The Warning Signs of Stress

Stress warning signs:

Of course, different people deal with stress in different ways, but here is a list of mental and physical symptoms to help you understand if you're stressed.

The mental symptoms may involve you being:

•Angry
•Depressed
•Anxious
•Always hungry, or having no appetite
•Crying often
•Have trouble sleeping and feel tired
•Have trouble concentrating

The physical symptoms may involve:

•Chest pains
•Constipation, or diarrhoea
•Cramps, or muscle aches
•Feeling dizzy, or fainting
•Engaging in nervous behavior like biting your nails
•Twitches, or experiencing pins and needles
•Feeling restless
•Having sexual problems, from erectile dysfunction to lowered sex drive
•Feeling breathless
•Can't sleep

Having just a few of these symptoms may indicated that you are stressed, and you should address the issue.

How stress works
When you are in a stressful situation, your body will release the hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline, and these will go on to cause the physical symptoms of stress.

You may start sweating, and your blood pressure and heart rate may rise.

This, in turn, may undermine your immune system, making you more susceptible to illness, as well as lead your body to release fat and sugar into your blood stream, which may lead you to gain weight.

As stress raises your blood pressure, if you are stressed in the long term, you can develop high blood pressure, which in turn can increase your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke.

Link to Article

Can problem drinkers drink at a 'normal' level again?

Problem drinkers may reduce the amount of alcohol they consume over a period of years but not to the level of the average adult, according to a new study!

Using a telephone screening program, researchers identified 672 problem and dependent drinkers who had not been in an alcohol treatment program for at least 12 months. Eleven years later, men in the study had reduced their average number of drinks per month by 51%, and women had reduced their average number of drinks by 57%

However, even after this reduction, male problem drinkers still consumed 160% and female problem drinkers 223% more alcohol than the average adult. This suggests that problem drinkers and heavy drinkers may never lower their consumption to the level of the general population.

"Our people were functional, for the most part. They had addresses, a lot of them had insurance at baseline, and they're not at the 'bottom of the barrel,' which is interesting," said lead researcher Kevin L. Delucchi.

The researchers also examined which factors appeared to be linked with continued heavy drinking. Participants who received help from Alcoholics Anonymous or community social service agencies were likely to drink less. However, those who had heavy-drinking friends in their social network, received general suggestions that they do something about their drinking, and went to a formal treatment program were actually likely to drink more.

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An interesting study that highlight the power of substance addiction and how difficult it can be to beat. Being able to stem the consumption to under 50% of the previous usage and function well within society seems to me to be a success, we don't expect those addicted to be perfect, but at least they are not at the 'bottom of the barrel' - they can contribute to society and perform within it. Whether or not they could ultimately choose to completely give up on alcohol is another question, and perhaps with support they could, but as long as they are functioning is it really a problem?

Or is alcoholism only a problem when it starts affecting other people?

Link to Article

Genes and their affect on Alcohol response

"The study compared the brain's response to long-term alcohol drinking in two genetic variants of mice. One strain lacked the gene for a dopamine receptor, which produces feelings of pleasure and reward. The other strain was genetically normal.

In the dopamine-receptor-deficient mice, long-term alcohol drinking resulted in significant biochemical changes in areas of the brain well know to be involved in alcoholism and addiction."

These findings may help explain how someone's genetic profile can interact with the environment to produce these changes only in some individuals, but not in others with a less vulnerable genetic profile. The work supports the idea that genetic screening could provide individuals with valuable information relevant to understanding risks when deciding whether or not to consume alcohol."

Further research on the interaction between genetic and the environment will increase the understanding of addiction. This information will be imperative to the public and will help people make more informed decisions about their behaviors"

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Although this does highlight a genetic link between addictive behaviour and alcohol, it does make me wonder how much we are controlled by our genes, and whether or not our free will can be compromised by our genetic makeup. Perhaps a gene would not make addiction unavoidable, but it would increase a propensity towards it. Should a person, genetically designed to become addicted to alcohol for go alcohol entirely, or is it about how we choose to behave with this propensity in mind?

Link to article

Gambling Addiction is not limited to a single 'type' of person

Out of four types of compulsive gamblers identified by researchers at the University Hospital of Bellvitge (IDIBELL) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)shows signs of a significant pathology.

The study shows it is possible to distinguish four groups of pathological gamblers based on their personality traits and associated psychopathology.

Type I, which could be called 'disorganised and emotionally unstable', is characterised by schizotypal personality traits, high degrees of impulsiveness, alcohol and substance abuse, psychopathological alterations and early onset age.

Type II, which is a schizoid type, exhibits high levels of harm avoidance, social distancing, and alcohol abuse.

Type III is reward-sensitive, and is characterised by high levels of sensation-seeking and impulsiveness, although without any psychopathological alterations.

Type IV is a high functioning, globally-adapted personality type, without any disorders relating to substance abuse, and no associated psychopathological alterations.

Types I and II are pathological gamblers who exhibit problems in controlling their responses, "but only type II shows signs of a significant concurrent psychopathology," with high levels of impulsiveness and sensation-seeking.

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An interesting look into behavioural addiction and how there seems to be no one reason or type of person that can become addicted to gambling. Would a similar thing be found for other addictions, either substance or behavioural?

Link to Article

Young Teens Who Play Sports Feel Healthier and Happier About Life

Taking part in sports is good physically, socially, and mentally for 12 - 14 year olds!

New research shows that young teens who are physically active and play on sports teams are more satisfied with their life and feel healthier.

The 12- to 14-year-old boys and girls were asked to fill in questionnaires assessing their physical activity levels, their overall satisfaction with life and asking them to describe their own health.

In boys, participation in physical activity had no effect on either life satisfaction or self-rated health but with girls those who had taken part in activity in the last week were significantly more satisfied with their life compared to girls who had not, but it had no effect on their self-rated health.

Playing on a sports team was linked to higher life satisfaction in both boys and girls.

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It makes me wonder if it is the actual physical activity that is creating the greater feelings of satisfaction, the winning, or just because the boys/girls are part of an in-group. Perhaps those not in sports are less likely to be part of an in-group.

In either case, Parents may find it better for their child to encouage sports and general physical activity to maintain life satisfaction. Makes sense. However, I remember being that age and, being the geek I am, greatly disliked any form of physical exercise. Would more PE have increased my life satisfaction?

Maybe, maybe not.

Link to article

Background noise affects taste of foods

A news article I read the other day:

The level of background noise affects both the intensity of flavour and the perceived crunchiness of foods.

Diners were blindfoldee and has to judge the sweetness, saltiness, and crunchiness, as well as overall flavour, of foods as they were played white noise. Interstingly, whilst louder noise reduced the reported sweetness or saltiness, it increased the measure of crunch.

"In a comparatively small study, 48 participants were fed sweet foods such as biscuits or salty ones such as crisps, while listening to silence or noise through headphones.

Meanwhile they rated the intensity of the flavours and of their liking.

In noisier settings, foods were rated less salty or sweet than they were in the absence of background noise, but were rated to be more crunchy.

"The evidence points to this effect being down to where your attention lies - if the background noise is loud it might draw your attention to that, away from the food," Dr Woods said."

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The article went on to talk about how this was the reason airplane food tasted so bland, which may be one of the reasons...(quality of food may be another but it's been a number of years since I was on a plane, perhaps it's different to how I imagine!)

It does highlight the interesting idea of attention though, and the white noise acts as a distracter, meaning we arn't concentrating on the food in our mouth, but instead to our other senses. But does it make a difference if the participant is blindfolded or not? Does the inclusion/ommision of sensation to the eyes impact on the taste of food? Surely if extra information to the ears can divide attention then the same could happen with visual information?

So, any restaurant owners want to boost their ratngs? Look to making your restaurant quieter - and possibly darker! - and your food could potentially taste far better, even if less crunchy!

Link to Article

Link to study

Therapy and Medication for Migraine Sufferers works the best

The combination of preventive medication and behavioral changes offered significant relief for 77% of participants.

"Migraines are a long-term disorder and we wanted to closely monitor participants every day for at least 16 months to find out if these treatments keep working over time," said lead author Kenneth Holroyd.

Participants were assigned randomly to have one of four treatments. One group received the combination of preventive medication (beta blockers) and behavioral migraine management, one received only the medication, one received only the behavioral therapy, and one served as a control group.

The combined therapy group showed the greatest improvement in the number of migraines, days with migraine and in quality of life, the researchers report.

A small percentage of participants reported fatigue as a side effect of the preventive medication, and some participants reported lack of time to learn or practice the behavioral techniques. But used consistently and together, the two approaches were effective for prevention and management of migraines.

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These findings could be very useful to when treating patients with frequent, hard-to-control migraines. More evidence that medication alone is not always the best course of action!

Link to Article

SDS Report: What’s the Ideal Size for a Therapy Group?

As you remember we promised to share with you our report on the ideal group size based on your responses.

The report is now available here: http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=67
 – just follow the link: “Is there such a thing as the “ideal” group size? We asked our delegates of their opinions on the subject. Read our report based on your replies here.”

You still can add your comments to this discussion in our blog: http://sdsmedia.blogspot.com/2010/09/request-for-help-whats-ideal-size-for.html or contribute to many other debates of hot topics in psychology and health care: http://sdsmedia.blogspot.com/

A quick reminder: EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT OF £26 on "The Essential Toolkit for Running Groups" seminars is available only until 15 OCTOBER 2010.

Virtual Food Causes Stress in Patients Affected by Eating Disorders

Food presented in a virtual reality (VR) environment causes the same emotional responses as real food.

The 10 anorexic, 10 bulimic and 10 control participants, all women, were initially shown a series of 6 real high-calorie foods placed on a table in front of them.

Their heart rate and skin conductance, as well as their psychological stress were measured during the exposure. This process was then repeated with a slideshow of the same foods, and a VR trip into a computer-generated diner where they could interact with the virtual version of the same 6 items. The participants' level of stress was statistically identical whether in virtual reality or real exposure.

Speaking about the results, Gorini said, "Since real and virtual exposure elicit a comparable level of stress we may eventually see VR being used to screen, evaluate, and treat the emotional reactions provoked by specific stimuli in patients affected by different psychological disorders."

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Interesting study showing how virtual food can create a response within those with Eating Disorders.

Could this affect advertising in the future? Especially as advertising is slowly moving to becoming more interactive..

Link to Article

Patient Personality Can Hinder Detection of Depression

"Friends and family members of a person who is highly outgoing and fun-loving and who is likely to experience happiness and excitement often miss the signs that indicate the person is depressed."

"When a person who has enjoyed socializing and whose mood normally is positive becomes depressed, friends and family often don't recognize it. Depression is inconsistent with the expectations that people have," said Paul R. Duberstein.

When the research began, researchers hypothesized that friends and family would miss depression in a person who is introverted.

"But our research showed the opposite to be true," Duberstein said. "We found the signs of depression were more likely to be missed in people with an outgoing, extraverted personality."

The researchers also found that friends and family missed signs of depression in a person characterized as "agreeable," someone who is more trusting and more altruistic or who might be considered a conformist.

"It is important for people to understand that people who are highly extraverted and highly agreeable can become depressed and that the signs of depression for these people are more likely to be missed or detected by friends and family," Duberstein said "Don't assume that because someone is outgoing or agreeable that they are not vulnerable to becoming depressed."

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But surely you'd think we'd be more likely to notice if our usually outgoing friend was depressed? Apparently not! But why is this? Perhaps because we're not looking for it, we're just refusing to see it. If somebody is very happy and outgoing, this is the image we have of them in our head, even if they have not been acting this way recently. Perhaps it is just our selective attention that is the problem!

Link to Article

Why CBT often isn't what it seems

I would like to share with you today a piece of research that I recently came across.

Isn’t it interesting how stereotypes develop? Many practitioners and clients expect CBT to be prescriptive, directive and "top down". A recent study by Westra et al (2010) * certainly questions such stereotypes:

In the study, eighteen clients were interviewed following 8 sessions of CBT. 84% of them stated that their experience of CBT was not as they expected. Most related to the fact that therapy was more collaborative than expected and that they learnt more about themselves than anticipated. Even in instances where the outcome of therapy was negative, clients typically still remained positive towards their therapist and attributed lack of progress to other factors such as time constraints.

The gap between prejudice and reality is a common psychological and social phenomenon with pre-existing attitudes often leading to selective attention. CBT is not only a valuable approach and toolkit of strategies which therapists can use to help change emotions and behaviour – it also "bolts onto" other existing modalities of helping people to change.

If you are interested in exploring the reality behind the myth and the prejudices surrounding CBT, have a look at our Introductory CBT course: http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=69

OR

if you have your own thoughts or experiences on the topic let us know by reply or commenting on our blog: .

As a "big tent" training organisation we are interested in all views on this subject... supportive or otherwise. :-)

Best Wishes
Paul Grantham

* Westra, H., Aviram, A., Barnes, M., & Angus, L. (2010). Therapy was not what I expected: A preliminary qualitative analysis of concordance between client expectations and experience of cognitive-behavioural therapy. Psychotherapy Research, 20 (4), 436-446

Request For Help: What’s the Ideal Size for a Therapy Group?

Hello everybody

I am writing to ask for your help on a question that keeps cropping up in group work but which never really gets a sound answer – namely what is the “ideal” size for a therapy group?

Whether it is activity based, CBT, psycho-educational, exploratory or discussion based – we all know intuitively that group size has an enormous bearing on outcome and many of us have strong opinions on it. So what research is there on the subject? The surprising answer is – remarkably little. There is lots of opinion expressed, there are traditions and norms for group size, but actually there is very little controlled research available to answer this question.

We will explore the available research evidence in our upcoming seminar "The Essential Toolkit for Running Groups" (http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=67 ). However, prior to it I would like to approach the issue in a slightly different way and to ask for your help on the matter.

If you have experience in running groups or ever being involved with it in any way – I would very much like to hear from you regarding:

• what size your groups usually are (e.g. 6-16),
• who your client group is (e.g. young people with depression, or elderly clients, or clients with eating disorders etc)
• how many people are running the group (e.g. only you or 2 co-leaders etc.)
• do you think that types of clients’ problems you are working with might dictate different group sizes

PLEASE POST YOUR REPLIES HERE AND FORWARD THIS POST TO YOUR COLLEAGUES WHO WORK IN THE FIELD. WE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM THEM TOO.

What we aim to do is to create a database of current group practice which we will post on the SDS website (http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/ ) as well as feed into our subsequent group training http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=67 . That is why the more examples of different types of groups we receive from you, the broader the range of group topics or aims we can cover – the better. This should at least begin to provide us with a reference point regarding current practice.

Again... please help us to create this guide that will be used by many of your colleagues by forwarding the details of your groupwork experience.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Take care, Paul

EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT ON "THE ESSENTIAL TOOLKIT FOR RUNNING GROUPS" SEMINARS IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE. SAVE £26 OFF THE REGULAR PRICE. EXPIERES IN OCTOBER 2010.

Nutrients in milk link to obesity

Taken from yahoo news:

Feeding babies milk enriched with nutrients to promote faster weight gain in infancy makes them fatter later in life, researchers have suggested.

Body fat mass in five to eight-year-olds was 22% to 38% greater in those who were given nutrient-enriched milk as babies than those who had standard formula, according to a team based at the University College London Institute of Child Health.

Researchers looked at two randomised, controlled, double blind studies - where neither they nor the mothers knew which kind of milk they were assigned - involving small newborn babies in hospitals in Cambridge, Nottingham, Leicester and Glasgow.

Mothers who had no plans to breastfeed were given either standard formula milk or a formula containing extra protein, energy-boosters, vitamins and minerals.

In the first study, which was conducted on 299 babies between 1993 and 1995, the formula was used for nine months.

Researchers then measured the body fat of 153 (51%) of the children in their homes between 1999 and 2002.

The second study involved 246 infants between 2003 and 2005 - until it was stopped early due to evidence of the link between early over-nutrition and later obesity - of whom 90 (37%) were followed up to assess fat levels in 2008-09.

Professor Atul Singhal, from the MRC Childhood Nutrition Research Centre, UCL Institute of Child Health, who led the study, said: "This study robustly demonstrates a link between early nutrition and having more fat in later life in humans - a finding suggested by previous studies and confirmed in many other animals."

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It is interesting to think that what we eat/drink in infancy can have such a poweful affect on our lives in adulthood.

Link to Article

The Mechanism that links Obesity and Addiction

When an animal finds food in the wild, it is a rewarding stimulus for the animal and is recognized by the brain by the release of dopamine.

Illicit substances such as cocaine, heroin and amphetamines also cause the release of dopamine and therefore make people feel rewarded when they take drugs. The release of dopamine also occurs in tasty and highly-caloric foods. For this reason it's clear that dopamine has a role in addiction and the development of obesity.

Professor Bill Colmers set out to find if dopamine may have an effect on the memory-forming brain cells in the dentate gyrus. 'Conditioned Place Preference' is the name given to the behaviour when an animal knows it can expect rewarding stimuli, like a treat, in a certain location. This forms spatial memories in the dentate gyrus.

They found that when dopamine was added, it increased the excitability in part of the brain cell called the dendrites. A chemical secreted by the brain, Neuropeptide Y, had the opposite effect making the cells less excitable.

"You can find the fridge and you know there's good stuff in there, so you can find it in your sleep, and people do," said Colmers. "So there's this whole reward aspect to place that we've been able to unravel."

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So if location and 'reward' can be linked, then avoiding places where we usually have a 'treat' (e.g. not going to the employee lounge on our breaks!) may help reduce those cravings for high-calorie foods. Similar findings have already been talked about in regards to drug use, (e.g. smokers not sitting outside can help curb the need to smoke) but with this finding used to explain eating behaviour and obesity, it shows how obesity and drugs addiction are not worlds apart.

Link to Article

How can people be motivated to make better health choices?

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) is considering ways to persuade people to take better care of their health, due to the considerable impact that unhealthy habits are having on the NHS.

The NICE study examined a series of proposals, including one in Kent which pays dieters up to £425 for losing weight and another in Scotland which gives pregnant women shopping vouchers worth up to £650 for quitting smoking.

According to the proposals being considered by the health watchdog for England and Wales - people could be given cash incentives to encourage them to give up smoking or to lose weight.

• Can cash incentives motivate people to make better health choices?
• Are there better ways to encourage people to take care of their health or we are now at our last resort – hard cash?
• Would offering money as an incentive to improve health be cost-effective for the NHS or would the money be better spent elsewhere?
• Is it the right way forward?

You, as one of those professionals who work in the front line of helping people, are qualified better then anyone to answer these questions on the basis of your experience. Your opinion is invaluable and needs to be heard. We have created a simple poll were you can make your view known in two seconds: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5WWMS39

Please vote – we will make sure that your answers are known to those who make decisions on the matter.
Please feel free to send us your views on the matter as well as to post comments in the comments box of the poll or on our Psychology & Psychotherapy Blog.

This is an important topic closely linked to our training on Motivational Interviewing and Beyond (http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=5) and we will definitely address this issue as part of our course discussion. However, we would like to give all of you the opportunity to express your opinion whether you are taking part in the course or not.

Looking forward to hearing from you.