At night, the silence from the deserted streets and boarded-up bars in my neighbourhood in London feels ominous and dangerous. Out there in the darkness, unseen, the Corona virus continues its hideous invasion. It is efficient and unwavering in executing its sole purpose: to infect, to replicate, to spread, to grow.

With astonishing speed, it has taken over our hospitals, our conversations, our news feeds. It has closed our schools and factories, bankrupted businesses, ruined lives. It has made a mockery of our sophisticated systems, our plans, our hopes and dreams. It dominates, controls and threatens our very existence. It is coming for you and coming for me. It lives on death.

Never before has something so large—human civilization—been felled by something so small. Corona is a mini-vampire, sub-microscopic, a life form a hundred times tinier than even bacteria.

The only thing more viral than the virus itself is the fear that it evokes. Fear can divide and diminish us. But when we fight and conquer it together, fear can enlarge us.  The age of Corona: the best of times, the worst of times.

In this way, the human reaction to Corona has similarly been one of extremes: either very small or very large. On the one hand, never before have people been so selfish and stupid, ignoring infection-limiting guidelines, panic-buying loo rolls, even abusing and attacking people suspected of being Chinese. Yet the crisis is also bringing out the best in people. Our doctors and nurses face the daily apocalypse with selfless care, kindness and good cheer. People around the world are volunteering, donating, checking up on the vulnerable, doing what they can.

We are completely alone, quarantined, forced into self-isolation and social distance, yet at the same time perhaps never before have we felt so connected, and in need of each other. Family and community matter more than ever. And increasingly, our family is humans and our community is planet Earth.

We truly are all in this together. However bad we feel today, however afraid, anxious, depressed or bereaved, we are actually not alone.  Instead of “othering” we might focus on “togethering.”  Instead of hating, we can choose to love.  We can reach out and reach in. We can give and receive.

Wouldn’t we expect grown-up leaders to do the same? To share knowledge, ideas, information, best practices, resources? To build bridges, not walls? To unite to fight Corona, not each other?

At such times, nationality recedes. Corona isn’t interested in your country’s borders, its reputation, history or your culture. It doesn’t carry a passport nor respect your own.

Global problems need global solutions.
​
Yet some see this pandemic human tragedy not as an opportunity for solidarity but its opposite. At a time like this, it’s pitiful for governments to blame each other, for the far-right as usual to blame everything on migrants, or for Trump to blame China, Obama, Millennials, the media, and anyone else he can think of. It’s hard to imagine what kind of person responds to the current devastating death toll in Italy with celebratory, deranged Brexiteering.

While politicians prevaricate, bluster and blunder, the virus goes on killing.

History apparently teaches us nothing. The so-called Spanish flu—which probably originated in Kansas—infected a quarter of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920, and killed tens of millions of people—more fatalities than the entire First World War.

Humans and chimpanzees are 96 percent the same, according to DNA studies. How similar then are humans to each other? What is perhaps so striking about our species is not what divides us but what unites us. We are a family. We should act like one. We should respect each other and our planet. We should tackle common problems together. We should care about family members who aren’t doing so well. We might then feel compassion and concern that 70 million of our brothers and sisters are forcibly displaced people, including 26 million refugees, half of them children. We might not feel great about a world where 42 individuals have the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity, 3.7 billion souls.

​In the words of Al Pacino, “Either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals.”

Sometimes, it takes a sickness for healing to happen. ​

Excuse me, are you lost?

You've been shaken by life you say? Your roadmap doesn’t seem to work anymore?

Congratulations. You are having a “midlife crisis.” They can be big or small, can happen at any age, once in a lifetime or many times (or, for the unfortunate, never at all).

Perhaps your existential crisis was triggered by an event—a bereavement, illness, accident, divorce, redundancy, financial ruin or other trauma. Or perhaps it was just life that happened to you. 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 got mugged by reality. And one day you found 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 of happiness. “And you may ask yourself,” as the Talking Heads song goes, “how did I get here?” And you want to be someplace else. So you go, often leaving a trail of destruction in your wake.

Dr Oliver Robinson and colleagues at the University of Greenwich recently presented their research into the midlife crisis, defined as feeling emotionally unstable, making major changes and overwhelmed for at least a year. They interviewed more than 900 adults and found that among people aged 40 to 59, 24 percent were "definitely" having some kind of crisis while 36 percent "maybe" were.

One feature of crises that Dr Robinson identified was an increased curiosity, reflected in a greater interest in people, in one's own self, ideas in general, and the world around.

​Dr Robinson says: “While crisis episodes bring distress and feelings of uncertainty, they also bring openness to new ideas and stimuli that can bring insight and creative solutions, which can move our development forward. This enhanced curiosity may be the ‘silver lining’ of crisis. Armed with this knowledge people may find the crises of adult life easier to bear.”

But a midlife crisis isn't an unfortunate affliction, an accumulation of dark clouds that come with the silver lining of enhanced curiosity while you wait for those clouds to pass. It is instead a journey beyond the clouds, from darkness to light. It is growth. It is something that is often unavoidable.

With the help of therapy, you can transform all the breakdowns into breakthroughs and experience some kind of metanoia; a renaissance.

A midlife crisis is painful. It is a clumsy grasp for a better life. In the darkness you might stub your toe and gash your shins; things can get spilled or knocked over. It can get really messy. People can get hurt. It can involve sports cars, motorbikes, tattoos and unlikely couplings, but does not have to be so dramatic or clichéd. 

​The worst of times can turn into the best of times. 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—and play it with confidence and purpose and verve.

Your relationships improve. You learn to love—and try to make it up to the people you hurt.

​You start to love life.

Cannabis: scientists call for action amid mental health concerns
The Guardian

There has been a move lately towards some kind of greater acceptance of psychedelic drugs. Travelling in the opposite direction, however, is cannabis. As this story shows, increasingly it is acknowledged that it carries potential dangers—including psychosis—especially for frequent users. Lots of people, especially young people starting out on their journey, venturing into a bewildering, unfair, uncertain adult world, think cannabis is the answer, or an answer. But maybe it might be more helpful to engage with the question. Yes, the world is messed up. This does not mean you need to be, too. Talk to someone. There is help.  

The risks of heavy cannabis for mental health are serious enough to warrant global public health campaigns, according to international drugs experts who said young people were particularly vulnerable.
The warning from scientists in the UK, US, Europe and Australia reflects a growing consensus that frequent use of the drug can increase the risk of psychosis in vulnerable people, and comes as the UN prepares to convene a special session on the global drugs problem for the first time since 1998. The meeting in New York next week aims to unify countries in their efforts to tackle issues around illicit drug use.
While the vast majority of people who smoke cannabis will not develop psychotic disorders, those who do can have their lives ruined. Psychosis is defined by hallucinations, delusions and irrational behaviour, and while most patients recover from the episodes, some go on to develop schizophrenia. The risk is higher among patients who continue with heavy cannabis use.

• Relatedly, a story in Parent Herald highlights the findings by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) on the links between mental health, longevity and smoking: people with mental health problems have significantly lower life expectancies than the general population and much of this can be attributed to smoking.


UK NEWS

Mental health goals may not be met, audit office warns
The Guardian

A government pledge to bring mental health services up to the standards of those for physical ailments will struggle to be met, the government’s official spending watchdog has concluded. 
The National Audit Office has examined the Department of Health’s strategy for bringing a “parity of esteem” to ensure that patients do not have to wait longer for mental health therapies. New waiting time targets for those seeking help with mental illnesses were supposed to be introduced at the start of this month.
Although it is five years since the government first drew up the ambition, a report by auditors has found that the DH does not yet have a grip on how much the policy will cost. 
The report found the department and NHS England have made available £120m of additional funding over the two years 2014-15 and 2015-16.
However, most of the cost of implementing the new access and waiting time standards will be met from clinical commissioning groups’ existing budgets – at a time when the NHS is under increasing financial pressure.
The findings have emerged as more people are seeking mental health treatment from the NHS.


USA NEWS

Lawsuit: Sperm donor lied about mental health
WDSU New Orleans

He was handsome and healthy, with several degrees and a genius-level IQ. On paper, Donor 9623 embodied the best genetics had to offer. At least 36 children were born using his donated sperm. According to a lawsuit filed by three families, it took almost 14 years before the donor's true identity was revealed: A schizophrenic college dropout with a felony conviction. 
Families that used his sperm are suing the Georgia-based sperm bank Xytex Cryo International, saying it should have done a better job of vetting its sperm donors.


WORLD NEWS

Grandmother benches, smartphone apps and other mental health boosts from around the world
World Economic Forum

More than 10% of the total disease burden in low and middle income countries (LAMIC) is due to mental health disorders, yet they receive less than 1% of many of these countries’ health budgets. A striking example of this is in Zimbabwe, where only 12 psychiatrists serve a national population of 15.3 million.
Considering this huge under-investment, a key question is how to provide support for people suffering from mental ill health when resources are scarce.
These five collaborative, low-cost care packages - delivered by lay people who are trained and supervised by professionals - all have the potential to close the treatment gap, and improve the mental health of hundreds of thousands of people.


Education, trauma counseling key to helping Syrian refugees in Lebanon
Catholic News Service

The more than 1.06 million Syrians who remain in neighboring Lebanon face continuing struggles with war trauma, dwindling funds, and a very uncertain and often dangerous future. 
"They have internalized the violence and loss in the conflict in Syria. Perhaps they saw loved ones killed, their houses destroyed in front of their eyes, or even being uprooted from their country has caused trauma," Monette Kraitem, a Lebanese psychologist working the Catholic charitable agency Caritas, told Catholic News Service.
She and fellow Caritas psychologist Christelle Ltief have so far helped 1,500 Syrian refugee children and women sheltering in this part of the Bekaa Valley to process the pain at the Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center in the nearby town of Taalabaya.
"We try to help the children deal with their trauma by expressing their feelings" through "play, art and music therapy, relaxation and respiration techniques, and individual and group therapy, where children can say how they feel without being judged," Ltief told CNS.


Why Pakistan needs to embrace Arts Therapy
The Nation

In the past decade, the field of Art Therapy has gained strong ground in the West and is being taught at the university level, offering graduate and post-graduate programs. In Pakistan, however, the awareness is gradually increasing among masses and the future looks promising. Asim Amjad, Samina Jamshed, Ufaq Ehsan and Shazia Mohamad are some of the iconic Pakistani Art Therapists who often arrange Art Therapy workshops and seminars for kids throughout the country.

VIEWPOINTS

Why do people have affairs?
The School of Life

Do you tend towards clingy neediness? Or cold aloofness? Relationships tiptoe along the knife edge of each person's need for closeness at times, and distance at others. When it gets out of kilter, the spectre of an affair looms (Dumas said marriage is a heavy burden that requires two people to carry it, and sometimes three). This new 3-minute film from The School of Life explains: "A lot of the reason why people have affairs isn’t to do with random excess horniness. It’s do to with issues of closeness and distance."


We need to talk about mental health
Financial Times

The most striking result that emerges from surveys of mental health at work is the awkwardness. For all the progress made in taking the stigma out of mental health problems, a large number of people just do not want to talk about it.
31%
would not feel able to talk to their manager if they had a mental health problem
A survey last year for Time to Change, a programme run by the charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, found that 28 per cent of people in England would feel uncomfortable asking someone close to them about their mental health problems. Why? Because it would make the other person feel uncomfortable, they would not know what to say or because they would not feel able to help.
The same embarrassment surrounds surrounds mental health at work, one focus of the “wellbeing” category of the Responsible Business Awards. In another survey conducted for Mind by YouGov in 2014, 31 per cent said they would not feel able to talk to their manager if diagnosed with a mental health problem. Some 33 per cent said that if they told their boss that they were stressed at work, they felt their ability to do the job would be questioned.


11 things to do daily
Bustle

A good roundup of pretty obvious things we could be doing to feel better. It's common sense...yet not all that common,

When it comes to taking care of ourselves, we often focus more on our physical body. However, maintaining your mind is just as important, and there are things we should be doing everyday to improve our mental health. Just like our body needs to get into a routine, so does our brain, and taking the steps to ensure our optimal mental health can have us feeling just as healthy as eating a good kale salad.

This week saw a new study on global mental health. To no one’s surprise, it turns out that if you are poor, you are less likely to have access to help.

The research, published in Lancet Psychiatry, argues for greater funding, claiming that the economic benefits of treatment greatly outweigh the costs: For every dollar spent on improving treatment for depression and anxiety, the return on the investment could be fourfold or higher in terms of increased productivity and health.
"This analysis sets out, for the first time, a global investment case for a scaled-up response to the massive public health and economic burden of depression and anxiety disorders," write the authors, led by Dan Chisholm of the World Health Organization's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse.
 
Almost a third of humans experience common psychological ill-health at some point during their lifetime. The vast majority live in poor countries, but clinical care resources are predominantly found in wealthy countries. Low- and middle-income countries spend less than $2 per year per person on the treatment and prevention of mental ill-health compared with an average of more than $50 in high-income countries.
According to Nature: “A teenager in Afghanistan seeking mental-health care does so in a country that has 1 psychiatrist for every 10 million people, not 1 per 5,000, as in, for instance, Belgium. But no country has sufficient numbers of trained mental-health-service providers. Nearly one-third of the US population lacks adequate access to mental-health-care providers. There are similar shortages in parts of countries as diverse as Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, New Zealand and Slovakia. Even in wealthy countries, 40–60% of people with severe mental disorders do not receive the care they need.”
​
Mental health has received very little attention in terms of large-scale global health initiatives compared to say malaria, or HIV. That is slowly changing. There is now some political consensus around mental healthcare, both at home—it was a hot topic in the General Electionlast year—in America, and transnationally. It’s terrific that as of last September, mental health is now included among the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
There are some impressive programmes that aim to create a more level playing field. The UK-funded Programme for Improving Mental Health Care (PRIME), for example, is a consortium of organisations brought together to scale up mental-health services in Ethiopia, India, Nepal, South Africa and Uganda, taking an informed, integrative approach in these countries with help from community advisory boards that include district health administrators, service users, traditional healers and police.

All well and good. But there are questions. Take 5:
1. Is this all window dressing, a token public relations exercise that diverts attention away from the real business of globalisation—making money and preserving power by and for those that already have it?
2. Do the big pharmaceutical companies have a hand on the lever, attempting to create and colonise large new markets for their patented medications?
3. Is the need for some kind of responsible global governance being served by unelected bodies like the World Bank, IMF and WTO which cater to the “prosperous few” at the expense of the “restless many,” in the words of Noam Chomsky, or like the UN’s WHO which, in this latest report at least, likes to regard people as mere economic units?
4. Could global mental health programmes become a form of cultural imperialism and control, as some have argued, trampling over local norms and practices and instead imposing monolithic “one-size-fits-all” western solutions?
5. If you don’t have access to drinking water say, or your children are starving, doesn’t counselling come fairly low down on the hierarchy of needs? The Indian government offers counselling to help farmers, for example--5,650 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2014, an average of 15 a day. But perhaps what they most need is better financial security. And some rain.

​Overall, the growing domestic, international and global attention paid to mental health is a good thing. But the implementation needs to be done the right way. Culturally-sensitive, local, diverse “bottom-up” mental health programmes are better than imposed, dogmatic, uniform, “top-down” western solutions. The book “Global Mental Health” recommends the liberal use of anthropologists and indigenous experts.
And underscoring all initiatives should be a recognition that mental ill-health is often the symptom, and economic disadvantage the cause. Not the other way round.
Whatever your language, it’s good to talk. Every country on earth could use more counsellors.
But it’s hard to pursue happiness, or perhaps Freud’s rather more modest goal of “common unhappiness,” without safety, food and water, and a roof over your head.
No amount of counselling will take away poverty and inequality.

There was a time when young children were allowed to be children.

​Primary school was about learning how to play, have fun and make friends. Happy children are more likely to learn and make the world a better place than unhappy ones.
Childhood hasn’t been cancelled exactly, but it is under extreme attack, as I’ve written before (“Suffer little children”). Today's subjects: stress, self-harm, suicide.

​This week saw the launch of a campaign for universal access to school-based counselling services.
Reports the story in Schools Week: “A motion being put to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ annual conference in Liverpool, which calls for better promotion of mental health awareness in schools and a campaign for all pupils in England to have access to a counsellor, is expected to pass with the backing of the union’s leadership.”

There is certainly a need:
• One in five children have symptoms of depression and almost a third of the 16-25-year-olds surveyed had thought about or attempted suicide. In Ireland, children as young as five are thinking of suicide.
• A World Health Organisation survey in 2014 revealed a fifth of 15-year-olds in England said they had self-harmed over the previous year.
• An ATL union survey of its own members revealed that 48 per cent of respondents had pupils who had self-harmed, and 20 per cent knew pupils who had attempted suicide “because of the pressure they are under”.
General secretary Mary Bousted said it was “horrifying” that so many young people many are self-harming and contemplating suicide.

Increase paperwork until standards improve!
There is more testing, more homework, and it starts earlier. (Homework for 5-year-olds? Really?). Teachers are overworked and underappreciated (and underpaid), frantically trying to get results, write up reports, check all the boxes and generally enact the latest keep-up-with-China government initiative, all set against a backdrop of cuts in funding and services and in many cases financial hardship at home. The creative, nurturing, qualitative skill of teaching has been turned into a bureaucratic, morale-sapping, quantitative exercise in stress, low-grade trauma and Ofsted reports, one that kills joy in the classroom, erodes resilience and is creating a whole new generation of children who as adults will be susceptible to mental and physical ill-health.
There are roughly 200 governments around the world—200 education policies (or lack thereof), 200 places to look for examples of good ideas and bad ones, 200 petri dishes.
Why fawn over China—do we really want to look to an undemocratic communist government with a terrible human rights record for child-rearing tips? How about looking instead to the more relaxed approach of the Scandinavian countries, especially Finland, where education is free, safe and friendly, school starts at age 7, teachers are allowed to teach, and children are allowed to be children rather than treated as future economic units. Finland’s less-is-more education system has been described as the best in the world.

Mental-health difficulties are the leading causes of disability worldwide—almost a third of people globally will experience mood, anxiety or substance-use problems in their lifetime. The best antidote is a happy childhood.

​As noted philosopher Whitney Houston put it:
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride 
 
--John Barton

Happiest days of your life?
There was a time when young children were allowed to be children.

​Primary school was about learning how to play, have fun and make friends. Happy children are more likely to learn and make the world a better place than unhappy ones.
Childhood hasn’t been cancelled exactly, but it is under extreme attack, as I’ve written before (“Suffer little children”). Today's subjects: stress, self-harm, suicide.

​This week saw the launch of a campaign for universal access to school-based counselling services.
Reports the story in Schools Week: “A motion being put to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ annual conference in Liverpool, which calls for better promotion of mental health awareness in schools and a campaign for all pupils in England to have access to a counsellor, is expected to pass with the backing of the union’s leadership.”

There is certainly a need:
• One in five children have symptoms of depression and almost a third of the 16-25-year-olds surveyed had thought about or attempted suicide. In Ireland, children as young as five are thinking of suicide.
• A World Health Organisation survey in 2014 revealed a fifth of 15-year-olds in England said they had self-harmed over the previous year.
• An ATL union survey of its own members revealed that 48 per cent of respondents had pupils who had self-harmed, and 20 per cent knew pupils who had attempted suicide “because of the pressure they are under”.
General secretary Mary Bousted said it was “horrifying” that so many young people many are self-harming and contemplating suicide.

Increase paperwork until standards improve!
There is more testing, more homework, and it starts earlier. (Homework for 5-year-olds? Really?). Teachers are overworked and underappreciated (and underpaid), frantically trying to get results, write up reports, check all the boxes and generally enact the latest keep-up-with-China government initiative, all set against a backdrop of cuts in funding and services and in many cases financial hardship at home. The creative, nurturing, qualitative skill of teaching has been turned into a bureaucratic, morale-sapping, quantitative exercise in stress, low-grade trauma and Ofsted reports, one that kills joy in the classroom, erodes resilience and is creating a whole new generation of children who as adults will be susceptible to mental and physical ill-health.
There are roughly 200 governments around the world—200 education policies (or lack thereof), 200 places to look for examples of good ideas and bad ones, 200 petri dishes.
Why fawn over China—do we really want to look to an undemocratic communist government with a terrible human rights record for child-rearing tips? How about looking instead to the more relaxed approach of the Scandinavian countries, especially Finland, where education is free, safe and friendly, school starts at age 7, teachers are allowed to teach, and children are allowed to be children rather than treated as future economic units. Finland’s less-is-more education system has been described as the best in the world.

U.S.A. NEWS
 
Beyoncé: 'Women have to take time to focus on our mental health'
USA TODAY
 
A throwaway line becomes a news story when it is uttered by Beyoncé. Here’s the line:
 
"We have to care about our bodies and what we put in them. Women have to take the time to focus on our mental health—take time for self, for the spiritual, without feeling guilty or selfish."

 
Unusual marriage counseling retreats
PR Newswire (press release)
 
Is your marriage all at sea? In turbulent waters? Do you feel as if you are drowning? Maybe this boat in North Carolina could help. But what an unfortunate name! Even Boaty McBoatface would be better!
 
Love Odyssey Charters has announced that it is ready to start booking new marriage counseling retreats. They have re-launched their pilothouse sailboat "Dragon Lady" after its annual maintenance. The company offers an intensive marriage intervention service for couples seeking to revive their troubled relationships. More than a gimmick, the service is based on sound neuroscience according to Dr. Bryce Kaye, psychologist and author of the book "The Marriage First Aid Kit." He explains: "We keep them moving and out of their stuck roles. We sail them from port to port where they stay in quaint B&B's, explore the historic towns and enjoy the down-east restaurants. They are surrounded by beautiful natural scenery on the rivers and sounds of North Carolina. The marriage counseling retreats take place in a cozy teak-lined pilot house of a Finnish-made sailboat. All of this puts them into an exploratory state in which their minds are more receptive to new ideas."


VIEWPOINT
 
Clare Allan:
Why words matter when it comes to mental health
The Guardian
 
It happens all the time. If not every day then at the very least several times a week. Someone describes someone else as a “nutter” or a situation as “mental”, and, listening, I am faced with a choice: to speak or not to speak.
It happens in the media too. And not just in tabloid headlines about “schizos”, “psychos” and so forth. In arts discussions on BBC Radio 4, I regularly hear the word “psychotic” used as a shorthand for lacking in conscience, or “schizophrenic”, when what is meant is in two minds.

The big match 
Who do you support?
Team Body—or Team Mind?

The former adopts the “medical model” approach to psychological distress: the root causes are largely found within the biology of the unwitting individual and the best treatment is medication.
Sample narrative: “I am stressed and can't cope. The chemical levels in my brain are slightly off—I need medication to restore the balance.”
 
The Mind team, by contrast, regards symptoms as manifestations of underlying, unresolved inner conflict which needs to be explored, processed and resolved through talking therapy.
Sample narrative: “I am stressed and can't cope. I am such a workaholic and brutally hard on myself—I now see this as some kind of loyalty to my very strict and punitive. parents.”

Longstanding debate 
In his article “The 'drugs v talking' debate doesn't help us understand mental health," in The Guardian on Wednesday, Simon Wessely, chair of psychological medicine at King's College London and president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, attempts to build a bridge across the yawning divide.
The longstanding debate, he writes, often “has been caricatured as ‘psychiatry v psychology’, or equally unhelpfully ‘drugs v talking’, or ‘brain v mind’. But these are false distinctions, which don’t help in understanding mental disorders, don’t help mental health professionals, and most of all don’t help patients.”
Wessely argues instead for a pluralistic approach: “As there is incontrovertible evidence that physical, psychological and social factors contribute to the development of mental health problems – in different degrees and mixtures according to the type of illness and the particular individual – it follows that treatments that psychiatrists use can be physically, psychologically or socially based, either singly or more often in combination.”
And, according to Wessely, a pluralistic, multidisciplinary approach is precisely what patients get: “The truth is that up and down the land psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other mental health professionals work together in multi-disciplinary teams for the benefits of patients.”
 
All that is missing from the picture he paints is a rose-tinted sky filled with smiling cherubs.

Read more

U.K. NEWS

​Stressed out teachers are turning to drink and drugs
Mirror.co.uk
 
Teachers’ union NASUWT recently conducted a survey of more than 5,000 teachers—the results will be published later this year but the Mirror had a sneak preview:
 
Teachers are resorting to drugs and drink to cope with the job’s stress, a shock poll reveals today.
A tenth say they have been prescribed anti-depressants due to work-related pressures – and 47% have seen a doctor in the last 12 months over job-linked physical or mental health problems.
A total of 22% claim to be drinking more alcohol, while 5% are smoking more tobacco and 7% are using or have increased their reliance on prescription drugs.
Disturbingly, 2% claim job stress has driven them to self-harm.
 
 
Kelly Holmes backs mental health campaign after her own battle with depression
Mirror.co.uk
 
Olympic legend Dame Kelly Holmes has given her backing to the Sunday Mirror’s campaign to raise awareness of mental ill health.
The retired British athlete pledged her support as she prepares to run the London Marathon to raise funds for the charity Mind.
The 45-year-old suffered with depression as she struggled to overcome injuries a year before her double Olympic triumph in Athens in 2004.
Dame Kelly reached such a low point she even self-harmed, cutting herself in the bathroom behind a locked door.
She said: “Having suffered from depression myself, I know how horrendous it is to feel so low and so desperate that you actually want to harm yourself.

​Holding the government to account
Luciana Berger MP
 
Luciana Berger has been busy in her role as the first ever shadow Minister for Mental Health. In her latest newsletter she writes:
 
“Time to Talk day happened and was a great success. The night before, I spoke at a mental health rally in Parliament and Everton FC became the first Premier League football club to dedicate a themed match day to break the stigma around mental health. On Time to Talk day itself I spoke at a Business in the Community event on the importance of mental health support in the workplace, visited the 02 in Slough with Jeremy Corbyn, and spoke at the MQ conference on the importance of research. That weekend I took part in the Southbank Centre's Changing Minds Festival - you can listen to the discussion here.”
If you’re interested in Berger’s newsletter you can sign up here.
 
• Ministers 'letting down mentally ill people' by not collecting data (The Guardian)
• We're being forced to fix our own mental health. And it's not working - video (The Guardian)
• I worked in mental health - and after seeing the effects that austerity had on people, I had to leave (The Independent)
• Wentworth Miller pens powerful essay on mental health in response to body-shaming (The Independent)
​

U.S.A. NEWS
 
Mobile platform Talkspace is the 'Future of Therapy'
New York Daily News
 
After a positive experience of couples therapy, software developer Roni Frank wanted a career change. The result is Talkspace, which offers unlimited access to a therapist for $25 a week:
 
Two years into her journey toward a master’s degree, she “started to realize the mental health system in America is completely broken,” she said. “One in five Americans suffers from mental health issues each year.”
Yet, roughly 70% of those who need help don’t receive it, Frank said. The three main obstacles? Cost, stigma and accessibility.
Most face-to-face therapy runs at least $100 an hour, many feel embarrassed about needing psychological help and getting to appointments can be difficult. Frank was convinced she could do something.
Four years ago, the Franks launched Talkspace with $13 million in venture capital funding. They now have over 500 licensed therapists, who report to supervisors.
Some 200,000 people have used the service, which runs $25 a week. Clients can text, record a voice message or leave s video on the firm’s app as often as they want. Therapists get back to them within the day. 

 
Obama administration pushes Medicaid expansion as mental health solution
U.S. News & World Report
 
The White House on Monday released a report saying Medicaid expansion will help those with mental health and substance abuse disorders, but advocacy groups said more needs to be done to remove other barriers that prevent people from getting care.
The Department of Health and Human Services in its report cited those affected by the country's opioid epidemic and people with untreated mental illness as a needy population that could be helped if states that are resisting expanding coverage to their needy populations under Obamacare committed to the move. Doing so, the agency said, could reach the nearly 2 million low-income people in non-expansion states who have these conditions, even resulting in 371,000 fewer people having symptoms of depression.
"The conclusion is clear: If states are serious about tackling mental illness and opioids, then expanding Medicaid offers a unique opportunity to do so," Richard Frank, assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at HHS, said in a call with reporters Monday.
 
 
Probing the complexities of transgender mental health
NPR
 
Do transgender people suffer more from psychological distress because of discrimination, lack of support and a generally hostile response from society? Or is it inherent to the transgender experience, resulting from gender dysphoria and the conflict of feeling different from your assigned identity at birth? A recent study attempts to find out:
 
The study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics reveals the difficulty in picking apart this question. It examined mental health and substance use among nearly 300 young transgender women in Chicago and Boston.
Only a quarter of the women were white, and all were between ages 16 and 29. The researchers, led by Sari Reisner, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, found that the rate of psychiatric disorders and substance dependence among these women was 1.7 to 3.6 times greater than in the general population.
 
• Doctors are failing to help people with gender dysphoria (BMJ)

RIP Patty Duke:
A mental health pioneer
Los Angeles Times
 
Long before celebrities shared their private struggles on talk-show couches and social media feeds, actress Patty Duke broke a Hollywood taboo by speaking publicly about her mental health struggles.
Duke, who died Tuesday morning at age 69, was diagnosed with manic depression (now called bipolar disorder) in 1982. Known at the time as the goody-two-shoes child star of "The Miracle Worker" (for which she won a best supporting actress Oscar at 16) and "The Patty Duke Show," Duke revealed revealed a much darker reality in her 1987 memoir, "Call Me Anna," written with L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan. In the book, she graphically detailed her turbulent life, drug and alcohol abuse and childhood mistreatment at the hands of cruel managers.
In talking candidly about her mental illness, Duke took on the stigma long attached to the issue. In the years since Duke's disclosure, actresses such as Catherine Zeta Jones, Carrie Fisher, Rene Russo and Kim Novak have spoken publicly about their own bipolar diagnoses, while countless other public figures have talked about their depression.
Upon her death, Duke's son, actor Sean Astin, sought to continue his mother's legacy of bringing attention to mental health, launching a crowdfunding campaign to establish the Patty Duke Mental Health Initiative.
 
 
Legal MDMA could happen by 2021
UPROXX
 
Everything old is new again! Now that we’re finally understanding that some drugs — like marijuana — can be helpful when it comes to treating physical and psychological disorders, more and more studies are popping up suggesting that other drugs such as MDMA and Ketamine might also be helpful… in a medical setting. Don’t put your party hat on just yet (this isn’t happening until 2021 at the earliest), but new research shows that MDMA can be helpful in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (previously, it’s been used in couple’s therapy) and the team that’s been conducting the research will soon meet with the FDA to discuss exactly how to proceed when using Molly as an assist in psychotherapy.
 
 
WORLD NEWS
 
Mapping global mental health research funding
RAND Corporation
 
Rand’s new report maps the global funding of mental health research between 2009 and 2014. Among the findings:
 
• The field of mental health research is large (and growing) and diverse – over 220,000 papers were published between 2009 and 2014, supported by over 1,900 funders.
• The US dominates the mental health research field, being both the largest producer of research (36 per cent of publications) and accounting for 31 per cent of government and charity/ foundation/ non-profit funding organisations.
• Charities, foundations and non-profits form the most numerous group of mental health research funders (39 per cent of the funders identified), but governments fund the most papers, accounting for over two-thirds of the papers with funding acknowledgements.
 
• India: Govt hires stress counsellors for paramilitary forces (India Today)
• Queen Rania of Jordan attends counselling session with Syrian refugees (Daily Mail)
• Psychosocial counselling helps earthquake survivors in Nepal overcome loss (Big News Network.com)

SILLY STORY OF THE WEEK
 
Psychotherapy for depressed rats
EurekAlert
 
Genes are not destiny in determining whether a person will suffer from depression, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. Environment is a major factor, and nurture can override nature.
When rats genetically bred for depression received the equivalent of rat "psychotherapy," their depressed behavior was alleviated. And, after the depressed rats had the therapy, some of their blood biomarkers for depression changed to non-depressed levels.
"The environment can modify a genetic predisposition to depression," said lead study investigator Eva Redei, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "If someone has a strong history of depression in her family and is afraid she or her future children will develop depression, our study is reassuring. It suggests that even with a high predisposition for depression, psychotherapy or behavioral activation therapy can alleviate it."
 
What on earth is psychotherapy for rats, you may ask:
 
Redei and colleagues wanted to see if they could alter the rats' genetically caused depression by changing their environment. They took the depressed rats and put them in large cages with lots of toys to chew on and places for them to hide and climb - sort of a Disneyland for rats. The rats were kept in the playground for one month.
"We called it rat psychotherapy," Redei said, "because the enrichment allows them to engage with the environment and each other more." The results of a month in the playground: the rats' depressive behavior was dramatically reduced.
After the playground psychotherapy, the rats were placed in a tank of water. Their behavior in the tank is a measure for depression. The control rats will swim around, looking for a way to escape. Depressed rats will simply float, showing despair behavior. After the month in the playground, the genetically depressed rats energetically paddled around the tank, looking for an exit.
"They did not show despair," Redei said.
 
The lab-coated boffins also found that it’s possible to make rats depressed (as if being part of this whole sorry enterprise wasn’t demoralising enough for the rats):
 
Northwestern scientists also wanted to see if environmental stress could trigger depression in rats bred to be the non-depressed control group of the experiment. These rates did not show despair behavior originally. The control rats underwent a psychologically stressful situation, which involved being restrained two hours a day for two weeks. After the two weeks, the stressed, control rats displayed depressed behavior when placed in a tank of water.
 
Conclusion: rat depression is not hereditary. A fun, stimulating environment where rats can play makes them happy. Strapping them down for two hours a day makes them sad. I think we knew that already, no? We can draw on decades of qualitative research into depression in another mammal: humans.
This weekend, take a look around your “cage.” Do you metaphorically speaking have “lots of toys to chew on” and “places to hide and climb”? And what restrains you? Unlike the lab rats, we are born free. But, as Rousseau noted, we are “everywhere found in chains.”