You Can't Feel It But I Wish You Could

I’ll just start with a heads-up for people who haven’t read my earliest posts, and explain that I’ve set myself the challenge of naming all my posts after song titles or lyrics.  This may seem a little strange, but I love my music so it’ll be interesting to see if I can think of a lyric to match any topic!   Some of them so far have been a bit far-fetched, but I think this one’s quite apt.  ’m going to talk all about those moments when you wish someone else could feel exactly what you’re feeling, just for a moment.  Oh, I almost forgot… My title is from a song called Growing Up High by Seven Summers, a band Matt Cardle used to be in.  A great band; give them a listen!

So, we’ve all had them – I think! – moments when, say, you’ve had an argument with someone, and you just know that they’d come to their senses if they were you, just for a moment, and thought or felt exactly as you did, just for a moment.  Another lyric that I think depicts this nicely is, coincidentally, also from a Seven Summers song: “Sometimes I wish that you were me, so you could see, just what you’re doing wrong” (from the song Without You).  I’ve definitely felt like this after arguments with family members, thinking surely they would stop saying certain things if they knew exactly how it made me feel!  Or after a break-up, when I thought he would surely give me more of an explanation of what was going on if he knew how I was feeling, even just for a second.  

Anyway, although I’m hoping this is something a lot of people can relate to, the point of this post isn’t to just complain about when other people upset me!  There are positive elements too.  A while ago I was talking to someone about being an emotional person (I can see that this might sound like an odd conversation, but to be fair to us we were in a counselling skills session and it was part of an exercise the tutor had set us!).  We both said that although being emotional can be problematic in bad times, it can also be an amazing thing, because as well as really feeling negative things we also feel really positive things. 

This notion of wishing someone else could feel the positive things you do is what the song my title comes from pertains to - “Got a walk with a wobble and a wiggle in it; you can’t feel it but I wish you could… Got a head like sea, I’m swimming in it; how can everybody look so good?  Look up to the skies; something’s written in it; you can’t see it but I wish you could.  Oh, yeah, I’m loving it; oh, yeah, well I’m fine…” – Admittedly there seem to be hints in the lyrics that this could be drug-induced joy, but it’s a song about wanting to spreads joy nonetheless! (Just to clarify, the type of joy I want to spread is definitely not drug-related!)

If I’m feeling great about life, these are the times when I really do wish I could get other people to feel exactly what I’m feeling.  When I see a beautiful view and realise how amazing the world is, I want other people to feel exactly what I am because it’s such a great feeling; I want family and friends to feel exactly how I feel about them so they know how important they are to me. 

She's trying to tell him how important he is to her!

An example of this is a few months back when a friend was having a hard time and I really wanted to help but couldn’t.  I so desperately wanted this person to at least know exactly how much I wanted to help, because I thought that surely this in itself would help them feel a little better!  I myself was in a really good place, really enjoying life and the world.  It was around this time that I wrote my post My Heart Is Open And The Sky’s On Fire (if you haven’t read it yet, please do!).  This post was all about my positive feelings about life and the world; exactly the kind of feeling I so wish I could make other people feel sometimes.  I’m hoping that by sharing my take on things through my blog I may be able to go some way to inspire a certain level of this positivity in some people (the more people that read it, the better chance I’ll have of doing this, so please do share if you think any of my posts are worth a read!).

I also wish that more people felt the same way as me on what I think are massively important issues in society, such as mental health and body image.  I’ve already mentioned some of these things in my previous posts and will go on to talk about more in the future.  I hope that by doing this I can get my views out there, connect to people who feel the same way and inspire others to get thinking in a similar way to me on certain issues.  In the meantime, I hope people will continue to read posts like My Heart Is Open… and You Could Be Happy and find some inspiration in those.

 

Many thanks as always for reading; please share to help me get my views heard by lots of people, and come back soon!

The Trick To Life...

...“is not to get too attached to it…”, so the song goes.  (For those who don’t know, it’s the title track from The Hoosiers’ first album).  But that’s not exactly what this post is about (I like to think my style is a little less morbid than that!).  Sadly, I don’t think there is really a ‘trick to life’; I’m pretty sure if there was one, we'd all be using it by now!  Please let me know if you have any bright ideas though…!

So, why have I called this post The Trick To Life?  Well, I think one way to do pretty well in life is to be a well-rounded person.  This may sound a bit clichéd and obvious, but bear with me!  I think one of the tricks society needs to learn to better use to help people do this is good, well-rounded education.  If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll already know about my views on how mental health should be incorporated into education.  If you haven’t, then I refer you to my post titled Staring at the Sun.  Although mental health is extremely important, it’s not the only thing that I feel strongly about in terms of education.

What made me decide to write about this today was something I read in my local Youth Parliament manifesto.  One of their notions is that “all young people ages 11-18 should be taught basic politics at school”.  I completely agree:  I for one was barely taught a single thing about politics at school, and the outcome is not good.  It’s embarrassing when it comes to election time or some such event and one simply doesn’t know anything about politics!  And how can a young person be expected to make a reasoned judgement when voting  if they don’t know what the key differences are between the parties?  It seems kind of irresponsible to give people the right to vote without giving them the tools they need to vote wisely (tihs seems an appropriate time to mention a dear friend of mine who votes Labour because their colour is red and he adores Arsenal FC!  He was half joking, I hope!).

It’s not just politics that I believe is severely neglected by the education system.  In my discussions about mental health I’ve already expressed my passion for psychological wellbeing, and another hugely important element of that is body image.  I could go on about this all day and will no doubt be writing about it in more detail in later posts.  But in short I think schools have the potential to do massive amounts to help diminish what experts in the field have called a ‘culture of body dissatisfaction’.  Fortunately awareness of this problem is on the up and there are things being done, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

 

 This weaves back in nicely with my post about mental health awareness.  One of the key things I think could be done to improve emotional wellbeing in general is encouragement of exercise (and not just traditional team sports like netball, football and hockey, but more varied activities to really get lots of young people involved). Not only could this help to prevent illnesses such as depression, but it could also help to alleviate negative body image.  Exercising can help you to feel healthy and maintain a healthy body weight without the need for strict dieting.  I have a lot more to say about this, but I think I’ll save it for another day, so please look out for further posts if this interests you!

All in all, I feel that schools should be doing more to encourage wellbeing and life skills as well as academic success.  I understand that there is already a struggle to fit everything into the National Curriculum, and I agree that the academic side is very important, but I can’t help but think that the value of being academically brilliant is hugely decreased if the person has difficulties in other aspect of their life.  I’d like to hear about other people’s thoughts on this, and will leave you with the question of what sorts of things you believe are really important in education.  Debate, discussion and views contrary to my own are welcome!  As always, thanks for reading :)

Give Me Novocaine

Firstly, apologies for this being a couple of days late.  So far I’ve managed to be posting consistently every other Thursday but just didn’t have enough time to write this on Thursday!  Anyway, as always I hope you find this to be a good read…

This post is actually a response to a comment someone made about my previous post, which discussed raising awareness of, and the possible prevention of, mental health problems.  In relation to when people develop mental health problems, this person asked me “It seems that cocktails of pills seem to be the answer to a lot of mental problems, what are your views on that?”  So, I decided to put together a little post about my views on that, and in the process of doing this explain a little bit about the current guidelines for treating mental health problems.  The title Give Me Novocaine comes from a Green Day song with the same title; obviously novocaine isn’t a drug that is used to treat mental health problems, but the song seems to allude to the notion of just taking pills to make everything better, whereas this isn’t always going to work.  Also, I love Green Day and it’s a great song so why not use it?! 

In answer to the question - what do I think about the use of drugs to treat mental illnesses? - my simple answer is that drugs can be necessary but should not be the first port of call in all cases of mental health problems.  Some illnesses (e.g.: psychotic ones) are more likely to warrant the use of medication.  What I find concerning is GPs’ propensity to administer anti-depressant medication willy-nilly.  (As you may have already noticed in previous posts, I will tend to use the example of depression, firstly because it is the main thing I have a knowledge base in and secondly because it’s such a common illness that needs addressing.)  

My view on this comes from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (or, aptly abbreviated, NICE) guidelines.  These are formed on the basis of evidence, which basically means that NICE only recommends therapies that evidence suggests are effective.  In terms of common mental health disorders, NICE recommends that a stepped care model should be used (NICE, 2012).  This essentially means that the ‘least intrusive, most effective’ intervention should be provided first.  In other words, if, for instance, a person has mild depression, they will be treated accordingly for this; similarly, a person experiencing severe depression will be treated accordingly for the severity of the problem (see the stepped care image below, from IAPT Programme, 2012).  

  

IAPT stands for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies and is another key element of the NICE guidelines on treating mental health disorders.  By using the stepped care model, we are using resources more efficiently, which means more people can be treated.  In turn, this means that people don’t have to wait so long to be treated.  Let’s take the example of depression: for mild depression, cCBT (computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and guided self-help are recommended.  This means the patient uses resources at home and has periodical guidance from a professional such as a PWP (Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner).  These are known as low-intensity therapies and are less intrusive for the individual and free up more of the professionals’ time, meaning more people can be treated at once.  For moderate to servere depression, on the other hand, high-intensity therapy is recommended.  This could be in the form of face-to-face CBT.  

 

The important thing to remember here is that these guidelines are all based on the evidence relating to treatment for mental health disorders, which I why I tend to agree with them.  For example, CBT, IPT (Interpersonal Psychotherapy) and BA (Behavioural Activation), all therapies recommended by NICE for depression, have been found to be as effective in treating depression as antidepressant medication (e.g.: Hougaard & Jørgensen, 2007).  These treatments have also been shown to be more effective than medication in prevention depression relapse (Dobson et al., 2008).  Hence, my view that a cocktail of pills is not the answer to mental health problems!

Don’t get me wrong though; I don’t condemn the use of medication altogether.  In depression for example, the severity could be so high that the patient simply won’t be able to engage in CBT or BA.  In these cases, antidepressant medication can be really useful in making the patient feel more able to engage in these.  The guidelines also recommend medication for patients who have not responded to other therapies.   

Another important consideration though is the fact that antidepressant drugs have a slightly delayed effect on cognition (thoughts) compared to behaviour.  As a result, a person who is feeling suicidal may find themselves feeling more able to act on their thoughts before these types of thoughts start to subside or change.  Hence, very careful consideration should be given before prescribing medication to treat depression. 

So, to summarise, my most basic answer to the question “should drugs be used to treat mental health disorders?” is yes, where the evidence base suggests this is effective.  In terms of depression, I think drugs should only be used where this is necessary due to the severity of the illness or non-responsiveness to other, less intrusive therapies.  I think one of the problems is that anyone who is medically qualified (e.g.: GPs) can prescribe anti-depressant medication, even if they do not have specialised knowledge in this area.  Therefore, GPs seem too often to prescribe drugs when a patient presents with mild depression, when they should be referring them into the IAPT service.  This need to change!

As always, thank you for reading and I would be interested to hear about other people’s views on this so please do leave a comment.  Also feel free to suggest a topic for my next post and I’ll see what I can do!  See you in two weeks…

References:

Dobson, K. S., Hollon, S. D., Dimidjian, S., Schmaling, K. B., Kohlenberg, R. J., Gallop, R. J. … Jacobson, N. S.  (2008). Randomized trial of behavioral activation, cognitive therapy, and antidepressant medication in the prevention of relapse and recurrence in major depression. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76, 468-477.

Hougaard E. and Jørgensen, M. B. (2007). [Psychological treatment of depression.]. Ugeskr Laeger, 169, 1444-7.

IAPT Programme (2012). Services. Retrieved from  http://www.iapt.nhs.uk/services/services/

NICE (2012). http://publications.nice.org.uk/common-mental-health-disorders-cg123/key-priorities-for-implementation. Common mental health disorders: Identification and pathways to care. Retrieved from http://publications.nice.org.uk/common-mental-health-disorders-cg123/key-priorities-for-implementationhttp://publications.nice.org.uk/common-mental-health-disorders-cg123/key-priorities-for-implementation