The spectrum of mental health: part 1 - full & partial syndrome disorders
9th January 2011
This blog post is downloadable as both a Word doc & a PDF file. Different degrees of "mental health": At any point in time, a proportion of people are suffering from some type of formally diagnosable mental disorder. Others are subsyndromal - struggling although not qualifying for the full criteria …
Recent research: articles from December journals
6th January 2011
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 15,400 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …
Antonio Damasio’s “Self comes to mind”: emotions and the body 2
3rd January 2011
I wrote an initial blog post last month on "Antonio Damasio's 'Self comes to mind': overview". I commented that I wanted to think a bit more about three of the areas covered in the book - "Emotions and the body", "Memory and the autobiographical self" and "Mindfulness, protoself, core and …
Recent research: 2 mindfulness studies, 2 on goal setting, 1 on wellbeing & reduction in risk of mental illness, 1 on compassion
23rd December 2010
So here are half a dozen recent research papers in the general fields of positive psychology and mindfulness (abstracts and links are given further down this post). They're mostly by "big hitters" on big topics. So there is the paper by Willem Kuyken & colleagues entitled "How does mindfulness-based cognitive …
Antonio Damasio’s “Self comes to mind”: emotions and the body 1
20th December 2010
I wrote last week about "Antonio Damasio's 'Self comes to mind': overview" saying that I wanted to think a bit more about three of the areas covered in the book - "Emotions and the body", "Memory and the autobiographical self" and "Mindfulness, protoself, core and autobiographical self". I mentioned that …
Therapeutic writing & speaking: inspiration from values (specific instructions)
18th December 2010
See the two earlier blog posts - "Therapeutic writing & speaking: inspiration from values (background information)" and "Therapeutic writing & speaking: inspiration from values (how-to-do-it)" for fuller details of these self-affirmation, self-transcendence approaches. This "instructions" post is downloadable as a Word doc. introduction: Affirming key personal values and life areas …
Recent research: 2 studies on child adversity-adult illness links, 2 on prevalence, & 2 on how adversity may lead to resilience
16th December 2010
Here are seven recent research studies - largely about the effects of early life adversity on adult psychological health (although I've slipped in one I find important on the prevalence & effects of subsyndromal/subclinical symptoms). The last two papers touch on the truth or falsity of Nietsche's famous saying "What …
Antonio Damasio’s “Self comes to mind”: overview
13th December 2010
I first came across Professor Antonio Damasio's work in 2001 at the "7th European Conference on Traumatic Stress" in Edinburgh. One of the main plenary speakers talked about Damasio's ideas as expressed in his earlier books "Descartes' error: emotion, reason and the human brain" and "The feeling of what happens: …
Therapeutic writing & speaking: inspiration from values (how to do it)
12th December 2010
I wrote yesterday about "Therapeutic writing & speaking: inspiration from values (background information)". Today's post looks more at how-to-do-it details. Self-affirmation research describes a number of effective ways to reduce stress, clarify thinking, and boost effectiveness. If the affirmation exercise is being done in response to a particular stress or …
Therapeutic writing & speaking: inspiration from values (background information)
11th December 2010
Writing (or speaking) about our values or areas of our lives that are of particular personal importance can help us feel less threatened by stresses and more able to see situations clearly. There are many research studies demonstrating this. For example writing about personal values has been shown to reduce …