Positive thinking

  Angel Urbina-Garcia, University of Hull Diagnoses of mental disorders and drug prescriptions among school-age children have skyrocketed over the last two decades. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that 20% of children experience mental disorders – such as depression, anxiety, ADHD and autism – at any given time. This is a significant problem in the UK, where one in eight children between the ages of five and 19 has been diagnosed with an emotional or behavioural disorder . Even children as young as five are getting ill: according to the latest reports, 6% of five year olds suffer from a mental disorder. The challenges are greater still for children from low income families, who are four times more likely to develop mental health problems than their better off peers. While home life, friends, social media and body image all have an impact on the mental health of children, a recent report from The Children’s Society found that more young people feel un...

Mary Thornton, University of Hertfordshire Teachers have a lot to put up with at the moment in terms of workload and stress. But what may come as a surprise to some is that, just like in the playground, bullying can be a big problem in the teaching world. Research shows that when a teacher is being bullied, the bully is often (but not always) the headteacher – who is increasingly stressed and can sometimes take out their worries about Ofsted inspections on their staff. And with this in mind, Dr Pat Bricheno and I recently studied the experiences of 39 bullied teachers in the UK. All became ill as a result of being bullied – mostly with anxiety, stress and depression. The symptoms they described included palpitations, shaking uncontrollably, crying a lot, drinking too much, raised blood pressure, and taking multiple medications. We also heard about teachers who were getting so upset they were crying in their cupboards, while still on the job. This was due to an atmospher...

Rob Creasy, York St John University and Fiona Corby, Teesside University Children growing up in the UK are said to be some of the unhappiest in the industrialised world . The UK now has the highest rates of self harm in Europe . And the NSPCC’s ChildLine Annual Review lists it as one of the top reasons why children contact the charity. Children’s mental health has becomes one of British society’s most pressing issues. A recent report from the Prince’s Trust highlights how increasing numbers of children and young people are unhappy with their lives, sometimes with tragic consequences. This is a generation of young people that has been labelled as “ snowflakes ” – unable to handle stress and more prone to taking offence. They are also said to have less psychological resilience than previous generations. And are thought to be too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own. Social media likely plays a part in all this. Studies show nearly thr...

Olivia Remes, University of Cambridge   The term “smiling depression” – appearing happy to others while internally suffering depressive symptoms – has become increasingly popular. Articles on the topic have crept up in the popular literature, and the number of Google searches for the condition has increased dramatically this year . Some may question, however, whether this is actually a real, pathological condition. While smiling depression is not a technical term that psychologists use, it is certainly possible to be depressed and manage to successfully mask the symptoms. The closest technical term for this condition is “ atypical depression ”. In fact, a significant proportion of people who experience a low mood and a loss of pleasure in activities manage to hide their condition in this way. And these people might be particularly vulnerable to suicide. It can be very hard to spot people suffering from smiling depression. They may seem like they don’t have a reas...

Lowri Dowthwaite, University of Central Lancashire   Who’s happier, men or women? Research shows it’s a complicated question and that asking whether males or females are happier isn’t really that helpful, because essentially, happiness is different for women and men . Women’s happiness has been declining for the past 30 years, according to recent statistics . And research shows that women are twice as likely to experience depression compared with men. Gender differences in depression are well established and studies have found that biological, psychological and social factors contribute to the disparity . But research also shows that women are more likely to experience intense positive emotions – such as joy and happiness – compared to men. So it seems that women’s more intense positive emotions balance out their higher risk of depression . Research also shows women are more likely to try and get help and access treatment – allowing them to also recover sooner . Ear...

Camille Lassale, UCL Being depressed can negatively affect your appetite and what you eat, but can bad eating habits bring your mood down? Our latest study, a systematic review of the best available evidence , found a clear link between the quality of a person’s diet and their risk of depression. And it goes beyond the effect of diet on body size or other aspects of health that can affect mental health. We took extra care in including only studies that took age, sex, income, body size, general health, smoking and physical activity into account in their analyses. That way we could be sure that the associations between diet and the risk of depression are independent of these factors. We aggregated the results of several studies and found a clear pattern that following a healthier, plant-rich, anti-inflammatory diet can help prevent depression. Of the 41 studies in our review, four specifically looked at the link between a traditional Mediterranean diet and depression over t...

Liza Morton, Strathclyde University   One in every 125 babies is born with a heart condition – but thanks to modern medicine more infants are surviving than ever before. In the developed world, 90% will now live into adulthood, compared with just 20% in the 1940s . However, there is no cure for these conditions and the person needs lifelong medical monitoring . Congenital heart disease (CHD) doesn’t just affect the body – it affects the mind, too. A growing body of evidence shows that people with CHD are more likely to suffer from mental health problems, such as anxiety , depression and post-traumatic stress disorder . To date, this psychological impact has been understood as a consequence of the additional stressors that living with a serious lifelong medical condition can bring, such as missed schooling, spending lots of time in hospital (from childhood), and having to undergo frequent surgery. I know from personal experience how challenging this journey can...

Marianne Etherson, York St John University and Martin Smith, York St John University   The pressures of young adulthood coupled with the demands of university leave undergraduates at risk for depressive symptoms. In fact, nearly 30% of undergraduates suffer from depressive symptoms, which is threefold higher than the general population. As such, researchers are increasingly interested in identifying factors that contribute to depressive symptoms to help curb the ever-increasing depression epidemic. Our new study , published in Personality and Individual Differences, focused on one such factor, perfectionism, and its depressing consequences. Perfectionism refers to a tendency to doggedly strive for perfection and hold quixotically high standards. However perfectionism isn’t just about setting lofty goals and trying one’s best. On the contrary, perfectionism involves a tendency to feel that other people, such as parents and teachers, demand perfection. Perfectionists a...

Scott Lear, Simon Fraser University In Canada, approximately one in five adults will experience a mental illness in their lifetime, with similar numbers reported in the United States . Preventing mental illness is just as important as preventing other chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. As with these chronic conditions, regular physical activity plays a key role. A recent meta-analysis (a large study combining other studies together) with a total of 266,939 participants reported that being active for 150 minutes or more per week was associated with a 20 per cent reduction in risk for depression . Mental health week in Canada — which runs from May 7-13, 2018 — offers us an opportunity to consider what science says about the impacts of exercise on mind and body. Reduce your stress and anxiety Exercise offers immediate as well as long-term benefits. Research shows that after just one session people have a greater chance of experiencing p...

Jean Twenge, San Diego State University Something is stealing teens’ sleep. In a newly released analysis of two large national surveys , my co-authors and I found that the number of U.S. teens who reported sleeping less than seven hours a night jumped 22 percent between 2012 and 2015. Sleep experts agree that teens need at least nine hours of sleep a night . But by 2015, 43 percent of teens reported sleeping less than seven hours a night on most nights – meaning almost half of U.S. teens are significantly sleep-deprived. What could have raised sleep deprivation among teens to such unprecedented levels? Some factors are easy to rule out. For example, we found that the amount of time teens spent working, doing homework and participating in extracurricular activities held steady during those years. But there was one large change in teens’ lives between 2012 and 2015: More owned smartphones. It starts as an alarm clock… Today’s teens – whom I call “iGen” – a...