No Health Without Mental Health

Greetings all!

The Coalition Government has just published its initial plans on mental health - "No Health Without Mental Health": "No Health Without Mental Health"

I don't want to go into the content of the document at present or even raise the question of how mental health can be improved within a context of service cuts.

Instead, I want to draw your attention to and seek your thoughts on a key expressed assumption within the document highlighted by NHS Networks, namely that " THE GOVERNMENT [HAS THE] AIM OF ACHIEVING PARITY OF ESTEEM BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH". I’ve never come across such a strongly expressed statement of parity between physical and mental health in ANY government policy document before.

Now, of course, this may all be talk and that the reality may be quite different. However, my cynicism isn't quite so marked - not because of my belief in the intrinsic altruism of governments - but rather because of the financial issues currently being grappled with.

Firstly, there is the issue of the welfare budget. Forgive me if I'm teaching you to suck eggs here but for those unaware of the history of incapacity benefits let me give some brief background. Twenty years ago, Invalidity and Sickness Benefit (as it was then called) along with associated housing benefit was significantly short term in nature (six months or less) and primarily claimed by those with industrial injuries and pain problems. By 2010 this situation had radically changed whereby an increasing number of claimants were claiming for more than six months and over 50% of these were claiming for mental health problems. At estimated costs of £16 billion a year all political parties began to look seriously at the question of addressing this cost. IAPT (Increasing Access To Psychological Therapies), introduced by the last government and extended by this government by hundreds of millions of pounds, is the most visible example of how seriously central government now takes mental health. (CBT Training); (Managing Depression)

Secondly, the parity between mental health and physical health has also become apparent as a result of their interconnectedness - again from the perspective of the costs, this time associated with health costs associated with "long term conditions". The latter includes such illnesses as diabetes, cardiovascular problems, respiratory diseases and stroke. They are conditions that are often associated with repeated hospital admissions (which are costly) usually prompted by failure to maintain changes in health behaviour or because of the de-motivating effects of mental health problems such as depression. The thinking is that IF services can address depression or poor motivation in such groups, hospital re-admission rates will fall and costs reduced. (Motivational Interviewing Training); (Psychological Coping Post-Stroke)

Now this is all very understandable and laudable stuff - all industrialised countries at present are trying to contain healthcare costs, but a recognition that mental and physical health are intrinsically interconnected strikes me as a radical new framework in which to start debating this. However, it also raises difficult questions about the priorities that we we establish within this however.

• With limited money, do you agree that Depression and Degenerative Arthritis are of "parity of esteem".
• What about Panic Attacks and Palliative Care or Gall Bladder problems and Generalised Anxiety Disorder? Or do you think that we should recognise that such "parity of esteem" varies according to the type of problem.
• Should Botox continue to be funded on the NHS in certain circumstances when those with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder still have problems finding ANY service wanting to work with them?
• Should Pancreatitis be seen as having a "parity of esteem" with PTSD or should the latter be seen as a more pressing issue.

These are difficult questions with no easy answers. However the government's express acceptance of "parity of esteem" between physical and mental health opens up this debate.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? ALL VIEWS AND IDEAS ARE GREATLY WELCOMED.

The Best Motivation to Stop Smoking?

What's the best way to motivate smokers to quit? Tell them what their habit is doing to their insides? Show them pictures of what it's doing to their inside? Tell them how much money they could be saving?

All good ideas.

But what about showing them what smoking is doing to their outside... in the future!

Using state-of-the-art morphing technology, researchers have been able to produce images of how smokers will age if they continue to smoke compared to if they stop.

Results were successful with over two thirds of participants in the project claiming they will quit smoking as a direct consequence of seeing how their appearance will change.

Professor Sarah Grogan, Project Lead and Professor of Health Psychology, said: "We found that women were very concerned about the impact of ageing on their faces in general and in particular the additional impact of smoking on their skin - Many experienced a physical shock reaction, including reports of nausea, to seeing how they would age if they continued to smoke.

Now THAT's motivation!

The researchers plan to retest the research participants six months later to see if they kept their word and stopped smoking.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Article

Video Games and Children's Health.

How do we get children to eat their vegetables and drink more water? Fact-filled TV adverts? ...Funny radio characters? ...Computer games?

Well maybe so!

Two games, "Escape from Diab" and "Nanoswarm: Invasion from Inner Space" are video games specifically designed to lower risks of type 2 diabetes and obesity by changing behaviors.

"Diab and Nanoswarm were designed as epic video game adventures, comparable to commercial quality video games. These games incorporated a broad diversity of behavior change procedures woven in and around engrossing stories. The games motivated players to substantially improve diet behaviors," according to lead investigator Tom Baranowski, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics, U.S. Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service supported Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine. "Serious video games hold promise, but their effectiveness and mechanisms of change among youth need to be more thoroughly investigated."

Amazingly they found that children actually ate more fruit and veg per day, however it didn't increase the amount of water they drank or physical activity. These children basically wanted to sit inside, play computer games and eat an apple! I guess it's better than a chocolate bar!

Oh well, you can't win them all!

But it's a huge step forward in using a medium that children really like to get them to lead healthier lives!

Link to Paper

The Pain of Discrimination

"In a new study, researchers found that adolescents from Latin American and Asian backgrounds experienced more discrimination than their peers from European backgrounds and that the discrimination came not only from other adolescents but from adults as well. The level of discrimination also impacted these teens' grade-point averages and their health and was associated with depression, distress and lower levels of self-esteem.

601 Teens (equal males and females) kept a daily diary for 2 weeks to record any discriminatory events or comments they experienced. They were also asked to separately record on a four-point scale any physical symptoms, such as headaches, stomach-aches or general pain.

Among the teens in the study, nearly 60% reported experiencing discrimination from other teens, and 63% reported discrimination from adults; 12% reported experiencing discrimination on a daily basis.

The researchers found that teens who reported higher levels of peer or adult discrimination also reported more aches, pains and other symptoms, as well as a lower overall grade-point average. Thus, discrimination may not only tax adolescents' physical and psychological resources but may also affect their ability to achieve in school, the researchers said.

"Discrimination significantly predicted lower GPAs, higher levels of depression, higher levels of distress, lower self-esteem and more physical complaints," Fuligni said. "So the bottom line? Discrimination is harmful."

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This interesting study highlights the link between the personal world, i.e. one's own wellbeing and health, and the social world. This link can be good, in terms of positive interactions and suppport, but, as this study shows, negativity in the social world can create bad results in the personal world.

Although people may think the discrimination is only small, it can mount up on a single individual, much like in the story 'An Inspector Calls' by J.B Preistley, and can manifest itself in a number of physical and psychological problems.

The modern world already seems to be accelerating the number of people that are being diagnosed with depression and ADHD and personality disorders etc, and people are quick to blame the fast paced life and music and videogames. This study is an interesting wake-up call that shows how our interactions with each other, although seemingly harmless, may be commiting more pain than we realise.

Link to article

Portion Control: is it all a matter of perception?

Research suggests that the key to losing weight could lie in manipulating our beliefs about how filling we think food will be before we eat it, suggesting that portion control is all a matter of perception.

Test subjects were more satisfied for longer periods of time after consuming varying quantities of food for which they were led to believe that portion sizes were larger than they actually were.

Memories about how satisfying previous meals were also played a causal role in determining how long those meals staved off hunger. Together, these results suggest that expectations before eating and memory after eating play an important role in governing appetite and satiety.

In the first experiment, participants were shown the ingredients of a fruit smoothie. Half were shown a small portion of fruit and half were shown a large portion. They were then asked to assess the 'expected satiety' of the smoothie and to provide ratings before and three hours after consumption. Participants who were shown the large portion of fruit reported significantly greater fullness, even though all participants consumed the same smaller quantity of fruit.

In a second experiment, researchers manipulated the 'actual' and 'perceived' amount of soup that people thought that they had consumed. Using a soup bowl connected to a hidden pump beneath the bowl, the amount of soup in the bowl was increased or decreased as participants ate, without their knowledge. Three hours after the meal, it was the perceived (remembered) amount of soup in the bowl and not the actual amount of soup consumed that predicted post-meal hunger and fullness ratings.

Dr. Brunstrom: "Labels on 'light' and 'diet' foods might lead us to think we will not be satisfied by such foods, possibly leading us to eat more afterwards - One way to militate against this, and indeed accentuate potential satiety effects, might be to emphasize the satiating properties of a food using labels such as 'satisfying' or 'hunger relieving'."
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So these diet foods could actually be causing us to eat more as we still think we should be hungry? Interesting!

This study really does highlight how that aspects of our lives that we never really considered anything more than biologically driven really can be altered by our psychological state of mind!

This is an interesting situation for advertisers. Do they want to avoid using 'diet' on their labels so people don't feel like they're missing out on food? Or keep using it because the 'diet' part is the reason people keep buying it?

I know I'll be paying more attention to the fine print now!

Link to Article

Mindfulness Meditation Increases Well-Being in Adolescent Boys

'Mindfulness', the process of learning to become more aware of our ongoing experiences, increases well-being in adolescent boys, a new study reports.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge analyzed 155 boys from two independent UK schools, Tonbridge and Hampton, before and after a four-week crash course in mindfulness. After the trial period, the 14 and 15 year-old boys were found to have increased well-being, defined as the combination of feeling good (including positive emotions such as happiness, contentment, interest and affection) and functioning well.

Professor Felicia Huppert of the Well-being Institute at the University of Cambridge said: "More and more we are realising the importance of supporting the overall mental health of children. Our study demonstrates that this type of training improves well-being in adolescents and that the more they practice, the greater the benefits. Importantly, many of the students genuinely enjoyed the exercises and said they intended to continue them -- a good sign that many children would be receptive to this type of intervention.

"Another significant aspect of this study is that adolescents who suffered from higher levels of anxiety were the ones who benefitted most from the training."

The success of this initial study has recently led to the creation of an exciting 8 week mindfulness curriculum for schools in both the state and private sectors. This new curriculum, which includes games and video clips, should have even greater benefits.

(More information by clicking HERE)

Another link: mindfulnessinschool

Link Between Everyday Stress and Obesity Strenthened

Stress can take a daily toll on us that has broad physical and psychological implications. Science has long documented the effect of extreme stress, such as war, injury or traumatic grief on humans. Typically, such situations cause victims to decrease their food intake and body weight. Recent studies, however, tend to suggest that social stress--public speaking, tests, job and relationship pressures--may have the opposite effect--over-eating and weight gain. With the rise of obesity rates, science has increasingly focused on its causes and effects--including stress.

A recent study conducted by the Departments of Psychiatry and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, examined the effects of stress on the meal patterns and food intake of animals exposed to the equivalent of everyday stress on humans. The results suggest that, not only does stress have an impact on us in the short term, it can cause metabolic changes in the longer term that contribute to obesity.

Stress is experienced by animals and humans on a daily basis and many individuals experience cycles of stress and recovery throughout the day. If, following stress, we consume larger and less frequent meals, the conditions are favorable for weight gain--especially in the abdomen. We know that belly fat, as well as stress, contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease, immune dysfunction and other metabolic disorders. Further studies using the VBS model will help us understand the relationship between stress and obesity and help us treat and prevent the development of these diseases

(More information on this study can be found by clicking HERE)
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With obesity and body image in the media more and more in recent years, it seems now more than ever trying to maintain a healthy diet and exercise is important - especially if you've had that extra-stressful day at the office!

Possible methods to help you relax? Meditation, Tai Chi or a nice cup of tea!

Smoking-Mind Over Smoking-Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction

A new study from Tel Aviv University shows why patches and nicotine gum are ineffective.

In the new study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Dr. Reuven Dar of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology found that the intensity of cravings for cigarettes had more to do with the psychosocial element of smoking than with the physiological effects of nicotine as an addictive chemical.

"These findings might not be popular with advocates of the nicotine addiction theory, because they undermine the physiological role of nicotine and emphasize mind over matter when it comes to smoking," Dr. Dar says. He hopes this research will help clinicians and health authorities develop more successful smoking cessation programs than those utilizing expensive nicotine patches or gum.

Dr. Dar's studies conclude that nicotine is not addictive as physiological addictions are usually defined. While nicotine does have a physiological role in increasing cognitive abilities such as attention and memory, it's not an addictive substance like heroin, which creates true systemic and biologically-based withdrawal symptoms in the body of the user, he says.

Dr. Dar believes that people who smoke do so for short-term benefits like oral gratification, sensory pleasure and social camaraderie. Once the habit is established, people continue to smoke in response to cues and in situations that become associated with smoking. Dr. Dar believes that understanding smoking as a habit, not an addiction, will facilitate treatment. Smoking cessation techniques should emphasize the psychological and behavioral aspects of the habit and not the biological aspects, he suggests.

More information on this study can be found by clicking HERE