In 1817, in a letter to his brother, the poet John Keats wrote about how people of achievement had a quality he called “negative capability.” They were capable, he said, “of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Negative capability is an acknowledgement of complexity, a mature respect of life’s shades of grey, an understanding that despite what the strident headline, indignant tweet or demanding placard says, the situation is probably not quite so simple.
“We can never know in the beginning, in giving ourselves to a person, to a work, to a marriage or to a cause, exactly what kind of love we are involved with. When we demand a certain specific kind of reciprocation before the revelation has flowered completely we find ourselves disappointed and bereaved and in that grief may miss the particular form of love that is actually possible but that did not meet our initial and too specific expectations. Feeling bereft we take our identity as one who is disappointed in love, our almost proud disappointment preventing us from seeing the lack of reciprocation from the person or the situation as simply a difficult invitation into a deeper and as yet unrecognizable form of affection.” A digression: Do you feel lucky today? Richard Wiseman, a magician turned popular psychologist, conducted some research on luck. He advertised for people who considered themselves very lucky, or very unlucky and received many replies. The lucky people seemingly had led charmed, successful, happy lives. They were always in the right place at the right time, and good things inevitably just happened to fall in their lap. The unlucky people? The opposite. An extraordinary catalogue of calamities, disastrous romances, failed businesses, missed connections, lost harvests. Wiseman conducted a series of tests on these people. One was to count the number of photos in a newspaper. The unlucky people took a few minutes to complete the task. The lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because on page 2, half the page was devoted to a notice that said, in large letters: “Stop counting: There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” The “unlucky” people, blinded by the certainty of the task, never saw it. According to Wiseman, people make their own luck. The house of uncertainty holds no fear for lucky people. Which side are you on? Our brains have two hemispheres: the intuitive, holistic, creative, transcendent “right brain,” and the more logical, rigid, pedantic, detail-focused “left brain.” Iain McGilchrist calls the former the “Master” and the latter the “Emissary.” The problem, he says, is that the Emissary is supposed to be in service to the Master, but somehow he has taken over the controls. As a result, he has profoundly changed us—and our world. All power, says McGilchrist, now rests with the Emissary “who, however gifted, is effectively an ambitious regional bureaucrat with his own interests at heart. Meanwhile the Master...is led away in chains.” (A simplistic binary split of the brain into left and right perhaps shows a lack of negative capability—it ignores all the shades of grey matter. But we'll stick with it.) Instead of working together, our bird-brained inner accountant turned on our wise and thoughtful inner poet and, in a desperate ontological battle, the latter was slain. The poet, needless to say, embraced negative capability; she lived it. The accountant however, clipboard, ruler and calculator in hand, can tolerate only certainty. He has created a fragmented, western world of technology, mechanisation and bureaucracy, a world of alienation, where love is hard to find, and beauty gets bulldozed, a world of spreadsheets instead of sonnets, a world where everything is measured, itemized, indexed, where the little picture matters and the big picture doesn’t. Einstein had a sign hanging in his office which read: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Doubt in the consulting room The Emissary’s hand can be seen in every detail of our lives—in tax returns, Ofsted reports, market research. In doomed attempts to deconstruct jokes or works of art. And, as I wrote earlier this week, in the field of mental health. The Emissary wants to shoehorn your troubles into a neat, clearly-labelled pigeonhole. He wants to eradicate your symptoms with a drug and, if you insist, a bit of talking in the form of some short-term cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). A little adjustment to your levels, a bit of soldering under the bonnet, and you should be good to go—back to your spreadsheets. If it were that simple, we would not be human. On the first page of the introduction in her book The Impossibility of Knowing, psychotherapist Jackie Gerrard writes: “I am sure that I, like many of my colleagues, started my training eager to learn and to know, and I have subsequently spent the years post qualification learning that I do not ‘know,’ cannot ‘know,’ and, indeed, should not ‘know’ . . . by saying I do not ‘know,’ I am continually endeavouring to hold a state of mind that can tolerate remaining open, bearing uncertainty, and avoiding, wherever possible, omnipotence and omniscience.” Not “knowing” is not the same as indecision or ignorance. In Tales of Un-knowing, existential therapist Ernesto Spinelli says therapists should aspire to be un-knowing—as opposed to “unknowing”—they should “attempt to remain as open as possible to whatever presents itself in our relational experience.” The Emissary therapist reaches for theories, models, personality tests and questionnaires about your mental state so that he can enter your score on a spreadsheet. He reaches for the manual to find a clinical diagnosis such as “generalized anxiety disorder” or “oppositional defiance disorder” and some techniques to make it go away. American existential therapist Irving Yalom marvels that anyone can take diagnoses seriously, adding: “Even the most liberal system of psychiatric nomenclature does violence to the being of another. If we relate to people believing that we can categorize them, we will neither identify nor nurture the parts, the vital parts, of the other that transcends category.” The Master therapist, by contrast, see you—all the vital parts, all of you. All her senses are alive to you and your experience of distress. This level of presence and empathy was memorably expressed by British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, who wrote that every therapeutic session should be approached “without memory and without desire.” Even the therapist’s wish for their client to be, say, less depressed is, according to Bion, an imposition that will cloud that therapist’s mind. He believed that in every session there had to be a genuine open-mindedness and freedom. All too often therapist and client conspire to flee from uncertainty. The therapist who claims to be “sorted” might be cut off from their own vulnerability and woundedness, and perhaps not be the best guide to accompany a client as they traverse a landscape of despair. Integrative psychotherapist Diana Voller writes: “The tension of the experience of being in uncertainty brings the person of the therapist well and truly back into the therapy.” The therapist, too, needs “the scariness and excitement of being willing to be in the unknown, allowing oneself to be temporarily overwhelmed, feel stupid for a while...gaining new perspectives and growing.” (I am grateful to Voller for a presentation she made on negative capability years ago in London—thank you.) Increasing your negative capability So perhaps we would be better people if we could cultivate a little more negative capability in our lives. There'd be more good things like luck, love, empathy. Negative capability transforms a profane world into one of poetry. For Keats, ways to cultivate more negative capability were: “books, fruit, French wine, fine weather and a little music out of doors played by someone I do not know.” Voller suggests that films, TV, art, literature and the theatre are all “rich everyday resources for choosing to be temporarily unsettled and ready to be ultimately changed by other ways of seeing things.” Here are 9 tips for a greater capacity for uncertainty: 1. Have therapy There’s no better way to experience the discomfort of uncertainty, to encounter those frontiers of yourself that you have for long retreated from, than to be a client. The consulting room is a safe place to explore your distress, your history, your way of being in the world, all your secrets and shadows. Processing such dark matter affords some control over it rather than the reverse. 2. Keep a journal Another great way of exploring, of cultivating a better relationship with our self—or rather, disparate selves. Start the conversation. 3. Improvise Now and again, put away the instruction manual, or the sheet music, or the cookbook, and just do it. 4. Meet new people Hurl yourself into unfamiliar social situations. Interact with a wide range of people. Richard Wiseman wrote of how some of his “lucky” participants often sought out ways to force them to meet different people. One noticed that whenever he went to a party, he tended to talk to the same type of people. To disrupt this routine, he now thinks of a colour before a social event and then speaks to people wearing that colour of clothing. 5. Get lost Take a different route to work, take your watch off, travel without a map, go somewhere new on holiday, camp in the wilderness, explore a very different country, travel alone. Develop a sense of what psychoanalyst Nina Coltart called xenophilia. Lose yourself in nature. Gaze at trees, clouds, thunderstorms. Waste time. 6. Spend time with children Learn from their streams of consciousness and ability to play, and to be spontaneous and joyful and un-selfconscious. They haven’t yet learned, as we have, to filter, to not see. Negative capability is the antidote to old age. Viewpoints, like arteries or neural pathways, can become clogged, fewer, narrower, less fluid. 7. Have new experiences Sign up for that retreat, workshop, meetup.com event. Do things that you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t because they scare you a little. Try different genres of art and music and film and food. 8. Be with your body Dance. Play. Sing. Act. Exercise. Move. Do yoga. Touch and be touched. Our psychology affects our body—the reverse can also be true: putting your body into unfamiliar, freeing positions can also free your mind. 9. Stop making lists! Ultimately, negative capability is a stance, a state of mind, an awareness. A willingness to give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you, as American mythologist Joseph Campbell so succinctly put it. It’s not easy. There are times when we need to be on autopilot, or seek refuge from the world under a giant metaphorical duvet. But we are only fully alive in those fleeting moments when we are brave enough to throw away all the old rules and maps and guidebooks and lists and embrace living in a state of uncertainty, eyes wide open to the world, engaging our fluid self with a fluid environment in original, creative and spontaneous ways. I’m pretty sure there some truth in that. But of course, I can’t be certain. Are you going away in August? Anywhere nice? To a happy place? Does it involve coastlines, cocktails, cookouts, and colourful clothes that you wouldn’t dream of wearing back home? Will you take in majestic vistas, far-flung sunsets, the wonders of the world? (Or will you not take them in at all but simply take pictures of them for boasting purposes on Instagram?) Do holidays make you happy? One study in Holland found that happiness comes from planning a holiday. The anticipation of a trip boosted happiness for eight weeks prior to departure. On returning home, however, for most people the good cheer quickly fades away, along with and the suntan and the memories. Back among your quotidian hassles, the limoncello doesn’t quite taste the same. Maybe you hate the summer anyway—you suffer perhaps from reverse seasonal affective disorder and your mood falls as the temperature rises. So what does make you happy? The size of your bank balance, your physical beauty, your number of Facebook friends? If so, you will never feel as if you have enough. You will never be satisfied. Is it about having security, knowledge and religion, as a 1938 U.K. survey suggested? Or humour, leisure and security, according to the same survey today? Being a heavy metal fan? Being playful, mindful, forgiving and compassionate—and getting the basics right like diet, exercise and sleep? Yes. These are all good daily, tried-and-tested practices. But true happiness runs deeper. It arises perhaps from good relationships. Having a sense of purpose and meaning. Becoming who you are, who you were meant to be—fulfilling some of your true potential. Some kind of spiritual practice and belief. A feeling of connection—with yourself, with others, and with something larger. Love. In the end, maybe it's all about love. 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. Note: world of therapy is on holiday for the rest of August, returning with a “Weekly news round-up” on Friday September 4. Have a great summer! Make it a summer of love!
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. If you’re struggling this summer—and seem to struggle every summer: • Get some professional help. No need to suffer in silence. A therapist might help you understand what it is that makes summer such a slog and develop ways to manage it better. • Pay attention to the basics: food, light exercise, sleep. And drink plenty of water. And find ways of restoring your energy: meditate, spend time with close friends or in nature. Try saying no to some of your obligations. • If you can, plan a trip to cooler climes. Head north—or head for the hills. • Make your summer your own. Forget about the idealized image of what summer “should” be all about and instead find all the things you actually quite like about it and build your own routines, rituals and traditions around them. • Relax—autumn is just around the corner. —John Barton • 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. Magic mushrooms and LSD could play an important role in treating mental health problems, according to a leading U.K. psychiatrist. “Hundreds of papers, involving tens of thousands of patients, presented evidence for their use as psychotherapeutic catalysts of mentally beneficial change in many psychiatric disorders, problems of personality development, recidivistic behaviour, and existential anxiety,” writes James Rucker, honorary lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, in last week’s British Medical Journal. “This research abruptly ended after 1967, when psychedelics were legally classified as schedule 1 drugs under the UK Misuse of Drugs Regulations and as class A drugs under the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 ... This classification denoted psychedelic drugs as having no accepted medical use and the greatest potential for harm, despite the existence of research evidence to the contrary.” Rucker goes on to say that psychedelic drugs, more legally restricted than heroin and cocaine, are not habit forming, and not harmful in controlled settings. They could play a crucial role in alleviating psychological distress. Meanwhile, across the pond, other great minds are thinking alike. Researchers in California have been given permission to experiment with the party drug Ecstasy to see if it could enhance psychotherapy and help alleviate anxiety for terminally ill patients. According to a report in The Science Times, Ecstasy or MDMA, banned by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 1985, “is known for creating feelings of euphoria, empathy and heightened energy. According to co-researcher Julane Andries, MDMA has the ability to help an individual ‘experience awe, and that eases anxiety and depression.’ She adds that ‘later, you can hold onto that memory of feeling vital, alive, happy and full of awe.’ ” Participants in the research, conducted by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Santa Cruz, will have psychotherapy sessions after taking the drug, while some will unwittingly be given placebo capsules instead. At the end of the trial, participants will undergo psychological testing and counselling and the mental health of the two groups will be compared. After decades of just-say-no prohibition, psychedelic drugs seem to be making something of a comeback, helped along by people like psychopharmacologist David Nutt, a latterday Copernicus or Galileo who idiotically was fired as the drug-policy adviser to the Labour Government, in 2011, for suggesting that psychedelic drugs could be beneficial. Or Amanda Feilding, the Countess of Wemyss and March, whose Beckley Foundation in Oxford was set up to investigate the therapeutic possibilities of psychoactive substances. Research shows that psychedelics aren’t particularly dangerous—less so than alcohol—and may indeed prove profoundly beneficial to mental health. Already, Ecstasy is starting to be used as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In other studies, psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic muhsrooms, has been used to reduce anxiety and depression in terminal cancer patients; in Switzerland LSD has been used to treat anxiety. In an excellent overview in The New Yorker, Michael Pollan writes: “Many of the researchers and therapists I interviewed are confident that psychedelic therapy will eventually become routine. Katherine MacLean hopes someday to establish a ‘psychedelic hospice,’ a retreat center where the dying and their loved ones can use psychedelics to help them all let go. ‘If we limit psychedelics just to the patient, we’re sticking with the old medical model,’ she said. ‘But psychedelics are so much more radical than that. I get nervous when people say they should only be prescribed by a doctor.’ “In MacLean’s thinking, one hears echoes of the excitement of the sixties about the potential of psychedelics to help a wide range of people, and the impatience with the cumbersome structures of medicine. It was precisely this exuberance about psychedelics, and the frustration with the slow pace of science, that helped fuel the backlash against them.” Intimations of immortality Many ancient civilisations placed great importance on the use of psychedelic experiences derived from plants like water lilies, acacia, magic mushrooms, or peyote cacti, and the lure of altered states of mind continues today. Miley Cyrus was filmed in 2010 smoking Salvia divinorum from a bong—the plant has long been used by the Mazatecs of Mexico. Ayahuasca is an ancient concoction used in traditional healing ceremonies in the Amazon rainforest—today seekers from around the world congregate there on spiritual retreats to experience its long-lasting psychological effects. Apple founder Steve Jobs described taking LSD in his youth as “a positive life-changing experience.” “Many of us find Wordsworthian ‘intimations of immortality’ in nature, art, creative thinking, or religion; some people can reach transcendent states through meditation or similar trance-inducing techniques, or through prayer and spiritual exercises,” writes celebrity neurologist Oliver Sacks, who spent his weekends in the 1960s taking drugs on an industrial scale. “But drugs offer a shortcut; they promise transcendence on demand. These shortcuts are possible because certain chemicals can directly stimulate many complex brain functions.” The manifesto for the benefits of psychedelics is English novelist Aldous Huxley’s famous, slim volume, The Doors of Perception, in which he describes an afternoon in Los Angeles in 1953 when he was transported to a profound altered state of being, courtesy of the hallucinogenic, magic-carpet drug mescalin. (The title comes from William Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”) Huxley argues that drugs can offer a kind of liberation from the confines of our nervous system, a voyage beyond Plato’s cave out into the unknown, into intense, chromatic other worlds that we can otherwise only glimpse, worlds that offer heightened experiences of love, creativity, understanding and transcendence. He writes: “To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large—this is an experience of inestimable value.” On his deathbed, in 1963, Huxley had his wife inject him with LSD. We have explored, mapped and catalogued every inch of our planet. We have walked on the moon, sent spaceships to far-away stars and studied ever-distant galaxies. Perhaps, however, the final frontiers are within—what Huxley calls the “antipodes of the mind.” It can be a difficult journey, fraught with peril, the dangerous ravines of madness never far away. But with exploration—whether through self-reflection, therapy, meditation, religious practice or hallucinogenic drugs—it’s possible that we can discover new realms, expand our consciousness and become ever-richer, fuller, truer versions of ourselves. —John Barton • Ecstasy and Acid in your medicine cabinet? Doctors explore psychedelics (Newsweek) • Magic mushrooms should be used to treat mental health problems, psychiatrist says (Telegraph.co.uk) • The Trip Treatment (The New Yorker) • Could Ecstasy be the next big anti-anxiety medication? (Science Times) • FDA approves Ecstasy-assisted psychotherapy in Marin County (KQED—a 52-minute radio show) So, in case you missed it, the Conservative Party won the General Election. • Will this make us happy? • Will an emboldened second-term government, now freed from the handbrake of its Liberal Democrat coalition partners, move further to the right? • Will austerity be accelerated, further reducing public services and benefits? • Will tax breaks and loopholes continue for those that need them the least? • Is the solution to inequality more inequality? • Will the NHS increasingly be contracted out to a private sector more concerned with profits than patients? • Will the backbench nationalists lead a charge that pulls us out of the European Union? • Will an invigorated Scotland, united under the SNP, reconsider its codependent relationship with Westminster and head for the exit, for independence? • Will the United Kingdom become ever-more disunited? 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.” International Day of Happiness By decree, today is the International Day of Happiness. The United Nations has apparently commanded our planet’s 7,302,469,431 citizens (and counting) to be unrelentingly cheerful today. All day. You must paper a smiley face over all of your problems today. You must snap out of it, pull your socks up, pull yourself together. Feeling bad? Well stop it! We can all go back to being miserable, depressed, anxious, bereaved, in pain, despairing and so on tomorrow. OK? Says United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "I wish everyone around the world a very happy International Day of Happiness! The pursuit of happiness is serious business. Happiness for the entire human family is one of the main goals of the United Nations." There are many things in life that make us happy. Is a demand for happiness from a giant, bureaucratic coalition of governments around the world one of them? Isn’t there something slightly creepy about Bhutan’s model of “Gross National Happiness”? Isn’t your happiness your business? What this means is that if you’re not feeling happy today, now you have one more thing to feel bad about. Perhaps in solidarity, instead of subserviently smiling along with the U.N., we should subversively spend today reflecting on unhappiness—yours, mine and the world’s. And anyway, who wants to be only happy? That’s not what life is about. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” • UN's International Day Of Happiness: How can we define or achieve it ... and who’s profiting? (The Independent) • International Day of Happiness: 10 easy shortcuts to making yourself happier (Metro) • International Day of Happiness: how happy are you? (Telegraph.co.uk) • UN creates 'happy songs playlist' to mark International Day of Happiness (Daily News & Analysis) • Smile, we're happier than the French: EU table of happiness (Daily Mail) • 10 Things to Keep in Mind About Happiness (Huffington Post) • How To Rewire Your Brain For Happiness (Forbes) • 22 songs of maximum joy to mark the International Day of Happiness (Mashable) UK news Children's mental health to get £1.25 billion boost The Coalition's commitment to extra mental health spending marks a "once in a generation" opportunity to improve outcomes, according to Nick Clegg. From Liberal Democrats: Nick Clegg has announced a £1.25 billion of new funding for children's mental health services. The money, spread over five years, will help treat 110,000 more children with mental health issues, and also provides rapid access to treatment for pregnant women and new mothers. As part of the package, Nick also announced that the first ever-waiting time standards for children’s mental health will be introduced, and specialists in children’s talking therapy will be available in every part of the country by 2018. The funding will also extend access to services for children under five and those with autism and learning disabilities. Three children in every classroom have a diagnosable mental health condition and research shows that left untreated it can blight their adult lives. But until now, provision of appropriate care has been insufficient to meet their needs. Children and young people with conditions like depression or anxiety, self harm or at risk of suicide will now get access to more therapy, parenting support and care closer to home or in their community (such as local cafes, youth centres and shopping centres). The Liberal Democrats have made improving mental health a priority, both in Government, but also in our Manifesto for the next parliament. This announcement is just the latest in a series of improvements to mental health services that we have delivered over the last five years, including: ◦ £7 million in new beds for children and young people, as well as more case managers to make sure they are cared for in a suitable environment ◦ £150 million over the next five years to help young people deal with issues like self-harm and eating disorder ◦ Introduction of a new waiting time standard, backed by £33 million, to make sure young people with psychosis get prompt treatments ◦ £54 million investment into improving access to Psychological Therapies for children and young people. • Charities welcome shake up of youth mental health care (from Mind) • NHS England welcomes new plans for radical shake up of youth mental health care (from NHS England) • Health minister about son's mental health struggles (from BBC News) Mind matters: the politics of mental health In the run-up to the General Election, mental health has emerged as a surprise must-have manifesto topic. A review from Politics Home of how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go: Support and recognition of the importance of the issue has sprung forth from leading figures in each of the main political parties during this Parliament. The Liberal Democrats have been particularly vocal in their commitment on the subject, with Nick Clegg pledging to end the “second-class treatment that people with mental health issues have had to endure for decades.” Ed Miliband has also committed the Labour party to improving services and will include key promises on early intervention and mental health resources for children in its 10-year plan for the NHS. In a landmark commons debate in 2012 MPs from across the political spectrum made moving admissions on how they had coped with various forms of mental health issues. Labour MP Kevan Jones described a battle with “deep depression” and Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston revealed that she had suffered “severe” postnatal depression that left her suicidal. Mental health charity Mind welcomes the progress that has been made on addressing the stigma associated with mental health and has led the way with its Time to Change campaign (run with partner charity Rethink Mental Illness), which aims to end discrimination faced by sufferers. As the general election approaches Mind is now keen to use the momentum that has been created to secure better funding for the sector. Mind’s CEO Paul Farmer says that “broadly speaking the rhetoric is fine but the reality is that many still aren’t getting the help that they need “You could characterise the last five years in parliamentary terms as being the period of awareness where people have really been genuinely engaging and learning about it. “From our point of view over the next five years, whoever is in power, it is all about the phase of action, so that that awareness and interest is turned into policy change.” The charity would like to see mental health achieve “parity of esteem” with physical health and is calling for a funding increase Wales: older men action call by Mind Cymru From BBC News: A charity is warning that more needs be done to help older men in Wales who are suffering from mental health problems. Mind Cymru says older men are more prone to suicide than younger adults, but many do not receive the support and medical guidance they need. Its figures show that one in four have symptoms of depression, severe enough to warrant intervention. USA news “President Obama has elevated the conversation about mental health to the national stage” From ThinkProgress: One in four adults across the United States suffers from a mental illness — including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder — according to the National Alliance on Mental lllness (NAMI). Among that group, less than 40 percent receive professional treatment, choosing instead to battle their ailment in silence, often to their detriment and that of others. But in the months and years after a young man opened fire on students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, President Obama has helped elevate the conversation about mental health to the national stage. The current administration has taken several significant steps forward in this area, potentially ensuring that President Obama has found his place as the most progressive executive on mental health issues in the last 30 years. Some of the desired results, however, have not yet come to fruition. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obama has expanded access to mental health treatment for afflicted Americans as part of an effort to destigmatize this silent killer and prevent future massacres. In February, the president signed into law the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act — legislation that would improve veterans’ access to mental health treatment — after it passed through the House and Senate. And earlier this month, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of “The Campaign to Change Direction,” her attempt to raise mental health awareness among Americans. “With President Obama being a prolific figure in our society, this act of stepping out and advocating equal access for all is crucial,” Lanada Williams, licensed psychotherapist and CEO of Alliance Family Solutions Counseling, told ThinkProgress. “I don’t think that I’ve seen that in other administrations.” Mental health: A new priority in Corporate America Hardworking Americans look across the Atlantic at Europe’s more leisurely, Epicurean approach to work and life with a mixture of pity, disgust and envy. Now, however, Corporate America increasingly is realizing that employees aren’t machines, mere cogs in the capitalist machine, but people susceptible to mental as well as physical ill-health (they may have also noticed the amazing “coincidence” that psychologically healthy employees are more productive). Some HR ideas include: meditation and yoga programs, mental health education, bootcamp classes, breakdancing lessons, hula hoop sessions, even offering employees a certain number of “wellness hours” in a week, as well as some goodies such as “reusable water bottles, fresh fruit, healthy snacks and wellness resources.” From U.S. News & World Report: One in four adults--approximately 61 million Americans--experiences mental illness every year, according to a study by National Alliance on Mental Illness. While many nonprofits, government agencies and local communities participate in initiatives such as the Campaign to Change Direction to raise awareness about mental health, some leaders in the corporate world have also adopted emotional health of their employees as a priority. “At Booz Allen Hamilton, we pick up emotional well-being, emotional health and mental health as part of our leadership culture,” said Sifer, who now leads more than 4,000 employees. “It is essential to how we work as a people-based enterprise.” Dealing with mental illness can be just as challenging as dealing with physical disabilities at a workplace where you have to constantly interact with people, Sifer said, and sometimes these issues make top employees unable to perform their best. “We know that mental health has no boundaries, and we also know that most of the day is spent in the workplace,” said Andrea Inserra, senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton. “As corporate leaders, we need to be concerned for the well-being of our colleagues.” Emotional health issues can also directly impact a company’s business. A survey by Employee Benefit News magazine revealed 31 percent respondents choose mental illness as the number one cause of lost productivity, increased absenteeism and other indirect costs. World news India: call for better focus on mental health in Kerala From The Hindu: The burden of mental illnesses and mental retardation in Kerala is much higher than the national average, yet, mental health is given less importance than physical health in the State’s health sector plans, the Economic Review 2014 points out. As per the national Census 2011, 0.20 per cent of the population in Kerala suffers from some form of mental illness in comparison to the national average 0.06 per cent. Similarly, 0.20 per cent of the State’s population suffers from mental retardation, against the national average of 0.12 per cent. The special features with regard to the State which might have serious bearing on the burden of mental illnesses include high suicide rate, alcohol consumption, breakdown of marital relations and families, problems of ageing, stress due to the mismatch between high parental aspirations and children’s academic achievements, high rate of migration, and the increasing number of single-parent families. The State Mental Health Policy 2013, which improved upon the policy of 2000, envisages the convergence of various departments for the care and rehabilitation of the mentally ill. Australia: mental health services spending on the rise From the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: Expenditure on mental health-related services in Australia has increased in recent years, according to new figures released today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare on its Mental Health Services in Australia website (available at mhsa.aihw.gov.au). 'Estimated national recurrent expenditure on mental health-related services was over $7.6 billion in 2012-13, or $332 per person, an increase from $302 per person in 2008-09,' said AIHW spokesperson Geoff Neideck. State and territory governments funded almost 60% of this expenditure, with the Australian Government funding just over 36%, and the private health insurance funding 4% of mental health-related services. Funding by state and territory governments of mental health-related services increased by an average annual rate of 3.5% between 2008-09 and 2012-13, while funding by the Australian Government increased by an average annual rate of 5.0%. The figures released today also include new mental health information on defence-funded programs and private hospital programs. 'For the first time, data are available on Department of Defence funded mental health programs, which indicate that in 2012-13, $24 million was allocated to these programs,' Mr Neideck said. There were 1,578 public and private specialised mental health care facilities in Australia in 2012-13, providing 11,410 specialised mental health beds. Over 2 million patient days were provided by public hospital mental health services during 2012-13. There were 30,298 full-time-equivalent staff employed in state and territory specialised mental health services, with 51% employed as nurses in 2012-13. Other stuff The computer will see you now From The Atlantic: If there was any question about whether the mental-health profession would be safe from technological disruption, the answer is now clear—and it’s a resounding “no.” BetterHelp, Talkspace, and other online counseling services can now connect clients with licensed professionals in an array of specialties. In the past year, these startups not only have increased in popularity, but also have gained the adulation of mainstream media outlets. A Wall Street Journal writer who recently used both services called BetterHelp a “positive, professional experience” and said his Talkspace sessions were “identical to what I had experienced in traditional therapy, except I had access to it any time I pulled out my iPhone.” However, despite the praise heaped on these counseling sites, some professional counselors worry about the privacy and quality of online therapy. As recent hacking scandals have demonstrated, nothing connected to the Internet is 100 percent safe. Some counselors worry about the possibility that a client’s deepest secrets could be exposed. Run from your problems: why counselling during a workout is an effective form of therapy A personal account of therapy on the run. From the Evening Standard: This is my first therapy run but Will Pullen, a psychotherapist with six years’ experience, has been counselling on the move for two years now. He says it’s a highly effective form of therapy because you are figuratively moving on while, well, literally moving on. The session starts on park bench for some “grounding”. Pullen asks how I am. I disclose that I’m a little “stressed”. He discloses that he can tell. The next 50 minutes, he says, will be spent “unpacking” that stress, and looking for “solutions”. As it’s a one-off, I don’t burden him with my tortured inner child but concentrate on the more manageable topics: the daily grind of life in London. He deals with this a lot — work problems, relationship problems, “people stuck in marriages; those are the most common”. Happiness is a needle and thread away: new data on benefits of knitting A good yarn from Yahoo: Turns out, it is possible to knit yourself into a better state of mind. Clinical psychologist Ann Futterman-Collier who runs the Well Being Lab at Northern Arizona University, is studying what Arizona Public Radio station KNAU calls “Textile Therapy” — the emotional benefits of knitting, as well as crocheting, weaving and quilting. "People basically have a vacation from their problems," she tells KNAU. "They can forget about what’s bothering them, and they get into something in the moment that energizes them, that leads to the repair in mood." Futterman-Collier studied 60 women suffering from various levels of stress. She had them either work with textiles, write or meditate. During their respective activities, the women kept track of their moods. And for good measure, Futterman-Collier also took saliva samples, monitored their heart rates to determine their stress levels and measured their inflammation. She then compared the stress-reducing results of each of the three activities. "Textile handcraft making was associated with the greatest mood repair, increases in positive, decreases in negative mood," she tells KNAU. "People who were given the task to make something actually had less of an inflammatory response in the face of a ‘stressor’." |
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AuthorJohn Barton is a counsellor, psychotherapist, blogger and writer with a private practice in Marylebone, Central London. To contact, click here. |