Toxic positivity

Whether you're seeing a psychiatrist, a psychologist or another kind of therapist, the tradition has been that the information all goes one way. Professional boundaries tend to be closely guarded, but social media is changing all that. A quick search online might tell you all sorts about a therapist. Should you engage in this kind of cyber snooping and how about the other way round? Claudia Hammond speaks with Louise Chunn, the founder of welldoing.org, an online directory of independent counsellors and psychotherapists and Susanna Hailstone-Walker, a psychotherapist.How can you overcome performance anxiety? For musicians and music students performing in front of audiences and audition panels, the experience can be terrifying. But this is where a digital simulation of the event could help. We visit the Royal College of Music where researchers have designed a concert hall which even includes a nerve-racking waiting area, and grim-faced judges reacting on a screen, to give students a chance to experience what it's like and to try putting the coping skills they've learnt into practice. The next in our insiders' guide to getting the best out of your mental health services asks what can you do if you're worried about the mental health of someone you know, but they don't want to go for help.We tend to think of the descent into corruption as a slippery slope where people do one small thing wrong and then gradually it gets more serious. But psychologists in the Netherlands have discovered that people are more likely to engage in corruption when there's a big reward and a sudden opportunity, than to do it bit by bit. Nils Kobis from the University of Amsterdam explains.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

9 Touko 201727min

900,000 people in the UK suffer from heart failure - where the heart can no longer pump sufficient blood around the body. Symptoms can include a combination of breathlessness, fluid retention and tiredness - enough to have a severe impact on a person's quality of life. Getting a diagnosis of heart failure can be frightening, but there is good evidence that psychological input can make a difference. Claudia Hammond hears from patients and Dr John Sharp, Consultant Clinical Psychologist with the Scottish National Advanced Heart Failure Service, on recognising and dealing with the unique mental health challenges of this increasingly prevalent condition.The second of the All in the Mind Insiders' Guide to Mental Health Services asks what can you do if you think you're not getting the best from your GP, and, if you think you're waiting too long for treatment, should you seek a private referral? Our 'insiders' this week are service user, mental health campaigner and retired chief of an NHS Trust, Lisa Rodrigues, GP and All in the Mind Awards finalist Daniel Dietch, and Head of Information at Mind Stephen Buckley And Claudia Hammond talks to psychologist Ariana Orvell from the University of Michigan on why we use the word "you", instead of "I", more frequently than we realise. It's emerging as a useful tool to distance ourselves psychologically - and extract meaning - from negative experiences.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

2 Touko 201728min

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is often thought of as a condition of childhood, but up to 3% of the adult population also experience it. Impressionist and comedian Rory Bremner is one of those. He discusses his experiences with Jonna Kuntsi and Jessica Agnew-Blais from Kings College London who study how childhood and adult versions of the condition differ, whether we can predict which children continue to experience symptoms in adulthood, and a new proposal that the majority of adult ADHD might not have begun in childhood at all.The first two parts of the All in the Mind Insiders' Guide to Mental Health Services ask how do you know when you have a mental health problem, and what should you say to your GP in order to get help. Our 'insiders' are service user, mental health campaigner and retired chief of an NHS Trust Lisa Rodrigues, GP and All in the Mind Awards finalist Daniel Dietch, Head of Information at Mind Stephen Buckley, and psychiatrist Sri Kalidindi.And Claudia Hammond talks to Kavita Vedhara about a new study that shows once more that simply writing about how you feel can speed up wound healing. Although this effect has been known since James Pennebaker's landmark studies in the 1980's, this is the first study to demonstrate that expressive writing after an injury can aid healing as much as doing it in advance of a wound. An important finding since we don't always plan our wounds in advance.Producer: Lorna Stewart.

25 Huhti 201728min

The Boomerang Generation Many parents are finding that with the cost of housing so high in some areas, coupled with job insecurity and more years spent studying - the kids are back home, except that they're not kids anymore. But however much parents might moan,from the perspective of mental health for the parents at least, there is an upside. This comes from an analysis of 50,000 people across 27 countries by Emilie Courtin from the London School of Economic. All in the Mind Awards When we had the All in the Mind Awards for the first time two years ago, there were some people we met who were faced with a future that was uncertain, to say the least. One of those was Tony, who had nominated his Clinical Psychologist Alan Barrett from the Military Veterans Service for helping him to turn his life around. He had post traumatic stress disorder after his time serving in the army in Northern Ireland.Two years later he's giving back and working with veterans. The Lipstick Effect When there's a recession fewer people buy luxury goods but the sales of lipstick goes up. It might not be an essential, but it's cheap enough for people buy themselves a treat. This is known as the lipstick effect and the reasons for it have been debated for years. One idea is that during tough times women are keen to make themselves look better to attract a mate with money. Now psychologists have conducted a new series of experiments published in the journal Psychological Science and believe they've come up with a rather more modern explanation. Ekaterina Netchaeva from Bocconi University in Italy explains.

13 Joulu 201627min

ADHD - or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder - tends to be characterised by difficulties in concentrating, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. Claudia Hammond talks to Philip Asherson, Professor of Clinical and Molecular Psychiatry at Kings College London and a consultant at the Maudsley Hospital in London, who has recently published research that shows that excessive mind-wandering might be at its core. She also hears from two teenage girls with ADHD about their experience of mindwandering during school lessons.it's not at all unusual for people with depression to have difficulty sleeping. Now a trial has focussed on treating the insomnia in the hope that it improves the depression, rather than vice versa. Professor of Mental Health, Helen Christensen, and Dr Aliza Werner-Saidler, a Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at the Black Dog Institute at the University of New South Wales in Australia, showed Claudia Hammond how an online programme called SHUTi - developed by the University of Virginia and commercially available - helped people with insomnia and depression.Two years ago on All in the Mind we debated the merits of a new scheme to get more high-flying graduates into the mental health field. Called Think Ahead it follows in the footsteps of similar schemes like Teach First. This time top graduates train, mostly on the job, to become mental health social workers. Claudia finds out how two of the first graduates are getting on in the their first placements.

6 Joulu 201628min

Claudia Hammond's guest is Mathijs Lucassen - lecturer in mental health at the Open University.Pathological demand avoidance is a developmental condition where children resist the demands of everyday life, and they can have extreme reactions if they feel they are being made to do anything. Although they might seem sociable, these children can end up ruling their families and even refuse to go to school for months at a time. The professionals who use this diagnosis consider it to be part of the autism spectrum. But is it a discrete condition? Claudia Hammond hears from Liz O'Nions at the University of Louven about its history and new research into teasing out PDA's traits.Is there such a thing as a wise person or does wisdom all depend on the situation? It appears as though some people have more of it than others. But new research suggests it might not be quite like that. Psychologist Igor Grossman of the University of Waterloo assessed the wisdom of individuals in their real lives, rather than in a lab and found some intriguing results.If you've ever arrived at a comedy gig to the terror of realising that the only seats left at the middle of the front row, where you might well get picked on, then you might like Sofie Hagen's approach to gigs. She is creating anxiety safe spaces. People can contact her in advance to let her know what they need at the gig to stop them from feeling anxious. Claudia Hammond headed to one of her gigs to see how it works.

29 Marras 201627min

Claudia Hammond's studio guest is Catherine Loveday Principal Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Westminster.Adolescence is a time when life-long mental health difficulties sometimes emerge for the first time. By combining genetic data with the information from brain scans of many hundreds of people, a team at Cambridge might have worked out why this can happen. Claudia Hammond hears from neuroimaging researcher Dr Kirstie Whittaker and bioinformatics researcher Dr Petra Vertes who work together as part of the Neuroscience in Psychiatry Network (NSPN) consortium. We've the first in an occasional update from the finalists of the All in the Mind Awards. We hear of progress from Alex : she nominated the organisation One in Four which offers subsidised long-term counselling and supports people in what can be a very long process if they want their abuser to be tried in court. Some people can't recognise the voices they know. And they might not even realise they have the condition - until they take a test . Phonagnosia is thought to affect as much as 3% of the population. Professor of Neuroscience Irving Biederman has just published the largest analysis to date in the journal Brain and Language. He played people a whole series of celebrity voices to test their skills at identification. He discusses the causes and strategies to minimise this unusual audio anomaly.

22 Marras 201627min

Claudia Hammond is in Sydney, Australia, with a live studio audience at the BBC's World Changing Ideas Summit finding out what is so special about the human mind. Are we the only creatures who can mentally time travel - deciding at will to look back nostalgically at a past event or to look forward, imagining something we've never done before? But the brilliance of the human mind brings its own problems too, a dread of the future or rumination about the past so strong, that a person develops depression. Claudia Hammond's guests are Thomas Suddendorf Professor of child cognition at the University of Queensland and Professor Helen Christensen Chief Scientist at Black Dog Institute, and they discuss whether new technology might hold some solutions for us.

15 Marras 201627min