Holiday, friendship and “meditation retreat” (first post)
19th March 2009
This is the first of 11 blog posts about going to Morocco to walk "mindfully" in the Sahara desert. This post gives a bit of background to the trip. 6.00am - the old clock has just sounded in my cousin's house in London. We arrived yesterday evening, flew down from …
Implementation intentions & reaching our goals more successfully (second post)
15th March 2009
I wrote a post yesterday introducing some of the ideas and research on implementation intentions. Today I extend this in more practical how-to-do-it directions: when to use implementation intentions? Implementation intentions help us reach our goals more successfully. The companion handout "Implementation intentions background ... " gives introductory information about …
Implementation intentions & reaching our goals more successfully (first post)
14th March 2009
what are implementation intentions? "Goal intentions" involve aiming for some desired future outcome. They are of the form "I intend to attain goal X". Unfortunately we know only too well that making such intentions does not necessarily mean that we will reach our goals. As the old saying goes "There's …
Recent research: five papers on childhood trauma, parenting & health in adulthood
12th March 2009
Here are five papers on childhood, the effects childhood experience can have on adulthood, and the effects adults may then have on their own children. The first paper by Brody et al. is the encouraging one. It demonstrates how caring parenting can combat genetic vulnerability - "involved-supportive" mothering greatly reduced …
“Antidepressants are not all created equal”
8th March 2009
Cipriani and colleagues published a major multiple-treatments meta-analysis of new generation antidepressants last week - see abstract below. As Parikh wrote in his linked editorial (see below) "Andrea Cipriani and colleagues provide the field with a major answer. Free of any potential funding bias (and including an analysis of studies …
Recent research: five papers on adolescent psychological difficulties
5th March 2009
Here are five papers on difficulties experienced by adolescents. A couple of the papers are follow-up studies. Colman et al looked at the multiple negative personal & relationship outcomes in a UK national cohort of adolescents with conduct problems followed over 40 years. Wentz et al studied the somewhat more …
Handouts & questionnaires for depression information
2nd March 2009
Here are a few handouts that I've put together over the years to provide background information about depression. The development & maintenance diagram is probably the handout here that I use most - both to explain issues about depression and also for many other psychological disorders as well. Development & …
How to cut down on saturated fats
1st March 2009
The excellent UK Food Standards Agency has recently launched a campaign (see the TV ad) to encourage people to cut down their intake of saturated fats. As the FSA points out on their webpage about saturated fats most people in the UK eat about 20% more than the maximum recommended …