Over the past few months The Mental Health Foundation has been researching whether or not we are becoming a nation of angry people, and what support there is for those who feel that they cannot control this primal emotion.
Of the 2,000 people surveyed, almost a third said that they knew someone who struggled with anger, and in a similar Government survey more than three fifths said they felt people were getting angrier.
What is quite worrying is that there really is very little help being offered to people who suffer from anger management problems. Anger is seen to be a symptom of a condition such as anxiety or depression and not worthy of "condition" status in itself. As a result, people will not generally be referred to a mental health professional until their anger has actually caused them to commit an aggressive act.
Historically, British people have always ignored the effects of our poor, wet weather. The heavy rain has always been there, so most carry on regardless. However, as the world shifts towards global climate change, water-related problems are arguably the most imminent and most personal. As Britain's temperature rises and weather patterns become more extreme, will our health be compromised by a lack of clean water and diseases spread by polluted floodwater?
And what of our mental health? Will our stoic disregard for the weather turn to mental depression or worse?
Health professionals, until now noticeable only by their absence in the climate change debate, will become increasingly important in helping us to understand and adapt to problems and in promoting behavioural changes that might avert the greatest threats.
Posted by: Uticopa in mental health, addiction on
May 05, 2011
The Get Well Scheme was an experimental scheme run out of two centres in Northern Ireland that enabled GP's to refer patients to complimentary therapists with the NHS picking up the tab. The aim was to show that not only can those who have come to rely on long term prescription drug use to manage their conditions reduce their dependency through these therapies, but that the scheme could even save the NHS money.
The use of prescription drugs to manage conditions can be costly and result in countless further medical risks such as addiction, reliance and side effects (however small the risk factor is). The Get Well Scheme looked into the use of such therapies as acupuncture, homoeopathy, chiropractic, aromatherapy and reflexology. The recent BBC One documentary (shown in Northern Ireland) charted the progress of the scheme and showed some very positive stories of success.
The scheme was attempting to prove that the NHS should be offering its patients access to these alternatives to prescription drugs for their better health and for the benefit of the NHS budget.
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?
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?
There has been a tide of media interest in young people recently - from fathers at thirteen, to earlier and earlier sex-education in schools, to the cervical infections surrounding the tragic Jade Goody.
Sex is once again in the news, if ever it really left.
The sexual conduct of young people has long been vigorously debated, but what of the inevitable mental health issues that are caused by such behaviour?
Posted by: Uticopa in stigma, mental health on
Dec 18, 2008
So much of the media stigmatizes mental health issues. Yet, media coverage in general has a direct impact on all our lives and even controls, subliminally, how we think. But in the field of mental health, it is clear that poor quality, essentially unbalanced, press coverage of mental health issues fuels stigma and actively reduces a sufferer's quality of life.
So, what can we do about it?
First we need to gauge its effects on mental health sufferers themselves. The mental health charity Mind recently surveyed over five hundred people suffering from a range of mental illnesses, asking them how they felt about press coverage. Over seventy percent felt that coverage of mental health issues was usually unbalanced, decidedly unfair and very negative in its biased reporting. In turn, this had made sufferers feel more anxious and depressed as a direct result. Some had even felt suicidal, whilst others reported withdrawal symptoms coupled with feelings of isolation.
Sarah Harding, singer with the pop group Girls Aloud, has spoken out this week against rumours that she is suffering from an eating disorder. The rumours were triggered by photographs of the singer's slim frame, but Harding insists that she "eats like a horse".
This is just the latest in a long line of rumours - some true, some false - about women in the public eye having eating disorders. Perhaps most famously, and certainly most tragically, was the case of singer Karen Carpenter who, after years of denying she suffered from Anorexia Nervosa, died in 1983 from a heart attack brought about by the condition. She was only 32. At the time of her death, she weighed just an astonishing 49Kg.
Pop stars, actresses, and other women in the public eye are admired as role models by young girls. They often want to emulate them in many ways, and while the celebrities themselves may be eating healthily, their slim figures can often lead young girls to take drastic measures to achieve the same look.
In a recent speech at The Guardian Public Services Summit, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg underlined his belief that the Government was failing the public by putting too much emphasis on medication and not enough on mental health options. He said "Britain has become the true Prozac Nation. I believe this trend has gone too far. This was in response to research his party had carried out that revealed that, for some psychotherapy and counselling services, patients currently have to wait up to two years before they are seen.
Mr Clegg blames the lack of an adequate mental health service offering as one of the major contributions towards the rise in the number of prescription medications being sold in Britain today. A startling 31 million prescription drugs such as Prozac were issued in England alone in 2006. Whilst Mr Clegg acknowledges the role medication plays in alleviating the symptoms of many conditions, he feels that this should not become the default medical solution to all conditions. He vowed to invest in mental health services to reduce long waiting times that could put some people off the treatment and make others wait for an uncomfortable amount of time for care that could change their lives dramatically.
A Department of Health spokesperson said that that over the next three years the Government would be investing and additional £170m into psychological therapies to help those who need it most. Such a long wait to meet with a mental health professional is not only dangerous for some patients and conditions, but as many mental health issues are progressive, by the time they are seen they will require a far longer period of therapy to achieve the same results.
It is very normal to talk to yourself, whether out loud or quietly in your head. Vocalising our thoughts process helps us to walk ourselves through the challenges that life throws at us.
