Alcohol: it's more damaging than we realised
28th August 2018
A major new research paper was published in the Lancet last week - "Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016." It's the biggest and best overview of damage caused by alcohol that has ever emerged. It's …
How can we make psychotherapy supervision more effective?
8th August 2018
All counsellors & psychotherapists in the UK need to have regular supervision if they want to maintain their professional accreditation. A central reason for this is to support therapists in being as helpful as possible for their clients. Unfortunately current approaches to supervision don't seem to do this particularly well. …
Glasgow BABCP conference: Pre-conference workshop - Michelle Craske on 'Exposure therapy in the 21st century' (2nd post)
29th July 2018
I recently wrote a first blog post introducing the excellent workshop that Michelle Craske ran before this year's BABCP annual conference. It's easy to see Michelle's work as only relevant for improving outcomes in exposure therapy of anxiety disorders. However I think these ideas are important much more widely than …
Glasgow BABCP conference: 3rd day - Jaime Delgadillo on feedback and Steve Hollon on caution over antidepressants
21st July 2018
I have already written blog posts about the great half day pre-conference workshop I went to - "Glasgow BABCP conference: Pre-conference workshop - the excellent Michelle Craske on 'Exposure therapy in the 21st century'" - and the first full day of the conference - "Glasgow BABCP conference: 1st day - …
Glasgow BABCP conference: 1st day - lecture rant, Anke Ehlers on PTSD, a workshop on the 'strong & curious therapist', and more.
19th July 2018
Yesterday was the first full day of the two & a half day (plus one day of pre-conference workshops) BABCP summer conference in Glasgow. It feels like I've been going to these annual BABCP get-togethers for a thousand years. In so many ways, I think they're great ... although, for …
Glasgow BABCP conference: Pre-conference workshop - Michelle Craske on 'Exposure therapy in the 21st century' (1st post)
17th July 2018
This pre-conference workshop with Michelle Craske on "Exposure in the 21st century" was great. A few years ago - in the blog post "Maximising exposure therapy" - I wrote "Michelle Craske & colleagues from the Anxiety Disorders Research Center of UCLA have, for many years, been publishing careful, challenging research …
A better way to assess & monitor progress with OCD
21st June 2018
When assessing and monitoring progress with OCD sufferers, originally I used the Y-BOCS questionnaire. Then some years ago I switched to using the OCI (distress scale). This is fine ... it's the officially recommended OCD questionnaire by IAPT, the English Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies initiative (see pages 39-41 of …
Erectile dysfunction (and other sexual difficulties) are common, distressing and treatable
17th June 2018
A couple of recent research papers caught my attention - Kashdan & colleagues' "Sexuality leads to boosts in mood and meaning in life with no evidence for the reverse direction: A daily diary investigation" and Gerbild et al's "Physical activity to Improve erectile function: A systematic review of intervention studies". …
Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA): a well-tolerated dietary supplement with helpful anti-inflammatory & anti-depressive properties
16th June 2018
I was intrigued to see the recent paper by Ghazizadeh-Hashemi et al - "Palmitoylethanolamide as adjunctive therapy in major depressive disorder: A double-blind, randomized and placebo-controlled trial" - with its abstract reading: "Experimental studies provide evidence for antidepressant effects of Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) in animal models of depression. We aimed to …
Further background for the colouring in exercise: gratitude, expressive writing, emotion processing & taking it forward
14th June 2018
This "Further background ... " post adds to the "Initial background for the colouring in exercise: assessment, maps, emotional intelligence & emotion discrimination" in supporting the "The 'emotion colouring in exercise': how to do it". gratitude writing: The second 3-minute section of ... expressive writing: Returning to the ... emotion …