‘Friendship is the single most important thing affecting our psychological health and wellbeing, as well as our physical health and wellbeing.’ Spending time with our friends releases endorphins in the brain, and makes us happy. This is Professor Robin Dunbar’s response to...
depression
A research team has won a £2.27m contract from the National Institute for Health Research to investigate if exercise is a beneficial treatment for mild to moderate depression in young people aged 13-17.
The multi-disciplinary research trial will include health,...
The call…
I was cooking dinner one balmy, sweet-scented summer evening when our daughter Jane called me. Phone calls, particularly on the house phone, were not our two daughters’ preferred form of communication. I was accustomed to long...
I left the Kiln Theatre emotionally drained; The Son is immersive, uncompromising, raw and visceral. I am still reflecting on it.
The audience is taken on an emotional tsunami of teenage depression, self-harm and suicidality. It...
In his ageless exploration of depression, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton lists sickness, solitude, jealousy, disappointment in love and religious melancholy as different shades of depression; these form the skeleton of the exhibition carrying the same name...
Researchers at King’s College London are aiming to recruit 40,000 people in England who have been diagnosed with anxiety and/or depression to take part in future research. The Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) study is being led by Dr Gerome Breen, Reader of...
Most people are well aware of the key signs of clinical depression: notably, the experience of profound sadness, a loss of enjoyment and interest, changes in energy levels and appetite, and a sense of guilt or hopelessness about the future. Depression has received more...
William Styron, the famous Pulitzer-prize winning author, was a sufferer of clinical / major / severe depression, the 'black dog', or whatever you want to call it. He described depression as a 'true wimp of a word for such a major illness', a word that has 'slithered...
In John Steinbeck’s acclaimed novel The Grapes of Wrath, one male character, Jim Casy, exclaims to another, Uncle John: ‘A man got to do what he got to do’. Casy uses this statement to condone Uncle John’s forbearance regarding his wife’s death during the trying...
The BBC are to be commended for their two-week strand of mental health programming, In the Mind. Its stated intention is to ‘help raise public...