The Black Box of Mental Health

Why it’s hard to get help and why you are not helped…much with mental health problems.

Mental health problems are like the black box in an aeroplane, we all know it exists, but we have no idea what’s in it or exactly how it works. We know anxiety exists, as does depression, but what are they really? We know the labels for things but not what the labels signify. This presents us with a problem because, without adequate language to explain and to understand a problem, it is very hard to know how to resolve it.

I was interviewed on BBC radio yesterday about emotional burnout, which seems to me to be simply a different name for chronic stress. Nevertheless, the presenter’s questions were focused on what can be done to combat emotional burnout, as if the assumption of its existence was ‘given as read’. There seems to be little interest in the fact that mental health issues are ubiquitous, in all developed...

As if the Covid-19 pandemic was not bad enough two studies published this week reveal that anxiety in the UK has reached an all time high and that Covid-19 related anxiety, stress and depression has also has also reached an all time high.

If you follow my work,  you will be aware that my passion is to create self help based solutions to problems like panic, anxiety, depression and stress. The video in this blog post  will explain more about how to manage Covid Stress

Prof Nick Freemantle published research this week that revealed a dramatic 'explosion' in anxiety in the UK. Researchers are usually measured in their language but he described it as a 'profound increase in anxiety' caused by a number of circumstances but staring with the financial crash in 2008 and continuing through to the Covid threat.

His study examined the data from 6.6 million NHS patients. I will give you one example from the data that I find startling. In 2008 8.42% of women aged 18-24 suffered...

What would you pay for a year of good health?

This is an interesting question because the government of most countries do actually place a monetary value on health and, to them, the cost of treatment.  We have all heard stories of this or that drug which seems life-saving, but sadly, is too expensive and so the individual has to go without it. This is national news. But these decisions are happening all the time. I was researching this more deeply and I came across a recent Australian research paper that puts a figure on how much an individual is willing to pay for a year of good health.

Based on data from 28,347 people in Australia a person is willing to pay for a Quality Adjusted life year (QUALY) (a year of good health) from between £23,000 and £37,000 (I have done the currency conversion from Australian dollars.

Also, an individual is prepared to pay £1112 for not having a long-term condition, almost like a health tax!

What fascinates me about this is how...

Worry is normal, but, how do you tell if you are worrying to much? This is an important question because excessive worry is a really key feature of some anxiety disorders like, Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Health Anxiety. And it is similar to some of the troubling processes seen in depression and other psychological problems like PTSD and OCD. Indeed, overthinking and rumination can look and feel a lot like worry. So, it is doubly important to be able to figure out if your worry is excessive because then you can do something about it. Without this knowledge you are helpless. To learn how to stamp on worry join The Anxiety Wizard Program and jump straight into the brilliant worry tools. These will teach you simply how to master worry. https://www.drpurves.online/store/BcNoi5Yf

I turned this podcast into a video. Rewiring your brain out of intense anxiety is about learning to have less and less anxiety each day until you literally forget to be anxious. When I work with clients on face to face CBT I know that the sessions have done their job when the client forgets to have a problem.

The same thing happens with The Anxiety Wizard Program. The progressive lessening of panic, anxiety, depression or stress over the time working on the program is very gratifying to witness.

Eventually those who have put in the effort have rewired their brain such that anxiety no longer gets produced. They have literally changed the physical structure of their brain and hence have a different life experience.

Everyone can learn. This is just a simple fact of life. So it is not that much of a leap of the imagination to accept that you can learn to leave anxiety behind. To learn more about The Anxiety Wizard Program visit my website. www.drpurves.online

All intrusive thoughts, memories or sensations have one thing is common.

YOU HAVE FED THEM.

Sorry, I know it seems strange but it is true. The converse is also true.

THE LESS YOU FEED THEM THE EASIER THEY DIE. 

 What this translates to is this: You are giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to things you actually want to die. You are feeding things that seriously detracting from your mental health. I do know that your experience is likely to be 'I am not doing it, it just happens'. And of course that is how it feels because you have fed these destructive processes for quite a long time. 

The alternative is this:- I was talking to a man today who has been using Anxiety Wizard for 8 weeks. He related all of the improvements in his life but the one most pertinent here is that he said he went for long periods of time where he forgot to be anxious. He even noted that he had days where anxiety was partially of completely forgotten and only when he remembered he had forgotten...

If this pandemic has taught us one thing it is that some things we took for normal were not necessarily always that great. I know that many people are struggling right now but there is an emerging tension between what we did and what we can do.

For many years I used to commute to London. It was expensive, tiring and now for many people unnecessary, certainly to the degree previously done. The social element is a big miss, but the work itself still gets done.

How many millions of miles were travelled to have face to face meetings with people? It turns out Zoom is pretty good. The meetings are more focused now, at least.

I have not conducted therapy sessions in my office since March and it seems to be working pretty well. Clients still recover and get on with their lives. 

Maybe as we shake things up and arrive at the 'new normal' we might consider also leaving the prison of fear as well.

Fear is the emotion that drives all anxiety problems: panic, GAD, OCD, worry, phobia, social...

It is easy to predict the future but not so easy to be correct.

The reason that it is easy to predict the future is that many things seem so obvious. For instance, the economy is going to struggle because of the combined effects of Brexit, the Pandemic and trade wars etc make this seem obvious.

That people are going to continue to be over-prescribed anti-depressants and anxiolytics seems obvious, given that the rates of prescription have doubled in 10 years.

It is harder to predict if people will start to take more responsibility for their own mental health. My special interest is in promoting Self Help Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (SH-CBT) because my mission is to eradicate unnecessary mental health problems. In all honesty, I am not at all sure this will happen in my lifetime!

Some reasons this prediction is hard to make:-

1. At school you learn history and biology etc but you learn nothing helpful about avoiding mental health problems.
2. You have been taught that psychological...

If you lost your memory would you still have a problem? No you wouldn't 

You are the sum total of your memories and of course this encompasses your experiences. But, many of your memories and experiences are ones of conflict!

Human history is really a catalogue of human conflict. Typically involving dominant men who are playing out their psychological conflicts and needs and using the rest of us as tokens in an endless game they cannot win.

Our own history is also one of conflict. Not actual physical conflict, unless the paragraph above resonates with you! No, it is a conflict between different belief systems and versions of reality. In fact, I will go so far as to say that all mental health problems are conflicts between competing internal belief systems or conflicts between different realities. 

The part of you that you call YOU, ME, I, is the victim. How does that make you feel? Like a helpless victim I would imagine, helpless, low in control and unsafe because you...

When the horseless carriage (car) was invented it looked just like a horse drawn carriage but without a horse. The inventors used design and thinking principles from the 19th Century as they ushered in the age of the automobile in the 20th Century. Now the government are using 20th Century thinking as they flounder to solve the problems of mental health in the 21st Century.

Many mental health problems are treatable by the individuals concerned using a more intelligent Self Help Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (Self help CBT) approach. The problem is that people do not know this. Self Help CBT is clinically effective, cost effective and empowering for the individual. And yet...where is it promoted? No where! The Guardian, today published an article on a report by Mind that stated 65% of adult participants with a pre-existing mental health problem said it had become worse during lock down. With younger people affected more and women more affected than men.

The centre for mental...