be adequate facilities to cater to the psychological needs of expatriate workers, a majority of whom is living here without families,” said an engineer working on a major infrastructure project in north Doha.

In Qatar, depression affected about 18% of the population, according to earlier reports. Cases of suicide involving expatriate workers are also reported at times.



New Zealand: Kiwis crave advice to support young people
Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand:

New research by Common Ground shows another side to youth mental health.

Nearly three quarters of the New Zealanders surveyed say it’s the responsibility of the community, not just the immediate family, to support young people who are experiencing personal issues however only 23% say they felt they could help out, with 15% saying they would like to help but don’t know how or don’t feel equipped to help.

Common Ground is a dedicated website for those helping troubled young people is part of the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project and developed with collaboration from the Mental Health Foundation, Youthline, Skylight, Innovate Change and Curative.

The new research shows that communities really want to help, Dr Theresa Fleming, University of Auckland psychological medicine senior lecturer and youth mental health advocate says.

“Mental health is not just up to the experts. If family, friends and communities reach out, then no-one needs to struggle alone. This research highlights that Kiwis do care, and with a little info and support all of us can make a difference.”


VIEWPOINTS

Should I stay or should I go?
Jannah Walshe in the Mayo News:

To properly assess your current relationship, I’d recommend you first have a think about your own perspective on your relationship before going through it with your partner. It’s a good idea to write it down so that you remember it when you do speak about it together. The following questions may help you.

>    Is this relationship serving us both or just the other person?
>    Do I spend more time questioning whether the relationship is right or wrong than enjoying it?
>    Is there more to learn for me in this relationship, or can I best learn and grow outside of this relationship?
>    Would leaving this relationship be an act of self-care?


7 signs your therapist is good at their job (because some of us are weirdos)
Kathleen Smith, in Bustle:

Finding a good therapist is a lot like shopping for a good pair of pants. You’re going to have to try a few on and maybe even make a few alterations before they start working for you and help you feel great about yourself. Science tells us that psychotherapy works just as well if not better than medication, but unlike a pill, your therapist is a human. This means that personalities can clash, misunderstandings can occur, or occasionally people can just be outright weirdos. But once you get started, how do you really know you’ve found a good therapist? 

I know the first time I went to see a counselor, he told me to tap my shoulder blade three times and say out loud that I loved myself. Then he expected me to write him a $200 check for his oh-so-random nonsense. Rather than see someone else, I shied away from the idea. It wasn’t until I considered the profession as a career for myself that I began to see how talking, processing, and strategizing with a professional can be an invaluable resource. Because sometimes having someone with skin who can actively root for you and shine the light on new insights is better than any self-help book.

 

TRUE NATURE

This week I took a short work-related trip to Scotland. When I got out of the car, something was different. Immediately I felt the crisp, perfumed caress of something strange, something that city-dwellers have long had to live without: fresh air. I filled my lungs with this exotic elixir and instantly felt stronger, happier, fitter. I slept better in Scotland. I became more alive, more human.

If only you could bottle this extraordinary intoxicant, you could make a fortune. (Actually someone did that already, in China, whose cities bring pollution to a whole new level.)

Even though we may not understand all the reasons, it makes intuitive sense that metropolitan living can be detrimental not only to our physical health, but to our very psyches, too. The research findings are not a huge surprise: Urbanites have higher rates of anxiety and depression. We’re more frazzled, more sensitive to criticism. Schizophrenia, too, is much more common in cities. And since 2009, more than half the world’s population lives in cities, according to the United Nations. That’s almost 4 billion souls potentially denied the oxygen of a healthy environment, one free of pollution, car alarms, and armies of sharp-elbowed impatient people rushing to the next meeting—or away from themselves. The Hopi call it Koyaanisqatsi or “life out of balance" (and if you haven't seen the mind-blowing 1982 film of that name, please stop reading this or whatever else you are doing and order it now). 

• Relieve stress. Whatever works for you. Mindfulness. Music. Exercise. Take up golf—a way of being among greenery and it might make you live five years longer (or, depending on how you play and who you play with, it might just make you feel five years older). If the stress of city life gets really bad, or even if it doesn’t, get some help.

• Join or get involved with local wildlife organisations like the London Wildlife Trust, or global ones like Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund, or Greenpeace.

• Take regular daytrips beyond the city limits (and beyond your comfort zone). Hopefully this will be more successful and uplifting than the legendary, foul-mouthed scene from “Trainspotting” when “Tommy” drags his sceptical city pals to the beautiful, desolate Rannoch Moor (“This is not natural man,” says one.) 

• Use your vacations, too, to get back to basics. Head for the hills: camp in the Lake District for instance, and “walk in blessedness” there as Wordsworth did all those years ago.

As the wandering, wondering wordsmith said: “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.”
—John Barton


U.K. NEWS

Large UK trial to ask if mindfulness boosts teenage mental health
From Reuters:

Nearly 6,000 British school children are to take part in a major trial designed to assess whether mindfulness training for teenagers can improve their mental health.

Mindfulness is based on the idea of being more aware of the present by intentionally focusing on emotions, thoughts and sensations and viewing them with acceptance. Advocates say this understanding helps people to respond in ways that are more purposeful, rather than reacting on "automatic pilot".

The three-part study will include the first large randomized control trial of mindfulness training compared with teaching as usual in 76 schools.

Further parts of the study include experimental research to establish whether and how mindfulness improves mental resilience of teenagers, and an assessment of the most effective way to train teachers to deliver mindfulness classes to pupils.

Brain scientists know that teenage years are a crucially vulnerable time for mental health, particular in brain regions responsible for decision-making, emotion regulation and social understanding. More than three-quarters of all mental disorders begin before the age of 24, and half by the age of 15.


U.S.A. NEWS

Even mild mental health problems in children can cause trouble later
From NPR:

It's not easy for a child who has had mental health issues to make a successful transition into adulthood. But even children who have symptoms that are mild enough that they wouldn't be diagnosed are more likely to struggle with life as adults, a study finds.

Children and teenagers with a psychiatric disorder had six times higher odds of having at health, legal, financial and social problems as adults, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. Those with milder symptoms were three times more likely to have problems as adults.

We already know from previous studies that most adults with mental health issues had a previous psychiatric disorder during childhood – it doesn't have to be the same exact condition. But this study shows mental health problems that occurred during childhood can make it more likely that someone will struggle as an adult, making it more likely that they won't graduate from high school or commit a felony, for instance.


Judge orders counseling for Obama critic Dinesh D'Souza
From India West:

A New York judge has ordered Dinesh D'Souza, an Indian American conservative scribe and Obama critic filmmaker, to do community service for four more years for breaking campaign-finance laws and undergo further counseling.

Judge Richard Berman clarified July 13 that under the sentence he handed down after D'Souza pleaded guilty last year, he has to do eight hours each week for the entire five years he is on probation and not just the eight months he was confined to a halfway house.

The Manhattan federal court judge also read aloud a report from a court-appointed psychologist who called D'Souza "arrogant" and "intolerant of others' feelings," according to the New York Post.

"In my mind it was never contemplated that the eight hours only applied to the period of home confinement," Berman was quoted as telling defense attorney Ben Brafman.

He later read out a report from a psychologist who saw D'Souza, the maker of the anti- Obama film "2016: Obama's America,” and then ordered him to continue attending weekly sessions, the Post said.

SUMMERTIME

Summer boldly announced itself on Wednesday this week—July 1—with temperatures in London reaching 36.7C (98F). It was the hottest July day in the UK since records began in the 1870s. Hotter than Barcelona, Ibiza and Athens.

Summer is good, right? The living is easy. The sunshine makes us happy because it promotes vitamin D, an antidepressant. We’re nicer, more helpful. We become heightened, more relaxed, more confident and better-looking versions of ourselves at this time of year. We ripen. We are in abundance. Aren’t we?

No, not necessarily. For some, summer is a time of dread. You’re “supposed” to be living la dolce vita, basking with amazing friends in some tropical beach resort, Tuscan villa, or Caribbean yacht or whatever, and you’re not. You’re home, alone, still you, still unhappy. The heat saps your strength. You’ve lost your appetite. All your appetites. The noonday glare is oppressive, exposing you, attacking you. Maybe you have a disability that means you can’t head for the beach, or a poor body image that makes it impossible to wear sandals, shorts or skimpy swimwear. You’re anxious and you can’t sleep. The kids are home from school or college. Everything is expensive. Tempers flare. The pollution is terrible. You can’t breathe. No wonder suicide rates rise in spring and summer.

There is something called “seasonal affective disorder” or SAD. It is generally a chronic, recurring low mood, but usually in the winter months—a kind of annual psychic hibernation.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) identifies it as a type of “major depressive disorder” with a seasonal pattern: “The essential feature is the onset and remission of major depressive episodes at characteristic times of the year...This pattern of onset and remission of episodes must have occurred during at least a 2-year period, without any non-seasonal episodes occurring during this period.”

SAD was first identified in 1984 by Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal and his associates at America’s National Institute of Mental Health (Rosenthal’s definitive book on the subject is Winter Blues). The estimates of prevalence of SAD range from 1.4 percent in Florida to almost 10 percent in northern, low-light regions such as Alaska and Finland. SAD is thought to have an organic cause, perhaps some delicate bodily unbalance involving circadian rhythms, melatonin and serotonin levels and the pineal gland. It has been found to respond well to bright-light therapy.

The summer variant--sometimes called reverse seasonal affective disorder or “summer SAD”—is more unusual. According to researchers’ estimates, it’s about a tenth as common than the winter kind, although in some countries near the equator like India or Brazil, the summer kind is more prevalent.

• Seasonal depression can accompany summer sun (The New York Times)
• Summer depression: causes, symptoms, and tips to help (www.webmd.com)
• Janis Joplin sings “Summertime” in 1969 (YouTube)
A year later she died from a heroin overdose:
One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky

U.K. NEWS

Semicolon tattoo trend spreads to raise awareness over mental health
This is an interesting project. Getting a tattoo is a step up from wearing one of those charity bracelets that were popular a few years ago. Project Semicolon was started in America in the spring of 2013 by Amy Bleuel, who lost her father to suicide. Why a semicolon tattoo? Because “A semicolon is used when an author could've chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.”
It is a faith-based Christian organisation. “This by no means excludes any other beliefs or religions, as we accept them all,” states the Project Semicolon website. But it is of course by its very nature exclusionary. People of other beliefs or religions are unlikely to want to get involved. Why not unite people with mental health challenges the world over by making it nondenominational? Until or unless that happens, for most Project Semicolon is a Full Stop.
From www.dailymail.co.uk:

Thousands of people across the globe are getting semicolons tattooed on their bodies in a bid to raise awareness about mental health.
The simple punctuation mark - used to divide sentence clauses - has been adopted by the non-profit group 'Semicolon Project' to help raise awareness over depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide.
The organisation hopes that by persuading people to have semicolon tattoos - permanent or temporary - will help break down the stigma associated with mental illness.

Although the U.S.-based charity was founded in April 2013, it has recently attracted renewed attention. 
Indeed, Emma Richards of Llandudno, Wales, got a semicolon tattooed on her little finger this week after reading about the initiative online.
The 30-year-old started suffering with depression after her young son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, epilepsy and autism.
Today, she remains on medication to alleviate the symptoms, which include palpitations and panic attacks.
She told Mirror.co.uk that she read about the Semicolon project and completely related to the message.

EastEnders: Lee Carter to battle depression in new mental health storyline
From the Radio Times:

EastEnders is working with mental health charity Mind for an upcoming storyline that will see Lee Carter (Danny-Boy Hatchard) fight depression.

In the coming weeks, viewers will see army recruitment officer Lee begin to struggle with everyday life as he battles with his emotions. After coming under pressure from sister Nancy (Maddy Hill) to reveal what's wrong, Lee finally comes clean.

But Lee will decide to keep his feelings from mum Linda (Kellie Bright) and dad Mick (Danny Dyer) for fear of causing them worry.

"This is not a subject that only a handful of people can relate to. It’s something that at some point most people in their lives will experience on different levels," said actor Danny-Boy Hatchard, who plays Lee. 

As to how the depression will affect Lee's relationship with Whitney, Hatchard explained: "This will make them stronger. What Lee wants in a relationship is what his own mum and dad have. And Lee knows that in order to have that, he has to confide in Whitney.


Positive view of NHS marred by fears over dementia and mental health care
From The Guardian:

Public perceptions of local NHS care for people with mental health problems and dementia are stubbornly low despite overall pride in England’s healthcare system rising to its highest level in recent years, a government-commissioned survey reveals.

Just over two-thirds of more than 1,000 adults questioned in their own homes last winter were satisfied with the running of the NHS at a national level – a figure that has seen little change – but satisfaction with local services dropped from 78% in 2013 to 74%.

Well over eight in 10 people who have been to hospital or their GP recently are positive about the experience, according to a report from the Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute.

More negatively, a higher proportion of people think those with mental health conditions are not well cared for (39%) compared with those who think they are (31%). Dissatisfaction has increased by seven percentage points since the last but one survey in spring 2013. Almost three in 10 people say they don’t know about care for this group of patients.


U.S.A. NEWS

Science proves what you suspected: hiking's good for your mental health
From the Los Angeles Times

Do not underestimate the power of a walk in the woods: A new study suggests that even a 90- minute stroll in a natural environment can lead to measurable changes in the brain, and may help combat depression.

Previous research has shown that just a 50-minute walk in nature can improve your mood, decrease your anxiety and even improve your memory. But for the new study, published this week in PNAS, the research team wanted to see if they could understand what the mechanisms for these positive effects might be.

To help them figure it out, they decided to focus specifically on what psychologists call "rumination," which has been shown to predict depressive episodes.

"Ruminative thought means something very specific in psychology," said Gregory Bratman, a PhD candidate in environmental science at Stanford University and the lead author of the study. "It is repetitive thought that is focused on negative aspects of the self."

Examples of rumination include spending a lot of time thinking back over embarrassing or disappointing moments, or rehashing recent things you've said or done.

To see how a walk in nature affects ruminative thought, the researchers randomly assigned 38 volunteers with no history of mental illness to take a 90-minute walk in an urban green space near Palo Alto or a loud, busy street with three to four lanes of traffic in each direction.


Traumatizing impact of family detention on mental health of children and mothers
From the American Immigration Lawyers Association:

The psychological harm caused when mothers and children seeking asylum in the U.S. are detained in jail-like facilities is the subject of a complaint filed today with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Women's Refugee Commission, and the American Immigration Council. The complaint includes details of the harsh and detrimental impact of detention on ten case examples of mothers and children documented by mental health professionals after in-depth evaluations. CRCL must immediately and thoroughly investigate these cases of trauma in family detention and further request a complete investigation into psychological and physiological impact that family detention is having on children and mothers.


WORLD NEWS

Turkey: Therapy center looks to heal wounds of Syrian children of war
From Daily Sabah:

Two nongovernmental organizations inaugurated a rehabilitation center in Istanbul yesterday for Syrian children and their mothers traumatized by the civil war in their country.

The Psychosocial Support Center in Istanbul's Fatih district, a hub for displaced Syrians who fled to Turkey after war broke out in their country four years ago, will provide therapy to distressed children and their families.

Mevlüt Yurtseven, director of the Alliance of International Doctors, one of the NGOs operating the center, said Syrian children underwent the most severe trauma during the war and they aimed to help them to recover.

The center will serve 240 children and their mothers in six-monthly terms during which they will undergo psychotherapy, art therapy including other forms of therapy. Both mothers and children will be able to attend the lifelong learning courses that aim to help traumatized children forget their past troubles and boost their self-confidence, NGO officials said.

Apart from children, the center will cater to Syrian women in need of legal and social counseling and offer Turkish classes.

Turkey is home to nearly 1.8 million Syrians and over 260,000 Syrians living in tent camps built by the Turkish government in provinces near the Turkish-Syrian border, while others either reside in their own homes, in rental houses or squat in abandoned buildings and parks. Psychological therapy and social support are provided for Syrians in camps but those not living in camps have no prospect of therapy.


Australia: new concept takes counselling into the great outdoors
From www.dailytelegraph.com.au:

If EXERCISE is just as good as medication in treating depression then Ryde psychologist Jo-Anne Sammons could be on to an absolute lifesaver – counselling in the great outdoors.

It was while completing a course at the Black Dog Institute, which looked at the success of using exercise to treat mild and moderate depression, that Ms Sammons came up with the idea of walking and talking.

“I’d been thinking about it for a couple of years,’’ she said. “I had a client with a newborn baby and she had post-natal depression. I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could do this outside where she could push the baby in a pram’.

“When you are outside you can practise mindfulness, focusing on the sun on your face, you get the benefit of exercise and some people just feel more comfortable being side-by-side – particularly men.’’

Holland: Dutch study on diabetes reports effectiveness of mindfulness-based psychotherapy
From Diabetes News Journal:

In a recent study published in the Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic, a team of Dutch researchers led by professor Paul Emmelkamp assessed the long-term clinical outcomes of psychotherapy in patients with diabetes.

Patients with diabetes often report depressive symptoms, a comorbidity that has a negative impact in clinical outcomes and mortality. The burden of depression is increased by the fact that it is a chronic and progressive condition, with high rates of relapse. Recently, evidence has shown that Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is effective and beneficial as a psychological treatment for patients with depressive symptoms. The method is also beneficial for relapse prevention.


VIEWPOINTS

Equality at work is still a pipedream for people with mental health problems
From Clare Allan in The Guardian:

One of the very few things the last government did to make life easier for people with mental health problems was to introduce legislation preventing employers from asking about the health of an applicant before making a job offer. (There are some exceptions. You cannot apply to MI6 if you’ve ever been diagnosed with either “manic depression” or schizophrenia, for example.)

While this change was long overdue and extremely welcome, that such legislation is needed is indicative of the fact that true equality, equality whereby the full range of human experience is regarded as equally valid and potentially useful, is still pretty much a pipedream for the vast majority of people with mental health problems. The best we can hope for is that nobody will find out.

This seems a pity. It’s a pity for the person forced to try and conceal the gaps in their CV by means of extended periods of “overseas travel”, career breaks and whatever else, like brushing strands of hair across a bald patch. But it’s a pity for employers, too, who must assess candidates without access to information on the full range of skills and experience they may have to offer.


How ketamine is revolutionizing the way we treat depression
From Dr. Keith Ablow in Fox News:

I have now treated approximately one hundred patients with intravenous ketamine. The results mirror those of research trials on the treatment; more than two thirds of my patients have experienced dramatic recoveries. Their profoundly low mood, lack of energy, decreased self-esteem and even suicidal thinking very frequently yields entirely to the ketamine infusions. And while the results from ketamine may last weeks or months, that is often more than enough time to allow other medications and psychotherapy to permanently rid patients of their suffering.


Have your feelings without your feelings having you
Dr. Gary Trosclair in Huffington Post:

I've noticed that most people come in to therapy with some preconception about what to do with their feelings in session: Some believe that venting will help them to heal, others feel that it will be most helpful to remain distanced from their feelings so that they can analyze them. They're both right. And they're both wrong. It's the use of both of these modes in alternation that's most helpful -- though I think that there are better ways to describe them than "venting" and "analyzing."

We need to value our feelings and use them rather than trying to get rid of them through either venting or analyzing. I've found that the best way to do this is to let feelings rise into consciousness, fully experience them, contain them and learn from them, and then decide what to do about them. This means expressing feelings without reacting to them impulsively, and then making conscious decisions about how to live based on what we learn from them.

This whole process could take minutes or years. Some feelings take a long time to fully rise into conscious, and to be fully experienced and fully understood. Others emerge quickly.

Delighted Danes, frolicsome Finns
You would think that with so many governments around the world struggling with similar issues—200-plus grand petri dishes—that there would be more consensus over the best way to run a country.

What system seems to work best? Where are people happiest?

In looking for answers, the Gallup organisation surveyed people across 158 countries about their happiness. In the latest edition of the resulting annual World Happiness Report (http://worldhappiness.report), the 10 happiest countries in the world were deemed to be:

1.       Switzerland
2.      Iceland
3.      Denmark
4.      Norway
5.      Canada 
6.      Finland 
7.      Netherlands 
8.      Sweden 
9.      New Zealand 
10.    Australia 

If you were born into any of these prosperous, well-run, generally egalitarian nations, you should be thankful—it could have been so much worse. It could have been bottom-of-the-pile Syria, Burundi or Togo for you. The U.S. is 15th on the list; the U.K. 21st.

So what do the top-10 have in common? What makes the Swiss and the Swedes smile? Why so many cheerful Canadians, delighted Danes, frolicsome Finns?

The 6 keys to happiness
The report identifies six key factors which contribute to the happiness ranking: “The six factors are GDP per capita, healthy years of life expectancy, social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (as measured by recent donations, adjusted for differences in income).”

A crucial ingredient that cuts across these criteria, the X-factor, is the concept of “social capital,” which is defined as: “the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively.”

Social capital describes the extent of trust, social support, and pro-sociality that exists. These things are the mark of an evolved human society—the antithesis of the kind of Ayn Rand law-of-the-jungle dystopia that is so prevalent in many parts of the world.

Writes sustainable development advocate Jeffrey D. Sachs in the World Happiness Report: “When social capital is high, individuals are more prepared to incur such individual costs for the greater good; and when most people in society behave in that manner, society as a whole benefits in higher economic productivity, stronger social insurance, greater societal resilience to natural hazards, and greater mutual care.”

Almost no-one can keep a straight face when the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Mayor of London—old Etonians David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson—inevitably utter the party line: “We’re all in this together.” We live in a deeply divided world—a world where 85 people have the same wealth of the poorest half of the global population, 3.5 billion people. But in egalitarian, truly democratic nations with high levels of social capital, the words are slightly easier to swallow.

The happiest nations are awash with social capital:

• The Scandinavian system or “Nordic model” of government features high taxes, a large, well-run welfare state, a high standard of free education and healthcare, and low levels of inequality. The machine works for betterment of the people, not the other way round. (In John Rawls “A Theory of Justice,” he demonstrates through his “original position” experiment that if people don’t know how they will end up in an imaginary society, they will generally opt for a fair, redistributive political and economic system that treats all fairly, maximising the prospects of the least well-off.) The Nordic model is a system that appears to make people happy: Denmark and its close cousin Iceland, plus Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, are all in the top-8 happiest nations in the world. Why isn’t such a superior form of governance the rule rather than the exception? (“Yes,” people say, “but these are countries with small populations and low immigration”—as though water, sunlight and soil were only good for some trees but not others.)

• According to the World Happiness Report: “66% of respondents in the Netherlands and 61% in Sweden answered that most people can be trusted, compared with just 35% in the US and 28% in Russia. Moreover, comparing the extent of trust in the 1981-84 sampling period with the recent period, trust rose in Sweden (from 57 to 61%), while it declined in the United States (from 45 to 35%).”

• Scandinavian cities tend to do well in the famous “lost wallet” experiments in which full wallets are left lying around to see how many get returned or handed in.

• The happiest nation, Switzerland, meanwhile, is the closest state in the world to a direct democracy. There are referendums on town, city, district and national level. They don’t just scrawl an X on a ballot paper once every 5 years. The Swiss really have a say in how their country is run. They are invested in their government, and vice versa.

Blame the victims
The World Happiness Report thus reveals that our mental state is highly dependent on the kind of society we live in, and our place within it. This should be obvious. We already knew that: there is a longstanding, strong correlation between low social “class” and mental health problems.

Yet in the West, there’s a tendency to blame the victims of unhappiness or other mental distresses for their own suffering. The rationale is that these unfortunate people need to pull themselves together, think more positively, be tougher, develop better strategies, stop whining or whatever. Or have 6 sessions of CBT—that should be enough to right their faulty thinking and behaviour, to make them see the error of their ways.

The late British clinical psychologist David Smail called this wishful thinking or “magical voluntarism.” The reality, he argued, is that our problems are caused by external circumstances, the harshness of living, an oppressive, unjust society. Aside from the likes of Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan, Karen Horney and the social environment psychologists, society’s role in mental dis-ease has generally been overlooked by a profession that for Smail is too often part of the problem rather than the solution.

Psychology, he says, has become part of the machinery of capitalism, co-opted to locate distress in the individual and so take the spotlight away from social iniquity, hierarchical structures and machiavellian manoeuvres in the corridors of power. Writes Smail: “I can think of no mainstream approach to psychological therapy which doesn’t harbour at its core a humourless authoritarianism, a moralistic urge to control, that has the ultimate effect of causing infinitely more pain than it could ever conceivably hope to cure.”

As in Bhutan, with its concept of “Gross National Happiness,” the U.K. government’s utterances and election promises around mental health are perhaps less about a genuine concern for the public’s wellbeing and more about public relations. The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme is welcome, but partly helps to window dress the real agenda: cutting back on public services and serving the needs of the powerful rather than the powerless. Likewise, it's easier for politicians in India to call for counselling for suicidal farmers than to give them a fair deal. Meanwhile, in the U.S., a powerful elite peddles the myth of the “American Dream”—anybody can become anything they desire, and if they don’t they’ve only got themselves to blame—as though a profoundly unequal playing field were an irrelevance.

People are unhappy? Well, continue flogging until morale improves. Or let them eat cake.

Perhaps Smail goes too far. “There is no such thing as an autonomous individual,” he writes. But we of course do have personal power. A lot. More than we realize sometimes. Regardless of our circumstances, we always have choices, as Viktor Frankl so eloquently described. The caged bird can still sing. There is a role for talking therapies.

As Sartre wrote: “Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”

General Election blues

Traumatised by the election result? A psychotherapist's recovery guide
Philippa Perry offers some post-election hangover remedies in The Guardian:

Don’t write anyone off as plain evil. Let’s stop assuming the worst of our so-called enemies. We need to learn to empathise and to make an effort to understand the feelings beneath the behaviour of people who voted for rightwing parties. It’s tempting to write them off as uncaring, selfish or persecutory, but that won’t solve anything. I need to feel what it’s like to believe that someone is after all my money and resources and imagine what it’s like to think people coming into this country will not add to our resources but take them away. Hating the electorate for being stupid, however satisfying in the short-term, will make things much worse. I think probably everyone means well in their own way. If I think that, I start to feel more upbeat and less despairing.


David Cameron: ensure our NHS is safe
Sign the petition from action.sumofus.org:

The people have spoken. More than two-thirds of voters in key marginal constituencies have sent a strong message to David Cameron to protect the NHS from being sold out to corporate interests under the secret Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal.
But despite these clear words from us, David Cameron has refused to come out publicly in defence of our NHS. As it stands, TTIP would give US corporations unprecedented access to the NHS and irrevocably cement the sell-out of the NHS to corporate interests.


Only less austerity will improve our mental health
From The Guardian:

This is the first election ever in which mental health has been considered a subject worthy of mainstream political discussion. The Lib Dems take the lead in this regard (closely followed by the Greens) with “equal care for mental health” being one of the five policy priorities featured on the front page of their manifesto, along with a promise of extra funding for the NHS.

In their Manifesto for the Mind, the Lib Dems set out in detail how their promise of an additional £500m a year over the course of the next parliament will be used to end “discrimination against mental health”, through better access to services, improvements in pre- and postnatal care, investment in children’s mental health, prevention, research and tackling stigma.

The Labour and Conservative promises are very much vaguer, indeed so vague in places as to be all but meaningless – the Conservatives’ pledge to ensure “that there are therapists in every part of the country providing treatment for those who need it” tops my personal piffle list. What does seem clear, however, is that politicians have finally clocked on to the fact that mental health is an issue of importance to many voters and, with more and more people prepared to speak out about their experiences, one that they can ill afford to ignore. Cinderella may not yet have made it to the ball, but she’s not about to go back into the scullery. his is the first election ever in which mental health has been considered a subject worthy of mainstream political discussion. The Lib Dems take the lead in this regard (closely followed by the Greens) with “equal care for mental health” being one of the five policy priorities featured on the front page of their manifesto, along with a promise of extra funding for the NHS.

In their Manifesto for the Mind, the Lib Dems set out in detail how their promise of an additional £500m a year over the course of the next parliament will be used to end “discrimination against mental health”, through better access to services, improvements in pre- and postnatal care, investment in children’s mental health, prevention, research and tackling stigma.

The Labour and Conservative promises are very much vaguer, indeed so vague in places as to be all but meaningless – the Conservatives’ pledge to ensure “that there are therapists in every part of the country providing treatment for those who need it” tops my personal piffle list. What does seem clear, however, is that politicians have finally clocked on to the fact that mental health is an issue of importance to many voters and, with more and more people prepared to speak out about their experiences, one that they can ill afford to ignore. Cinderella may not yet have made it to the ball, but she’s not about to go back into the scullery.


Morning after blues: post-election playlists
From The Guardian:

What is the mood music of the nation, this post-election morning? Depends who you voted for, really. With that in mind we have been compiling post-election playlists for supporters of the Tories, the Lib Dems, Labour and the SNP. No science has gone into this – each playlist is a ragbag of emotions, and lyrics are not to be taken as literal comment on each party’s fortunes. Well, not every lyric. And we are not suggesting that these artists are supporters of the relevant parties. While we at the Guardian might wish we could include a certain George Jones song in their playlist – Your Heart Turned Left and I Was on the Right – that was not to be. Perhaps, actually, this might be more apposite. Let us know which songs you would add to each playlist and we’ll update them later.

 • Vote with your feet: how (and where) to escape the election result (The Guardian)


Why elections are bad for your health
From Spectator.co.uk:

How common is this obsessive behaviour at election time, and how much damage can it do? While some degree of worry is normal – particularly about events which will potentially affect our own lives – when it reaches a level this extreme (in a small minority of people, but more than you might think) it is to the detriment of sleep, healthy eating, exercising and face-to-face contact with other people.

Of course journalists and politicians become totally consumed by elections – especially one as nail-biting as this. But if you focus on something all the time it becomes intrusive. Once a thought becomes an obsession it can make us feel as if we aren’t in charge of our own minds.


U.K. news

The crisis in children's mental health services: an NHS insider speaks
An anonymous report from the frontlines, in The Guardian:

The crisis has, in recent weeks, finally made it to the front pages. Troubling statistics are everywhere: one in 10 children will encounter a mental health problem of some kind, three quarters of which will go untreated; Camhs budgets reduced by up to 94% in some parts of the country. The steep increase in self-harm and in-patient admissions, the lack of beds resulting in children being seen on adult psychiatric wards, preposterous waiting times, increased referral thresholds and unacceptable national variations have all been brought to attention in recent weeks, with the promise that a further £1.25bn will be ploughed into mental health services during the next five years.

But whatever the promises made in the heat of a general election campaign, adequately funded services feel a remote prospect. On an ordinary day, staff work late and eat their sandwiches in front of computer screens. There are regular complaints that clinical time is increasingly eaten up by administration; but it is also true that our cases are often of such a complexity and level of risk that we want to make sure every decision is in writing. Sickness rates can be high and the lure of private practice grows: how much mental disturbance can we digest, in circumstances where we feel the quality of our work is at risk of compromise, without becoming ill ourselves?


NHS ‘system failure' puts pressure on A&E wards
From The Guardian:

Large numbers of people with mental health issues are ending up in A&E wards because of “system failure”, according to leaked minutes of a government-attended steering group.

The meeting heard that people with mental illness are presenting themselves at emergency wards because of inadequate provision for them in the community.

The minutes from the mental health crisis care concordat steering group, attended by health minister Norman Lamb, suggest that the failure to treat mental health patients properly is contributing to pressure at A&E wards in NHS hospitals in England, which have missed the target of 95% of people to be seen within four hours for 93 weeks in a row.

Reviews: 'Welcome To Me' shows humor, heartbreak in mental health struggle
From Forbes:

Films about mental health are already dealing with a touchy subject that requires a deft hand and sensitivity. When the film is a comedy, the difficulties are compounded and the need for sensitivity is even greater. The comedy-drama Welcome To Me manages to walk that fine line, driven by a remarkable lead performance from Kristen Wiig that proves her talents extend well beyond comedy. It tells the story of a woman with severe personality disorders who wins the lottery and stops taking her medication in order to pursue her dream of making her own talk show (in which she relives the most painful moments of her past, cooks food, takes naps, and neuters animals). Things go exactly as badly as you think they will. It’s not an easy sell to audiences, except that it’s wonderful and funny and heartbreaking in so many ways you rarely get from mainstream cinema. And again, the performance from Wiig makes it all worth the price of admission even if nothing else happened on screen around her.

 • Kristen Wiig on mental health, comedy and 'Ghostbusters' (Reuters)

'Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy' by Irvin D. Yalom
From the Washington Post:

In his new book, “Creatures of a Day,” Irvin D. Yalom, author of the best-selling “Love’s Executioner,” makes a compelling case for returning to the essence of what has always made any brand of psychotherapy effective: the therapist’s ability to connect and collaborate with his or her patients, making them feel safe and valued. This isn’t by-the-book learning, Yalom contends. Rather, the relationship comes only from preferring the “full-bodied, multidimensional individual facing us in our office” over formal diagnoses.

The book uses 10 case studies from Yalom’s therapy sessions to illustrate epiphanies on both sides of the patient-therapist relationship, with each case touching upon a single central concept: the ephemerality of life. How we manage the pursuit of a happy one in spite of fleeting youth, squandered opportunities and loss determines how much we’re affected by the prospect of our own death. 
“The amount of death terror experienced,” Yalom writes, “is closely related to the amount of life unlived.”

• Yalom: ‘Creatures Of A Day: And Other Tales Of Psychotherapy' (Radio interview with grandfatherly-voiced Yalom on WAMC)


World news

Earthquake-devastated Nepal struggles to heal its emotional scars
From the Hindustan Times:

Millions of quake survivors in Nepal are experiencing “phantom tremors” and other anxieties, in continuing anguish that experts describe as classic symptoms of post traumatic disorder that the country will struggle to deal with. 

Nepal has just 90 trained psychiatrists and 300 psychologists. Consider their task: Health experts estimate that about two million Nepalis will probably require basic post traumatic stress disorder counselling. Of these, at least 20% could require short-term medication, according to the Psychiatry Association of Nepal.

“These are conservative figures,” Dr Saroj Prasad Ojha, president of the association, told HT.

“Whichever way you look at it, we are not equipped to deal with this challenge. The infrastructure is grossly inadequate.”

• In Nepal, psychosocial counselling goes on the radio (UNICEF)

• New UN guide aims to address mental health needs in humanitarian emergencies (UN News Centre)

• Nepal Earthquake Appeal - oxfam.org.uk‎ (www.oxfam.org.uk/nepal_appeal‎)


Nigeria: Hundreds freed from Boko Haram require counselling
From AllAfrica.com:

Hundreds of women and children held by the militant group Boko Haram have been rescued by the Nigerian army in recent weeks. UNFPA is providing support to the freed women and girls in Borno and Adamawa states, and, as the military steps up its offensive against the insurgents, UNFPA is strengthening its services in anticipation of additional freed hostages.

Last week saw a major influx of rescued women and girls, including 293 women and girls who were rescued on 28 April 2015. Many of those released from Boko Haram have been brought to camps, where thousands of community members are seeking shelter from the ongoing unrest.

UNFPA, in close collaboration with the Borno State Ministry of Health, mobilized and deployed health workers to camps for internally displaced persons (IDP) in north-eastern Nigeria. There, they are providing psychosocial support and health services to the rescued women and girls, as well as to family and community members.

"A large number of girls and women rescued from Boko Haram have been found to be pregnant," said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "We do not know yet the total number of pregnant girls among those rescued. The screening is still ongoing."
 

Turkey: Obligatory counseling for domestic violence perpetrators
From Daily Sabah:

To fight domestic violence, the government is preparing to introduce compulsory psychiatric treatment for people convicted for domestic violence. New regulations will allow the Family and Social Policies Ministry to handle the treatment, which was previously mandatory only when ordered by a court.

Minister Ayşenur İslam said repeat offenders in domestic violence cases sometimes eventually end up killing their spouses, and the treatment aims to prevent a repeat of acts of violence. İslam said the violence was not confined to acts against women, but rather it was a social problem. "Violence targeting women also targets children. A child who grows up in a family suffering from domestic violence turns to violence when he [or she] becomes an adolescent. So, it passes from one generation to the next," she said. Her ministry will now launch a comprehensive study to examine the profile of those resorting to domestic violence and those who do not.

Units of the ministry specializing in domestic violence cases will assess the psychological condition of offenders, and they will undergo treatment for anger management, addiction and other factors that may have led to the crimes they committed.


Saudi Arabia: Using art therapy to open the minds of jihadists
From Pacific Standard:

Of all the problems therapists have been tasked with solving, altering the mindsets of committed jihadists is one of the toughest and most important. In Saudi Arabia, which has more experience with this problem than any other nation, they have found a simple tool provides invaluable assistance in this challenging process: Paint brushes.

In the journal The Arts in Psychotherapy, Awad Alyami of King Saud University, who serves as senior art therapist at the Mohammed Bin Nayef Center for Counseling and Care in Riyadh, provides a fascinating first-person report on his and his colleagues' work with former radical fighters, including men who had been held for many years at Guantanamo Bay.

He offers evidence that art therapy is "an efficacious approach in counterterrorism," and a vital part of the larger effort to integrating former radicals back into Saudi society. He describes the trial-and-error process that led to the current approach, and the ways he and his colleagues adapted Western concepts to serve a Saudi population.

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.

     Paying someone to hit you with a stick might gratify masochistic tendencies but any therapeutic benefits seem extremely dubious. At my school there was a geography teacher who liked to punish students by whacking them with his hockey stick, which he called "my willy" (I swear I'm not making this up). He was also fond of hurling his wooden blackboard duster at pupils, and occasionally had been known to grab a miscreant, drag him to the front of the classroom, and plunge his head into a bucket of cold water which he kept on his desk. Who knows how many children he traumatized over the decades with such barbarism. Some people say they had a good experience of boarding school. Many however did not and still suffer today from the devastating consequences of broken attachments and a stunted, shut-off emotional life (I was spared the former—I was a day pupil). Joy Schaverien calls this boarding school syndrome, and many of the afflicted end up in positions of power. And in therapy, too. Repression and denial work up to a point, and then they stop working. The middle-age man suddenly bursts into tears on his way to work one day, or out of the blue he hits his wife, or he finally notices that his drinking has got completely out of control. A crack appears in the facade. For the lucky ones, the crack lets in a little light. With some coaxing, such men emerge, blinking, out of their psychic foxholes, to discover that the war is over.
     While this supposed Siberian spanking therapy is extreme, there are many other, subtler, more insidious ways that therapists can abuse their clients. A skilled therapist might challenge you, provoke you, stir things up, which can be all well and good. There might be times when you leave a session feeling really terrible, as fragmented as a shattered mirror. You might even at times hate your therapist. These things are often all part of a healthy, helpful therapeutic process. Psychotherapy is not just about patting a client on the head and offering nice affirmations. The "do not disturb" sign hangs on the outside of the door, not the inside.
     But if you feel that your therapist doesn't have your best interests at heart, isn't on your side, is exerting an unhealthy power over you, undermines you, always makes you feel bad, or in some way seems to take out their own issues on you, then you have a choice. You could stick around and explore what's going on, share your experience of the therapist and vice versa and analyse the dynamics of your relationship and so on, all the while blaming yourself. Or do yourself a favour and walk. Don't let anyone beat you with a stick, whether actual or metaphorical.