The allure of the new

Charlie Tyack

Going deep. But are we getting

to the roots of distress?

Photo: DARPA

As human beings, we are attuned to notice the special or different. We also tend to like simple answers to complex questions. Perhaps they make us feel more in control of the complicated environments we find ourselves in. I wondered about this during a recent trawl for ‘depression cures’ on news websites. Suggestions included 9-stone weight loss, magic mushrooms (complete with obligatory 3D brain picture to enhance credibility), laughing gas and ketamine. It seems that we are on the lookout for simple-sounding and miraculous cures for our ailments. After all, the prospect that things can be fixed ever faster and with less effort sounds great. With a bias towards the novel and apparently miraculous, I wonder how we can appraise new, glamorous or cutting edge treatments? Can we judge such shiny new arrivals fairly?

20 years on: Finally our myopic brain obsession is on the wane

Professor John Read, back in the UK after a long period away, is struck by some important changes in the way we view mental health problems

Has how we talk about mental health changed?
Illustration: Mend the Mind

It’s good to be back in the UK after twenty years in New Zealand – well, apart from the weather, the political, economic and spiritual state of England, and the endless phone calls to India to get someone from up the road to install a phone. Amid it all I’m writing my first ever blog! What an antiquated old prof.

As regards mental health research, the difference I notice most is how far people’s thinking has moved on from the old, simplistic, ‘blame-the-brain-for- everything-and-medicate’ idea. 

Seduced by biology: The BBC, black dog and biological bias

Sue Holttum suggests that biological explanations for distress may easily be over-emphasised

Do brains turn our heads?
Photo: Helmut Januschka

A couple of mornings ago (Tuesday 18th Feb) there was an item on Radio 4’s Today programme about depression. Specifically, it related to the discovery that teenage boys with mild (non-clinical) depression, and higher-than-usual levels of the stress hormone cortisol, were 14 times more likely to develop clinical depression than other boys of similar age. Presenter, Evan Davis, interviewed respected neuroscientist, Prof Barbara Sahakian, from Cambridge University. Instead of asking the obvious question about why these youngsters are suffering enough stress to raise cortisol levels and be mildly depressed, Mr Davis asked about possibly correcting cortisol levels and whether cortisol was the cause of the depression.

Is Life a Disease?

Anne Cooke and John McGowan

The DSM makes a handy lectern
Photo: Maciej Janowicz

As regular readers of this blog know, we are very interested in the pros and cons of psychiatric diagnosis. We try to discuss this issue in an accessible way and reach as broad an audience as possible. It was a great pleasure, therefore, to be invited by Lewes Skeptics (a Sussex branch of the Skeptics in the Pub network) to give a talk about mental illness, diagnosis, and some of the controversies raised by the new version of the psychiatric classification manual DSM-5. We've since been asked to make the talk available more widely, so we've posted it below. It's a video of the slides, accompanied by a soundtrack recorded on the night.

It was interesting to see that the event sold out in a few days. Since we’re hardly big names, we hope this says something about the level of public interest in mental health. The same happened the last time that the Skeptics put on a mental health-related talk (by psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff), so something clearly strikes a chord. On the night of our talk the room was jammed, the temperature was hot and the controversy even hotter! Actually that last bit isn’t true. The debate was conducted in the most civil and decorous manner - not always easy when passions on this topic can run high.

We’d like to thank Lewes Skeptics (and in particular Eugene Gill) for hosting the event, and for their commitment to promoting public engagement with important topics. If you want to know more follow them @LewesSkeptics on Twitter. We are also grateful to John Warburton man of many parts, two of which were his very strong forearms. The fortitude with which he acted as a human boom for the recording equipment was admirable. Thanks also to the audience. The pub patrons of Lewes are clearly a thoughtful lot.

You can view the video either in the embedded version below or via the direct link on YouTube. 

There is also a recording of the discussion following the talk. The quality is slightly more variable as questioners were sitting in different parts of the room. The Q&A audio is embedded below or you can listen to it directly on Sound Cloud.