Posted by: Uticopa in sport and mental health on
Jul 30, 2009
Not only are the Olympics coming to London in the next few years, but now the Rugby Union World Cup too. Never has there been a better time to gen up on all those sports which interest you and try to get fit yourself. No longer is it sufficient to merely be an armchair supporter. Taking part in your favourite sport will give you a body to be proud of, but that's not all. It isn't just the physical aspects that will improve your health. It's good for your mental health too.
Let's face it: it's been a long, hard few years for most of us. Maybe you have struggled with the economic down-turn or been unfortunate enough to lose your job. The stresses and strains have been a big burden for many of us, sometimes resulting in marital breakdown or mental health problems such as depression or worse.
Take the case of Leigh Bailey. His world was in tatters - he had a breakdown, lost his job, his wife and his children. He was so depressed he couldn't even bring himself to leave the house. Clearly he was suffering from low self-esteem. But today he is brimming with confidence and has recently qualified as a gym instructor.
And to what does he credit this dramatic transformation? He enrolled in a 10-week Boxercise course run jointly with the Croydon branch of Mind and three times world champion Duke McKenzie. Boxercise is a fitness class which incorporates a number of boxing moves and techniques, but without the physical contact.
We read a lot in the media about the rise in teenage pregnancies in the UK and the subsequent psychological distress - not just to the new mother but to the whole family.
And the rest of the nation?
Everyone has an opinion. You only have to read the hundreds of blogs on various sites to see that everyone, not just professionals, has a view on the problem. Inevitably, the elderly - who have seen it all before in one form or another - place the problem fairly and squarely on society as a whole. ‘Lack of respect for their elders' is a common refrain. ‘Young people have no respect for authority, don't understand or care about the consequences, no longer bother to get married first, so it's their own fault.....' or words to that effect.
Posted by: Uticopa in stroke, stress, mental health on
Jul 20, 2009
Strokes are one of the most common killers in Britain, affecting an estimated 150,000 people each year, of which more than 67,000 die.
But, stroke is such a variable disease, its severity and symptoms varying so much depending on the precise spot in the brain that the blood clot occurred. Some sufferers are only mildly affected and can hope to try to regain any lost faculties by plenty of professional medical help.
However, what causes it in the first place?
Posted by: Uticopa in Alzheimers on
Jul 14, 2009
Here are the headlines: Disaster looms unless new Alzheimer's drugs work, scientists warn. New drugs which slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease could be available in five years but Britain faces an "unmitigated disaster" if they fail to work, scientists have warned. In the meantime there are 700,000 people in the UK alone who suffer from some form of dementia and need help today, not in 5 years' time.
For those who are constantly searching for that elusive, simple way to help yourself at home, why not try the following.
Remember the acronym CAST (coffee, sudoku, turmeric). Each of these three things is available locally all year round. Here are the reasons why you should ‘partake' of all three as often as possible:
Heard the one about the man who went to the doctor to get help for his depression? He's told to go and see a show with a well known comedian who would make him laugh and lift his spirits. "But that's me," says the patient. "I'm the comedian!"
Humour often develops as a response to depression and works as a coping mechanism. Natural comics tend to be superior in intelligence, but also angry, suspicious and depressed. Their comedic skills may well have developed as a means of compensating for earlier psychological losses and difficulties. A significant proportion of comedians do seem to suffer more with depression - think of the late Anthony Hancock and Spike Milligan. Comedy seems to act as a way of dealing with depression. Their comic style that went along with their depressive disorders seemed to feed their creativity.
Are you a creative thinker?
Posted by: Uticopa in fear, anxiety on
Jul 06, 2009
Is it growing old, the dark, cancer, death? We all have our fears, but how to deal with them so that our stress levels don't get blown sky-high?
Let's take ‘growing old'. If you talk to youngsters and ask them how they view the old people they pass on the city streets, often they will laugh and say things that indicate the old are aliens from another planet. The truth is that children need educating. Those old people are not ‘aliens': it is me in the future! The clothes the old people wear are not a sign that they haven't a clue about fashion, but simply that they choose to continue wearing the ‘fashion' from their own youth. What I'm trying to say is that education is one way of dealing with the fear of growing old.
Maybe you fear the very process of death and the aftermath. In ancient and some current third-world societies, children are exposed to death in a very real sense. They are taken to look at the recently-deceased member of their family, to show respect for the dead. There is often a serenity on the face of a dead person which can dispel all fears about dying. My late father used to say: you must remember me often and quote some of my sayings; in that way, I can live on. This is good advice because by so doing you can ease your own mind by remembering them when they were living and so help your own grieving process.
Posted by: Gillian Green in Untagged on
Jun 29, 2009
The minute summer arrives, everywhere we look the media tell us it's bad news. We should all stay out of the sun for fear of skin damage, food-poisoning, hay fever, eye damage...so the list goes on.
How refreshing, then, to hear that a leading professional - Professor Steve Field, Chairman of the Royal College of GPs - says that summer is a time when "health advantages far outweigh the disadvantages".
Hear, hear!
Posted by: Gillian Green in anger management on
Jun 17, 2009
Bitterness is a common occurrence, ranging in strength according to the reason for it. As two extremes, think of how the Jewish people viewed the Nazis during WW2, compared to a person today who harbours feelings against a bank who has refused him a home loan. At one end of the scale, a traumatic event can make a whole people angry, pessimistic, aggressive and hopeless. For most, though, it is a fleeting emotion, one that slips away as readily as any other as the hours progress and new thoughts seep in to push out the bitterness.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) generated a measure of incredulity recently by debating whether bitterness should be labelled a bona fide mental disorder. They've even come up with a new name for it: post-traumatic embitterment disorder (PTED), stating that it could be due to a chemical imbalance in the brain.
But, is it a mental illness?
I agree that there's certainly a lot of anger and bitterness in the world at the moment. From global issues to personal financial meltdown, there's no lack of things to feel embittered about. ‘Why me?' is the constant refrain.
Posted by: Uticopa in music therapy, memory, dementia on
Jun 17, 2009
In all forms of dementia there is a loss of protein, effectively cutting off the vital connections of the brain. Yet, it can't be as simple as that. Vestiges of old memories seem to lie dormant with sufferers, as if waiting for that essential trigger to spring them back to the forefront of consciousness again.
It was with this in mind that a programme called Music for Life was started in 1993. It was set up to use music to find the person behind the dementia. From this original, small group, a much larger organisation has now been handed over to Wigmore Hall in London. In May, the transition was launched attended by the charity's royal patron, HRH Princess Alexandra.
The latest remit for the charity is for a group of classical musicians, some from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, to take their instruments to nursing homes and provide around eight sessions involving dementia patients and their carers. As soon as the residents arrive, some in wheelchairs, some with sticks or walking-frames, the musicians strike up a pre-improvised melody. Subtle, entrancing and hypnotic, it's composed especially to alter mood through both the rhythm and dynamics.
Posted by: Uticopa in Untagged on
Jun 01, 2009
Our body's ability to metabolise food is complex and not widely-understood. There are as many different types of metabolic-rate as there are, say, types of facial features. If someone has inherited a poor bodily metabolic rate and then, foolishly, overeats to a marked extent as well - then we get the sort of extreme obesity levels one sees in places like the USA. There's one particular family I know where the wife is obese, the husband skinny, the one son following the mother's shape, the other the father's.
Yet, they all eat the same amount and type of food!
Every day there seem to be yet more doctors telling us that what we eat is bad for us. Most related studies have in the past concentrated on how obesity and poor choice of food give undoubted risk to our cardiovascular system, leading to strokes and cancer. However, a new Australian study has now shown a link between Western-style diets and mental health problems in teenagers.
