Recent research: NICE guidance on social and emotional wellbeing in secondary education
1st October 2009
NICE is the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - "the independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the prevention and treatment of ill health." Although their guidance applies particularly to England and Wales, the opinions they come up with are …
A couple of fine, recent books on attachment
27th September 2009
I wrote earlier this month on "Attachment, compassion & relationships". I've been aware of John Bowlby's work on adult-child attachment for many years but, when I've approached it for insights that might help in my work as a psychotherapist, I've been put off by the complexity of assessment methods and …
Therapeutic use of film, music & poetry
25th September 2009
A few days ago a client lent me a DVD of the film Groundhog Day. It's a whimsical comedy about a guy who finds himself in a weird time loop where he has to repeat the same day again, and again, and again. Luckily for him, he isn't condemned to …
Recent research: two studies on depression, one on sex, & three on positive psychology
24th September 2009
Here are half a dozen research papers that have recently interested me (all details & abstracts to these studies are given further down this blog posting). The first by Fournier et al is about whether to choose antidepressants or psychotherapy to treat depression. They found that marriage, unemployment and having …
Autogenic training: sixth session
21st September 2009
Here are the handouts, recordings, and reflection/record sheets for the sixth Autogenic training session. There are four overlapping themes to this 'lesson'. Obviously a key issue is the next Autogenic Training step - the focus on the abdominal area. I usually initially get trainees to put a hand or both …
Recent research: six studies on eating habits, obesity, vitamin D, lifestyle & dementia
17th September 2009
Here are half a dozen studies on weight, bite size, vitamin D, dietary supplements, and ways of avoiding dementia. Andrew et al report on the "Incident cancer burden attributable to excess body mass index in 30 European countries" estimating that about 6% of cancers could be avoided if we could …
Four aspects model & some associated evidence for relaxation, meditation & imagery
13th September 2009
Relaxation, meditation, mindfulness, hypnosis, imagery and other associated methods form a complex, loosely interlinked field. The "Four aspects of helpful inner focus" model, that I've put together to help me make more sense of this territory, looks like this: For a downloadable copy of this diagram click here. There is …
Recent research: articles from August journals
10th September 2009
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 13,000 abstracts. Every few weeks I scan through all the articles I've found interesting in the previous month (in the general areas …
Autogenic training: fifth session
7th September 2009
Here are the handouts and other materials for the fifth Autogenic training session. Start this exercise once you have worked through the first four lessons. Take your time. If you have conscientiously worked your way through to this fifth session, you're doing really well. Congratulations. Don't feel you have to …
Attachment, compassion & relationships
6th September 2009
Well I didn't sleep too well last night. Catero, my wife, and I went to the cinema yesterday evening and watched "500 Days of Summer" . I enjoyed it and it got me thinking about relationships. The "Summer" of the title is a woman who doesn't believe in romantic love. …