NEW: Diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy from SDS

We are holding a LIVE Facebook Question and Answer session on the CBT Diploma at 10.00 am on Thursday 1 December.
To access this simply start asking your questions as comments at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Skills-Development-Service-Ltd/148084035204831 and the SDS team will happily answer them.
If you cannot make that time – please feel free to leave your questions there now.

Read about SDS Diploma in CBT course here: http://skillsdevelopment.co.uk/CBT

Foetal (Fetal) Alcohol Syndrome Interview

Debate on Motivational Tools - Feedback

What do you usually do with your unmotivated clients? Discharge them? View them as resistant and work with them accordingly? Hope your supervisor got some ideas?
What do you do if you’re a supervisor and are at a loss?

The fact of the matter is that we could always do with some new ideas and tips on how to approach our most difficult clients.

Our recent delegate debate on motivational techniques produced some fascinating discussions about the topic and I would like to share them with you. Please read the comments to this post and feel free to contribute to this discussion by commenting yourself.

The issue of motivation is extremely interesting and multi-dimensional - that is why our training courses on Motivational Interviewing are always very engaging and lively. They are currently run in Manchester and London and until tomorrow you can book them with 30% discount. If you would like to learn more about this training follow the link:
http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=5

I hope you will find this post an interesting read and look forward to continuing this discussion with you at one of our training courses.

Take care
Paul

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.

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

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.

Research suggests that 'people are selfish'

New research has found that in economic decision making, humans are no more altruistic than bacteria. Dr Max Burton-Chellew of Oxford University explains the findings:

BBC4 audio file - http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8691000/8691801.stm

Positive Psychology claims that only altruistic behaviour leads to true happiness. Could this newly-proven selfishness lead to wide-spread unhappiness amongst us?

Would you agree with this research?

Do you know examples of selfless and altruistic behaviour that didn't lead to personal gain?

Please share your views with us.

Brain Training Doesn't Work. Or - Does It?

"Six weeks of computer brain training has little benefit beyond boosting performance on the specific tasks included in the training." That's according to an online study involving more than 11,000 participants conducted as part of the BBC's 'Bang Goes The Theory' science programme.

Adrian Owen of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and his colleagues first measured participants' baseline performance on a range of freely available tests on such measures as reasoning, verbal short-term memory, spatial working memory and paired-associates learning (a test of longer-term verbal memory).

Accoring to the researchers: "The results provided no evidence for any generalised improvements in cognitive function following brain training in a large sample of healthy adults".

The new findings are just the latest to cast doubt on the value of commercial brain training products. A 2008 investigation by the consumer charity Which? concluded that 'none of the claims [of commercial brain training products] are supported by peer-reviewed research published in a recognised scientific journal and involving the specific product'.

The Which? investigators recommended a healthy diet, physical exercise and challenging mental activities, including learning a new instrument or language, or completing crosswords, as the most effective ways to maintain a healthy mind.

What is your take on this story?
Do you thnk that results with children would be entiely different?
Do you think there is an "age limit" on our brain's ability to form new connections as a result of "btrin training"?
Is it possible that some people still benefit from these excersises even though the evidence suggest otherwise?
Does it still make sense to suggest brain training routines to older people in order to "keep their brains active?"
Please share your opinion with us.
______________________________
The results of this study will be shared and discussed on Bang Goes The Theory on BBC One at 9pm on 21 April and on the BBC's Lab UK website.
_______________________________

A.M. Owen, A. Hampshire, J.A. Grahn, R. Stenton, S. Dajani, A.S. Burns, R.J. Howard, & C.G. Gallard (2010). Putting brain training to the test. Nature [In Press].
_____________________________________

Further reading: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/04/brain-training-doesnt-work.html

SDS Debate: Award Winning Neurologist Challenges Our Therapy Practice

Here's a question for you: What do your clients spend most of their time talking about when they are with you?
• About how worthless they feel?
• About their negative core beliefs and how to challenge them?
• About their damaged histories and how these might be overcome?
• Or what they have been doing over the last week, month?

Marc Jeannerod may not be a name you're familiar with, but he is an internationally recognised expert in cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology. His research has highlighted a significant process that is both theoretically interesting and contains very challenging implications for our practice.

Firstly, he has found that at a neurological level, the brain operates in exactly the same way when “simulating an action or behaviour as it does when actually doing it." In other words the same areas of the brain are used in exactly the same way when we talk about or visualise an activity or action as those that are used when we actually do that action.

Secondly, we have known elsewhere for a while that repeatedly using the same areas of our brain reinforces such connections and makes them MORE LIKELY to be used in the future.

Putting the two together suggests that what our clients spend their time visualising or thinking about increases the likelihood of them doing those things in the future. Basically, if our clients spend their time with us talking about their inactivity or inability (even when thinking about how to overcome it) INCREASES the likelihood of them continuing with their inactivity or inability.

The implications for us are more than just trying to make our clients "more positive". Firstly and most importantly, it has major implications for the agendas and protocols that both we and our clients use. Any time spent NOT talking about "successful" activity (as defined by the client) is at best a wasted opportunity and at worst – reinforcing the problem. Even if we only spend 50% of our time with clients talking about the problem, this is 50% of time spent on reinforcing the problem. Secondly, talking about "overcoming the problem" is little better – unless it focuses on what the client wants to be doing instead. Focusing on how to overcome a problem is not the same as focusing (e.g. visualising) on actually overcoming the problem.
For those of you who are wondering where ‘listening to the client's worries in order to engage them’ comes in, the answer is in the question. Attending to the client’s inaction, confusion, or distress is a necessary activity to engage the client initially, but should never be a central tenet of helping because despite best intentions it ultimately leads the client back to the place where they do not want to be.

If this issue interests you and you'd like to explore it further, or even if you fundamentally disagree with it, I'd love to discuss it with you.

You can do this in a number of ways:
• You can reply to this email directly
• You can post your reply on the SDS Blog (http://sdsmedia.blogspot.com)
• Or even better – come along to one of the SDS Seminars "All New Brief Solution Focused Therapy" (http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=70). Anyone who has worked us with before will know I love lively, honest, and considered debate.

Looking forward to hearing from you and working with you again.

Take care

Paul

Paul Grantham
Consultant Clinical Psychologist

SDS Debate: Facebook, Self Esteem & Aiming for 153.5 Friends

Many of you probably caught the research study that hit the Sunday Times last weekend about the number of "true" contacts that people have on their Facebook account http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6999879.ece).

Professor Robin Dunbar at Oxford University found that although some Facebook users had thousands of online "friends", in reality they only managed to maintain regular contact with about 150 of them.

Past delegates on our "How to build clients' self esteem" workshop will already be familiar with Professor Dunbar's work regarding the relationship between the size of people's social networks and their self esteem. According to Hill and Dunbar (2003), the average size of someone's social network (based on their Christmas card list!) is 153.5. Now, whether that personally makes you feel proud or whether you feel like "Billy-No-Mates", one thing that is clear is that most of our clients' social networks are considerably smaller than this! Indeed the work that I've done suggests they are frequently in single figures.

We have known for over 30 years through the work of Brown & Harris that social support is a very important preventative factor regarding depression and that the size of someone's social network is an important feature of this. For that reason, when our clients have low self esteem we often try and get them to expand their social networks as a way of addressing this.

However we are often rather uncreative when we try to do this. The most commonly used strategy is "getting them to join a pre-existing group with a shared interest." Unfortunately however, this is often one of the most challenging and stressful ways of doing it and many clients with low self esteem fail as a result.

On our "How to build client's self esteem" (http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=1) courses we explore other ways of building clients' social networks which are not as threatening for them and as a result are more successful. If you are interested in this topic and can be available on 5th February (London) or 12 February (Manchester) why don't you sign up and come along.

Last minute online bookings for these events even have £25 off!

However, prior to the course I would be interested to hear from you about other ways you have used to help your clients build their social networks. Lets share ideas and draw on our experiences. As always please forward your thoughts to me and we will post the best of them on the SDS Blog (http://sdsmedia.blogspot.com/) so that others can make use of them. If you prefer - post your comments on the blog directly and follow us to keep up with future discussions.

Take care,

Paul

Paul Grantham

What makes a nation suicidal ?

A list of the top nations in the world for suicide rates doesn't make for pleasant bedtime reading. However, as a source of ideas for explaining why people kill themselves (and thus what can be done to prevent it), it is an interesting source of data.

So....what do you think are the factors that are most likely to lead a country to be vulnerable to high suicide rates? Poor social welfare systems ? A poor sense of community or togetherness, maybe its poor mental health services ?

In the industrialised world who do you think scores highest ? The USA ? Many of you may think this is a trick question and answer "the Scandanavian countries". Maybe you think its the UK ?
Well...you would all be wrong and infact, as far as the UK is concerned, it has the lowest suicide rate of all the countries in Western Europe...

The latest edition of The Economist (10 Ocober 2009) has just published OECD data on this question, that begs more questions than it answers. Infact the country with the highest rate is Japan ( a country defined by its sense of community and public services, though arguably with a social tradition of suicide). However, most striking (in position number 3) is France - which has a suicide rate that is TWICE that of the UK and 40% higher than Germany.

The Economist offers explanations which I personally do not find credible - such as a restrictive employment policy that creates meaningless jobs. However, it is a fascinating question as to why a country that prides iteself on quality of life and the value of community should have so may people who want to kill themselves ?

I would like to explore this further at my next block of workshops on Suicide and Self Harm ( http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=6 ) . Id be fascinated by your tho0ughts and theories on this (whether at the workshop or here on this blog). Let me know what you think.

Take care

Paul

Paul Grantham
Consultant Clinical Psychologist

SDS Debate: Are you using the Resilience Model yet?

Dear All

Happy New Year! I hope you have had a restful holiday period and are geared up for 2010!

I wanted to discuss with you some recent research in the Positive Psychology field.

Longitudinal research by Professor Emmy Werner over last two decades has firmly established that poverty, having substance dependent parents and being abused do not necessarily produce damaged children and adults.

Although the chances of damage are higher, a third of children studied showed no evidence of problems. Of the remaining two-thirds, psychological difficulties usually developed during adolescence but then markedly declined or disappeared in their 30s and 40s.

It appears that protective factors (or their absence) are much more important than risk factors in determining people's mental health and that the skills of "framing" and "reframing" are central in this.

Most significantly, it also appears that people can be taught such skills both before (as a protective measure) and afterwards (as therapy). The Penn Resilience Program (PRP) developed by Professor Marty Seligman, is just one application of its use which has been extensively evaluated over the last 16 years and has been found to significantly reduce a range of problems - from depression to criminality.

The forthcoming SDS workshops on Positive Therapy - http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=52 - will be examining the question of building clients' resilience along with other practical applications from the positive psychology field. I am looking forward to working with you and am sure that these events will be stimulating for all of us.

However, I also welcome any of your thoughts on the topic prior to then. It will help us to shape the discussion on the course around the most practical issues as perceived by you.

References:

Resilience: A Universal Capacity (2004) www.wested.org/online_pubs/resiliency/resiliency.chap1.pdf
Cardemil, E.V., Reivich, K.J., Beevers, C.G., Seligman, M.E.P., & James, J. (2007). The prevention of depressive symptoms in low-income, minority children: Two-year follow-up. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 313-327

Kind Regards

Paul Grantham
Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Idle thoughts on ICD-10

Ive just completed a set of training days on mental health awareness for a Housing Association whose target group are homeless people in the North East of England. I know the organisation well and we have worked together on a number of projects over the years.

This has been the first time Ive provided overview introductory training on Mental Health. The training was enjoyable and well received ...but it was the nature of the discussions with people who have no background in mental health or therapy that set me thinking.....

ICD-10 is predominant now as THE organising structure for psychoogical problems and psychotherapy in the UK. It is the primary classification system used by the primary funders of any service - the government or insuarnce companies, and influences the theoretical and linguistic framework in which other service providers think.

ICD diagnostic classification determines whether someone has a psychological problem and who shoukld be addressing it. It assumes a number of things ranging from the the unspoken belief that psychological difficulties relate to questions of "health" through importance of differential diagnosis to an assumption of treatment cure. I'm sure we all have an opinions on this way of thinking. However....this is not what my idle thoughts are about.

What has struck me regarding my recent involvement however is how much this sytem does NOT apply or doesnt WORK for practically all of the clients this organisation is dealing with.

Firstly, arounf fifty percent of their clients have psychological problems that dont fit into ICD-10 - anger problems, general lack of motivation or interest in life (without the necessary additional features to fulfill a diagnosis of depression), general "oddness" which psychaitrists have told them they shouldnt worry about etc....except for the fact that these presentations are a cause of distress for either the clients themselves or those around them.

Secondly, a large proportion of their clients have the dreaded P.D. diagnosis which is of course the 21st century equivalent of leprosy as far as mental; health services are concerned. Despite statements from NICE on the importance of mental health services addressing P.D. needs it still remains a primary reason for many of such services tio say that it is not their business to address their needs.

Finally, about 80% of their client have dual diagnostic problems....most commonly substance misuse and psychological problems, but occasionally learning disabilities and mental health problems....and as we all know dual diagnosis brings out the worst in a jobs worth attitude in statutory services, leading to an unending merry-go-round of trying to find someone who will meet the needs of such clients.

The long and the short of it is that some of the neediest people in out society get a really lousy service for their psychological problems or don't get any service at all ! And I'm convinced that a system that has made ICD-10 SO parameount is to blame....A system based on symptoms interfering with functioing or percived indivual need or distress seems a much more logical and equitable system to base our thinking on.....

All Ive got to do now is convince the medical professiona s a whole, the pharmaceutical industry and the cuurent holders of service and research budgets....Shucks....Im sure that wont be TOO difficult :o)

Paul Grantham
Consultant Clinical Psychologist

BACP issues warning that new depression guidelines may harm patients

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) has today issued a warning that the new depression guidelines published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) could mean a narrowing of the options available to those being treated for depression, Britain's number one mental health concern.

Dr Lynne Gabriel Chair of BACP said: "BACP welcomes NICE's recommendations to support counselling and psychotherapy in general to treat depression. But we are worried that the narrow focus of the new guidelines could be used to promote one form of talking treatment - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - at the expense of the full range of psychological therapies. The evidence is clear that CBT can only be of benefit to some 50 per cent of depressed patients rising to just over 70 per cent when symptoms specially lend themselves to a CBT approach".

All patients with long-term illnesses will be assessed for mental health problems under new guidelines issued by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Depression can be up to three times more common in those suffering from chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease but because of the focus on primary physical symptoms the mental distress can often go undiagnosed. The new guidelines will tell GPs to do routine screens for depression in all cases of serious illness.

NICE also released updated guidelines on treatment of general depression, suggesting that psycho-social or talking therapies should be the first treatment option for people with mild or moderate depression rather than medication

For further details please go to:
http://www.bacp.co.uk/media/index.php?newsId=1610

We would be grateful if you could share your views on this issue with us.

Three-minute therapy: Speed Dating, 'Speed Shrinking' - what's next?

Claire Prentice writes in The Independent:

Three-minute therapy: Can 'speed shrinking' fix your head in 180 seconds?

Three, two, one...Speed Shrink!" booms a voice over the loudspeaker. Having three minutes to spill your most intimate secrets to a stranger in a crowded room may not sound like everyone's route to good mental health, even in the world capital of psychotherapy. But for today's time – and increasingly cash – poor New Yorkers, it offers a potential quick fix that is hard to resist.

Read the full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/threeminute-therapy-can-speed-shrinking-fix-your-head-in-180-seconds-1818840.html

What do you think about this as an idea?
Have you ever experiences anything similar in your everyday life?
Is there room for this approach amongst other therapeutic interventions?

Please share your thoughts with us.

Nice Doctors Heal You Faster, And More!!!

I've been waiting for something like this for ages!
When I practised as a Gastroenterologist - I knew my patients had their symptoms disappear and their ulsers healed sooner then others just becourse I was SO NICE with them. :-)))
(Not going to die of modesty as we say it in Russia)...

Anyway - read this article - you'll enjoy it!

"It feels good when someone pays attention to our concerns and our feelings—and it turns out such empathy is good for our health, too.

Researchers at the University Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health report in Family Medicine that patients of doctors who expressed such concern had a cold for one day fewer than patients whose physicians focused on just the facts. In randomized controlled trials the colds of patients assigned to empathetic doctors lasted an average of seven days; those with low empathy docs endured an extra day of cold misery.

The doctors’ empathy also boosted the patients’ immune systems. There was a direct relation between a physician’s empathy level and his or her patient’s level of IL-8, a chemical that summons immune system cells to fight microbial bad guys."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nice-doctors-heal-faster

The inconsiderate use of mobile phones is a form of collective madness?

Will Self writes in New Statesman:

"... I don't think inconsiderate use of mobile phones is simply the rudeness born of a slackening of social bonds: I believe it to be a form of collective madness. When I'm in a public but confined space, such as a train carriage, and some deranged person begins to Samsung-soliloquise, I try to bring them to their senses by reading aloud from Schopenhauer (I carry a copy of The World as Will and Idea with me for just this purpose). Soon enough they stop and, sadly often irately, ask me what I'm doing. Then I explain that while public declamation and conversation is as old as humanity, there is no precedent for a person holding a one-sided private conversation aloud in public...

...
So confused have the boundaries between conversations become that it's by no means uncommon to see people attempting to buy - or sell - something while holding a mobile phone conversation. Thus what were once immediate and personalised bonds are constantly being vitiated by remote and anonymous ones, as the individual rattles around in a shaken snow globe of randomised verbiage. I'm not so out of touch that I don't know what it feels like to conduct a phone call while speaking to someone immediately in front of me: it feels like psychosis - something I've also experienced.
..."

Read the full article: http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2009/10/mobile-phone-public

Tell us what do you think?

An argument for warmer rooms?

BPS Research Digest writes:
Last year, the psychologists Lawrence Williams and John Bargh gave participants a cup of coffee to hold and showed that the temperature of the coffee affected the way those participants rated a stranger's character. A hot coffee led them to rate him as more good natured and generous, whilst holding an iced coffee had the opposite effect.
The finding was touted as an example of embodied cognition - the idea that the way we think about the world is grounded in, and affected by, physical metaphors.
Now Hans Ijzerman and Gun Semin have built on this work, showing not only that the ambient temperature of a room affects how socially close people feel to another, but also the type of language they use and the way they see relations between shapes.
Fifty-two participants were shown an animated film featuring chess pieces. Crucially, half the participants were seated in a cool room (15 to 18 degrees Celsius) whereas the others sat in a warm room (22 to 24 degrees Celsius). Afterwards participants in the warm room used more concrete, physical language to describe the film and reported feeling socially closer to the experimenter than did the participants in a cold room.
...
Full article:
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2009/10/warm-room-makes-people-feel-socially.html

Do you have an opinion about this? Do you feel differently in a warmer room?
What are your personal preferences and experiences?
How would it affect our practice and our workplace?
Please share your thoughts...

Web Helps to Slow Dementia

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor, Times Online says:

"GOOGLING is good for grandparents. Internet use can boost the brain activity of the elderly, potentially slowing or even reversing the age-related declines that can end in dementia, researchers have found.
Using brain scans, they found the internet stimulated the mind more strongly than reading, and the effects continued long after an internet session had ended.
“We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function,” said Gary Small, professor of neuroscience and human behaviour at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
In the research, Small and his colleagues worked with 24 men and women aged between 55 and 78. Half of them had used the internet a lot; the others had little experience. "

Read More:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6879663.ece#

• Please tell us what do you think?
• Do you know some one who can confirm the case?
• Do you agree on the basis of other information available in the field?
• Are you sceptical about it?
• Should we all start tweeting tomorrow?
  

SDS Delegate Debate: A single session cure for panic attacks?

Dear All

Recently I came across an interesting piece of research, whilst preparing reading materials for our forthcoming seminar on Anxiety. (http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=68)
As it was a very simple and useful way of helping clients I thought I would share it with you.

We all know that excessive caffeine consumption is probably not the most sensible thing for anxious clients to be doing. However, the question is - what is “excessive” and how un-sensible is it? On one hand, the British Coffee Association states that “scientific evidence consistently shows that drinking up to … four to five cups of coffee a day is perfectly safe … and may confer health benefits.” On the other hand, a paper published last month in Psychiatry Research suggests otherwise and indicates that caffeine consumption alone may be more than sufficient to promote and maintain panic attacks.

In a double blind experiment in Brazil (appropriately enough), of those experiencing panic attacks, nearly two thirds had such an attack after drinking the equivalent of 5 cups of coffee. However in a control group of those who had previously experienced such attacks, not a single panic attack was reported after consuming non-caffeinated drinks. *

As is so often in our field, substance consumption plays an important role. Not just in making problems more complex but also in providing potentially simple solutions.
Next time you work with an anxious client, remember to encourage caffeine elimination before engaging in more complex interventions. It may be sufficient to cure the problem.

We are looking forward to working with you in our future seminars. Remember that our seminar on Anxiety is fully booked on the first day in London, but there are still places left on the second London date and at other venues around the country.

Book online (http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=68) and receive automatic £10 discount.

Kind regards
Paul Grantham
Consultant Clinical Psychologist

* References: Panic disorder and social anxiety disorder subtypes in a caffeine challenge test Nardi AE, Lopes FL, Freire RC, Veras AB, Nascimento I, Valença AM, de-Melo-Neto VL, Soares-Filho GL, King AL, Araújo DM, Mezzasalma MA, Rassi A, Zin WA. Psychiatry Res. 2009 Sep 30;169(2):149-53.