Imperfect Cognitions

A group of researchers from the University of Ferrara, Bologna, New York, and Stockholm have developed a tool to predict the risk of developing depression in people over 55. Anyone can calculate their risk through a website . Here  Martino Belvederi Murri  (Ferrara) reports on the study that could mark a turning point in terms of early identification and prevention of this condition. The prophetess Manto According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability in the world. About 15% of people suffer from depression at least once in their life: the consequences can range from temporary suffering to the loss of work and social relationships, to suicide. The impact of the pandemic, isolation, the economic crisis and the population aging make depression a widespread economic and social problem, especially in late life. Unfortunately, depression often goes unrecognized or does not receive prompt treatment. This is due to several factors, such as sc...

This post has been written by Dariusz Galasiński, who is  Professor  at the University of Wolverhampton and Visiting Professor  at the Uniwersytet SPWS in Warsaw.  He is a linguist interested in psychiatry and psychology and their discourses. He blogs  here .  In this post, he presents his new  book on discursive constructions of the suicide process. My book is founded on a contradiction. Suicide and masculinity do not and cannot sit together easily. Suicide is stigmatised, and people who killed themselves are often thought to be weak and cowardly. Masculinity is anything but this. Its dominant model constructs men as strong ‘masters of the universe’. My book explores a number of resulting paradoxes. 1. The first paradox has to do with constructions of suicide. Even though suicide is constructed as a rational gift, it is not spoken of directly. The positive gift is outside discourse. For as the notes construct men as 'defenders' of the ...

On 15th October the Institute for Mental Health  (IMH) had its Inaugural Forum at Hornton Grange at the University of Birmingham. The event was live-tweeted by the Mental Elf and the IMH. The whole project PERFECT team attended the Forum and this report comes from their collective notes. In the morning session, Eoin Killackey (Orygen) and Paul Burstow (IMH) started the day with two fascinating talks on youth mental health. Killackey gave a very international talk, analysing a variety of interventions and forms of support available for young people across the world, reflecting on the many lessons those who wish to improve the UK youth mental health system can learn from these programs.  Two particularly interesting focal points were on how to improve the transition from youth to adult services, and how to better separate services on the basis of demographic and developmental evidence about the prevalence and nature of youth mental health difficulties.  ...

This post is by Angharad de Cates  (pictured above), a Senior Registrar in General Adult Psychiatry and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Unit of Mental Health and Wellbeing at the University of Warwick. Broadly, her research interests are neurocognition, self-harm, mood disorder, and mental health promotion and wellbeing. In this post, she summarises her recent article “ Can we use neurocognition to predict repetition of self-harm, and why might this be clinically useful? A Perspective ” co-authored with Matthew Broome, and published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychiatry in January 2016. The first issue in research about self-harm is to define what it actually is, which in part depends on which style of terminology you wish to use. According to patient and user groups, self-harm as a general catch-all term is preferred, where there is no attempt by clinicians or researchers to restrict by method or intent, but instead to focus on the fact that one has harmed ...

This post is by Chris Ryan (pictured above), a psychiatrist and Clinical Associate Professor with the University of Sydney and its Centre for Values Ethics and the Law in Medicine. Though primarily a clinician he maintains an active research agenda focusing on issues at the interface of ethics, law, and psychiatry. In this post he writes about his recent work on risk assessment for suicide. Imagine you are me – a psychiatrist working in a hospital with a large emergency department. This morning, like most mornings, you arrive at work to find that ten people have been seen overnight after presenting in some sort of psychological crisis. Many have attempted suicide. How do you work out who should be admitted to hospital and who should go home? On what basis should you make that call? Here is one tempting answer: admit the people that are at the highest risk of actually killing themselves in the future. If this strikes you as a sensible approach, you’re in good company – indeed ma...

On 10th November 2015 the Royal Society of Medicine hosted a very interesting conference, entitled "Mind, Body and Soul: An update on psychiatric, philosophical and legal aspects of care nearing the end of life". Here is a report of the sessions I attended on the day. In Session 1,  Matthew Hotopf (King's College London) talked about his experience of treating people with depression in palliative care. Anti-depressants are effective with respect to placebos. People with strong suicidal ideas are in a difficult situation as they cannot be easily moved to psychiatric wards due to the special care they need. The important factor is to be able to contain risk of death by suicide and self-harm. Hotopf concluded by saying that it is normal to have extreme emotions near the end of life, and this does not mean that one suffers from a mental disorder. Annabel Price , Consultant Psychiatrist at the Cambridge and Peterborough Foundation Mental Trust, pictured above, foc...

Today's post is by Jonny Ward who tweets as the Anxious Fireman  and has also blogged for the Stigma Fighters.   Hello to all reading this. My name is Jonny Ward. I’m 31, male, straight, white and a firefighter with Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service. I can grout the shower, chop logs, I have an anxiety disorder, I have travelled a lot of the world and I enjoy mountain biking. If you had to ask me about any one of my interests or traits from that list, which would it be? And why? If this had been someone else and it was three years ago, I would have picked the anxiety disorder part. Because back then I was just as naive to mental ill health as most men. I would consider it unusual, a strange thing to say or admit too. But over the last two years my mind-set has changed tremendously. I suffered with anxiety and panic attacks. It happened after a long period of stress. I was doing too much work, too many projects, trying to please too many people. All of which meant...