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.

How we understand recovery

Sue Holttum

Over the last 10 years NHS mental health services have become more and more focused on the concept of “recovery”. For whatever reasons (changing views of psychiatry, service user voices, or simply a change in the climate of healthcare) we seem less in the business of cure and more about empowerment.  But what is all this about and how does it apply to you if you have a mental health problem? And is it really happening or is the core business of mental health services still  drugs and hospital? In the following short feature (5 minutes or so of audio with slides) I consider two recent papers which may help in understanding these questions: one by Mary Leamy and her colleagues from 2011 and the other by Rachel Perkins and Mike Slade from 2012. The first paper looks at the concept of recovery as personal journey and how service users define it. The second considers how mental health services are trying to support recovery and what the challenges are. Both these papers offer a valuable contribution to the understanding of recovery and how we go about implementing it practice.

(Note: File is .wmv. There is also a transcript of the audio below).

TRANSCRIPT

Mary Leamy and her colleagues begin their paper,