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.