Building willpower: the seven pillars
Originally added on Sun, 10/07/2011 - 04:50Last updated on Wed, 17/08/2011 - 05:53
Building willpower: it's like strengthening and nourishing a muscle.
Originally added on Sat, 09/07/2011 - 06:36Last updated on Fri, 30/12/2011 - 06:13
Self-control, conscientiousness, grit, emotion regulation, willpower - the importance of training
Originally added on Fri, 08/07/2011 - 04:42Last updated on Sat, 16/07/2011 - 07:16
Family psychoeducation: is this a major step forward in relapse prevention for depression?
Originally added on Sun, 12/06/2011 - 04:40Last updated on Sun, 12/06/2011 - 05:59
There was a pretty startling paper published in last month's British Journal of Psychiatry:
A quiet rant to group facilitators & would-be group facilitators
Originally added on Sun, 03/10/2010 - 08:05Last updated on Thu, 07/10/2010 - 09:33
Should group facilitators & would-be group facilitators have personal experience of the skills they're teaching? Should swimming or driving instructors be able to swim or drive themselves? I'm sure it's possible to help someone learn to swim without being a swimmer oneself, but if you're an instructor you're likely to do a better job and be more convincing in your suggestions if you yourself are pretty good at swimming.
Recent research: six studies on emotional & relationship ‘intelligence’ – placebo, warmth, mindfulness, & emotions
Originally added on Thu, 22/10/2009 - 06:15Last updated on Thu, 29/10/2009 - 05:48
Here are half a dozen research papers that have recently interested me in the broad areas of emotional and relationship "intelligence" (all details & abstracts to these studies are given further down this blog posting). Kelley et al report on "Patient and practitioner influences on the placebo effect" which in this study was " ... twice as large as the effect attributable to treatment group assignment." Practitioners assigned to give warm, empathic consultations achieved considerably better outcomes than those assigned to neutral consultations, although the " ...
Some upcoming conferences in CBT & in Positive Psychology
Originally added on Tue, 20/10/2009 - 05:41Last updated on Wed, 28/10/2009 - 06:33
The autumn edition of the BABCP magazine CBT Today carries information about a wealth of courses & conferences. Here are half a dozen that look interesting, including three - children & families and a couple of European conferences - that aren't mentioned in CBT Today:
ACAMH-BABCP Conference, Croydon, London. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy with Children and Families: making CBT work for individuals, families, practitioners and services. Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, 2nd-4th December, 2009.
BABCP Spring Conferences & Workshops at the University of Westminster, London. Relationships and Relating in CBT: Science and Practice. Thursday & Friday, 8th & 9th April, 2010.
Recent research: NICE guidance on social and emotional wellbeing in secondary education
Originally added on Thu, 01/10/2009 - 04:19Last updated on Mon, 19/10/2009 - 06:03
NICE is the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - "the independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the prevention and treatment of ill health." Although their guidance applies particularly to England and Wales, the opinions they come up with are very carefully weighed and can be of use to health (and education) professionals wherever they work.
Recent research: six papers relevant to psychotherapy
Originally added on Thu, 28/05/2009 - 11:04Last updated on Sun, 31/05/2009 - 11:11
Here are six studies relevant to improving psychotherapy outcomes. Brewin et al report on using imagery-based interventions to help people with depressioin. Lydiard et al highlight the importance of sleep-related disturbances as a treatment target in PTSD. McCrady and colleagues show that working with couples rather than just individuals seems more effective when using behavioural therapy to help women with alcohol use disorders. Geerts et al describe rather amazing research investigating "The role of parental bonding and nonverbal communication in the short-term treatment response was investigated in 104 depressed outpatients. At baseline patients completed the Parental Bonding Instrument. We registered the nonverbal involvement behaviour of patients and interviewers from video recordings of baseline clinical interviews and calculated the convergence between patient-interviewer behaviour over the interview ... As hypothesized, low maternal care and high paternal overprotection predicted a poor response to an 8-week treatment. Maternal care was positively correlated with nonverbal convergence. Moreover, convergence moderated the relationship between maternal care and the response to treatment: Lack of convergence between patients and interviewers turned out to annul the positive effects of maternal care on the treatment response.
Recent research: six papers on helping children & adolescents
Originally added on Thu, 21/05/2009 - 09:01Last updated on Sun, 31/05/2009 - 09:11
Here are half a dozen papers on helping kids and adolescents. The Fuligni et al paper found that adolescents experiencing frequent interpersonal stresses tended to have increased levels of C-reactive protein, " ... an inflammatory marker that is a key indicator of cardiovascular risk ... ". Jackson et al showed that in preschool kids each extra hour of regular TV viewing is associated with an extra 1 kg of body fat. This appeared to be due to increases in calorie intake rather than reduction in physical activity. Decreased family accommodation is associated with improved outcome in paediatric OCD, Merlo et al found. Naylor et al found that a six lesson teaching block on mental health benefitted young teenagers. Proctor et al provide a free full text overview of teenage life satisfaction assessment measures, while Wilkinson and colleagues report on 28 week follow-up in a treatment trial for depressed adolescents. The authors found "Depression at 28 weeks was predicted by the additive effects of severity, obsessive-compulsive disorder and suicidal ideation at entry together with presence of at least one disappointing life event over the follow-up period.
