November 2009

Image credit: Getty Images

Image credit: Getty Images

From April, couples’ counselling programmes will be launched across England in an extension of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme of “talking therapies”, which has targets to tackle “sick-note Britain”.
Troubled relationships are thought to be among the key factors affecting rates of mental health and anxiety. Research consistently suggests that men in particular who are in successful relationships are more protected from depression and anxiety than those who are single, divorced or separated. Source: Guardian

Music triggers memories in dementia patients



One of the raps on iPods is that users tend to close themselves off from other people and retreat into their own private world.But with stroke and dementia patients, iPods and other MP3 players are having just the opposite effect.
Listening to rap and reggae on a borrowed iPod every day has helped Everett Dixon, a 28-year-old stroke victim at Beth Abraham Health Services in Bronx, N.Y., learn to walk and use his hands again.
revor Gibbons, 52, who fell out of a fourth-floor construction site and suffered a crushed larynx, has become so entranced with music that he’s written 400 songs and cut four CDs…. link to read full article

Source: Wall Street Journal

Research by the University of Warwick and the University of Manchester finds that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. The research has obvious implications for large compensation awards in law courts but also has wider implications for general public health. Chris Boyce of the University of Warwick and Alex Wood of the University of Manchester compared large data sets where 1000s of people had reported on their well-being. They then looked at how well-being changed due to therapy compared to getting sudden increases in income, such as through lottery wins or pay rises. They found that a 4 month course of psychological therapy had a large effect on well-being. They then showed that the increase in well-being from an £800 course of therapy was so large that it would take a pay rise of over £25,000 to achieve an equivalent increase in well-being. The research therefore demonstrates that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. [continue reading…]