"Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends. "


Improving treatments for complex PTSD and for survivors of child abuse (first post)

7th August 2010

I've just come across a very interesting research study published in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry: Cloitre, M., K. C. Stovall-McClough, et al. (2010). "Treatment for PTSD Related to Childhood Abuse: A Randomized Controlled Trial." Am J Psychiatry 167(8): 915-924. The abstract reads: "Objective: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related …

Recent research: articles from July journals

5th August 2010

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 14,800 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …

Manchester BABCP conference: “metaphors and stories in CBT” (fifth post)

25th July 2010

Yesterday I wrote about David Clark's inspiring conference talk on "IAPT: achievements, lessons and the future". The lecture was followed by a rather poor conference lunch - I had an image of us all dipping our heads into the brown paper bags of sandwiches we were given, like feedbags for …

Manchester BABCP conference: IAPT, inspiration & generativity (fourth post)

24th July 2010

It's the third and last day of this annual BABCP conference (although I'm posting this a day after writing it). I wrote yesterday about a symposium I went to on the second day. Today I was more settled - I got out for a pre-breakfast run and then had a …

Manchester BABCP conference: positive psychology and depression (third post)

23rd July 2010

The second day of the annual BABCP conference in Manchester started bright and early. I wrote a bit in my room - I've already written a couple of posts about the first day of the conference - before heading down for an early breakfast. Breakfast was good - much better …

Manchester BABCP conference: Emily Holmes & imagery (second post)

22nd July 2010

I wrote yesterday about the first symposium that I got to at this year's BABCP conference - "More news from the imagery front". The "discussant" overviewing the symposium intelligently and encouragingly was Emily Holmes. Not bad considering that she was about to give the plenary presentation that I went to …

Manchester BABCP conference: “more news from the imagery front” (first post)

21st July 2010

This year's annual British CBT conference jamboree has been a bit unusual for me. I've been coming to these British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) conferences for years now, and routinely I would start with one of the full day pre-conference workshops before launching into the three days …

European positive psychology conference in Copenhagen: Barbara Fredrickson 'How positive emotions work, and why' (sixth post)

11th July 2010

I wrote last week on "Barbara Fredrickson 'How positive emotions work, and why' (fifth post)" and the initial two key points she made in her talk - 1.) Positivity opens us, and 2.) Positivity transforms us. Today's post discusses the second half of her talk and her three further key …

European positive psychology conference in Copenhagen: Barbara Fredrickson 'How positive emotions work, and why' (fifth post)

4th July 2010

I was at the 5th European Conference on Positive Psychology last month. I wrote a series of four blog posts about it, but in the second I commented "I'm running out of time for this blog post. The second talk was also great - "How positive emotions work, and why" …

Recent research: articles from June journals

1st July 2010

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 14,700 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …