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Heading home.  Up quite early this morning.  Eventually left the hostel about 9.00am.  I drove up to Inverness before looping round to head down the A9.  I've just stopped in Aviemore at the Mountain Cafe  for old time's sake.  I came here a year ago on the way back from a trip camping and walking in the Fainnichs.  I was here again last October with my son-in-law and a friend after we'd walked north through the Lairig Ghru  - the marvellous pass through the Cairngorms.  This is a great cafe.  Eating their "Fresh fruit glass with runny honey and natural yogurt" more to justify my place at a table than anything else.

This is the third Moroccan blog post.  It introduces some ideas about mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), self-criticism and problem solving.

So yesterday we drove East and South from Marrakech across the Atlas - the road, our driver said, winding up to over 6,500 feet (about 2,000 meters) before heading back down to the plain that eventually after many kilometers will become the Sahara.

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:

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 many a slip between cup and lip".  A major review of 422 relevant research studies found that goal intentions accounted for only an average 28% of the variance in achievement of successful outcome (Sheeran, 2002).  Subsequent research suggests that even this figure of 28% is an overestimate (Webb and Sheeran, 2006).  The conclusion is clear - forming a strong goal intention to achieve some desired outcome in no way guarantees success. 

Yesterday NICE - the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in England & Wales - published guidance on a diverse range of fifteen clinical, technology, interventional and public health subjects.  Their clinical guidance on Medicines Adherence  interested me, as too did their public health guidance on Promoting Physical Activity for Children and Young People.  The subject of this post is the clinical guidance on Antisocial Personality Disorder and in my next post, I'll talk about their guidance on Borderline Personality Disorder.  As Dr Tim Kendall, Joint Director, National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, states: "Approximately 2 million people in the UK have personality disorders, with antisocial and borderline disorders being the most common.

Here are half a dozen papers relevant to psychotherapy.   The first two throw some light on the question of whether it matters which form of established psychotherapy one uses to treat a particular depression sufferer - bearing in mind Cuijpers et al's recent meta-analysis suggesting that " ...

Here are five studies on the loose theme of how the mind affects the body, and the body affects the mind ... and that the distinction between mind and body is pretty arbitrary anyway.  Using meta-analysis, Chida & colleagues highlight considerable evidence suggesting that stress-related psychosocial factors have an adverse effect on cancer incidence and survival.  Andersen & colleagues report a randomized controlled trial to respond to this in women diagnosed with breast cancer.  Women in the stress management arm of the study received an initial one-year, 26 session intervention in groups of 8 to 12 people.  The aim was to reduce distress and improve quality of life, improve health behaviors (diet, exercise, smoking cessation), and facilitate cancer treatment compliance and medical follow-up.