Does loneliness make you depressed?

Being lonely is bad for the mind and often leads to mental health problems like depression, stress, anxiety, and a lack of confidence. The number of people who are likely to be lonely is rising all over the world. Many of these are elderly, left by themselves after their partners have died or their families have moved away. Half of over 75 year olds in the UK live alone, and one in 10 suffer intense loneliness.

Dr Jaremka said: "Being lonely means not feeling connected or cared for, it's not about being physically alone. "We need to find ways to help lonely people. Unfortunately we can't tell anyone to go out and find someone to love you. We need to create support networks."

Read more of the story via BBC News here.

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Mental health: Don’t suffer in silence

University: it is depicted in the media as one long, unending party and the chance to complete the ‘essential life experience’ of activities before graduation. Everyone expects young people to be euphoric on the university experience and for many, this is not far wrong. However, what many are not aware of is that university can provide an environment which might trigger harmful mental health issues.

With overwhelming academic, social and financial pressures, many students feel significant emotional strain. Layla Haidrani writes that it is "a question of how to get students to discuss their overwhelming feelings of anxiety and depression. The main concern is that students do not admit to having these problems or if they are aware, find it embarrassing or humiliating to admit them or even do something about them.

The important thing is that students need to know they can get support for a mental health issue. They certainly won’t be the only student having difficulty, and it’s neither a sign of weakness or something to be ashamed of. And the sooner you get help, the better your chances of a quick and effective recovery. It’s time to break down the barriers of society. Students: don’t sit there in silence."

Read the full story via The Independent here.

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Ex-athletes 'face mental issues'

Veterans' mental health charity Combat Stress will host an event later this month to discuss the difficulties faced by servicemen and sport players when they leave their professions. Research shows that one-in-four professional cricketers who leave the sport are likely to suffer depression and one-in-five army veterans will experience mental health problems.

The former commander of the British Forces in Afghanistan, Ed Butler, will be joined by sports champions at the event called Hanging Up Your Boots, to be held at the Royal Geographical Society on 21 February .

Jake Wood, a former Territorial Army Lance Sergeant who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, said about the condition: "Some people might say it's all in the mind, but of course it is. It's just something I've learned to live with now," he explained.

Josh Lewsey explained that the prevalence of psychological issues was becoming "very common", with issues often becoming deeply embedded after years without help and support.

To view the video and the story via BBC News, click here.

PsychologyOnline offers professional support for those struggling with mental health issues. Our service is professional and confidential. For more details, see our website.

Mental health treatment funding approved for MPs

MPs will be entitled to receive mental health treatment in Westminster, a parliamentary committee has announced. The Commons Members Estimate Committee has approved an annual budget of £25,000 to help MPs with mental health problems access treatment.

The Committee said that is hard for MPs to access mental health services in their constituencies because of "their profile in the community" where they engage in frequent contact with local healthcare commissioners.

In a Commons debate in June 2012 on mental health, Mr Jones told MPs he had suffered from "quite a deep depression related to work issues" in 1996. He said he had "thought very long and hard" about whether to speak publicly about the matter, because: "like a lot of men, you try and deal with it yourself. You don't talk to people..".

Read the full story via BBC News here.

PsychologyOnline offers professional support for those struggling with mental health issues. Our service is professional and confidential. For more details, see our website.

Internet CBT is effective and cost-efficient

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a common therapeutic approach used to address a variety of mental health issues. However, not everyone has access to CBT services. The financial burden of receiving treatment can also prohibit many individuals from reaping the rewards of this type of therapy. Untreated mental health conditions extract a big cost from individuals, families, and society. For people with health anxiety, the overuse of medical services can put a financial burden on communities and families. Therefore, it is imperative that people with health anxiety be provided every opportunity to get the help they need, including access to CBT, which has been shown to be highly effective in the treatment of anxiety.

Erik Hedman of the Division of Psychology and the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden recently conducted a study to validate the effectiveness of Internet CBT (ICBT). He found that patients treated by ICBT improved considerably more than their counterparts undergoing different methods.

View the article via GoodTherapy here.

PsychologyOnline offers professional support for those struggling with mental health issues. Our service is professional and confidential. For more details, see our website.

Destiny's Child's Williams reveals depression battle.

Destiny's Child singer Michelle Williams has spoken out for the first time about suffering from depression. The 32-year-old has revealed she first experienced it when she was a teenager. Speaking to the Associated Press, Williams said: "I had to choose to get out of bed and do whatever I needed to do to be happy."

"I've had to deal with depression," she said, although she hadn't needed to take medication for it. Her experience of the mental illness has been described as moderate but she has encouraged others to seek help. "Go see a professional so that they can assess you. It's OK if you're going through something," she said. "Depression is not OK, but it is OK to go get help."

For the full article via BBC Newsbeat, click here.

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Diet drinks raise risk of depression

Experts are questioning whether diet drinks could raise depression risk, after a large study has found a link. The US research in more than 250,000 people found depression was more common among frequent consumers of artificially sweetened beverages.

However, drinking coffee was linked with a lower risk of depression. People who drank four cups a day were 10% less likely to be diagnosed with depression during the 10-year study period than those who drank no coffee. But those who drank four cans or glasses of diet fizzy drinks or artificially sweetened juice a day increased their risk of depression by about a third.

Lead researcher Dr Honglei Chen, of the National Institutes of Health in North Carolina, said: "Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk."

Read more via BBC News here.

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Quitting smoking 'reduces anxiety'

Smokers who successfully quit feel less anxious afterwards - despite the belief that smoking relieves stress, researchers say. The British Journal of Psychiatry study followed nearly 500 smokers attending NHS stop smoking clinics in England. It found a "significant" decrease in anxiety levels among the 68 smokers who had quit after six months. The effect was greater among those who had mood and anxiety disorders than those that smoked for pleasure.

The researchers - drawn from several universities including Cambridge, Oxford and Kings's College in London - said the findings should be used to reassure smokers attempting to quit that concerns about increased anxiety levels were unfounded.

Read more via BBC News here.

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Mental health issues common after cardiac arrest

A quarter of cardiac arrest survivors suffer long-term psychological problems such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, a new review of research estimates.This additional stress on recovering patients is under-diagnosed, researchers say, and doctors have few standard methods for identifying who is at risk.

"Anxiety, depression and PTSD are major concerns after cardiac arrest," said lead author Kathryn Wilder Schaaf, a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University. "We have the tools to treat this, so it's important to make sure that it's identified," she added.

Wilder Schaaf and colleagues found that months to years after surviving cardiac arrest, about one-third of patients were depressed and nearly two-thirds were experiencing anxiety. Even PTSD symptoms were surprisingly common, afflicting 19 percent to 27 percent of survivors, the medical literature showed.

Read the full article via Reuters Health here.

PsychologyOnline provides professional confidential support for those struggling with mental health issues including anxiety, PTSD and depression. For more details, see our website.

If 'drugs don’t work' for depression, CBT may.

“Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can reduce symptoms of depression in people who fail to respond to drug treatment" BBC News has reported. CBT is already an established ‘talking therapy’ for depression and takes a more pragmatic and problem solving approach than more traditional forms of psychotherapy.

The study found that people who received CBT in addition to antidepressants, rather than continuing to receive antidepressants alone, had around a three-fold increased chance of responding to treatment and having a reduction in their depression symptoms over the following 12 months.The study provides further evidence on the effectiveness of CBT to treat depression, particularly in those who have not responded to antidepressants alone.

Paul Farmer, chief executive at the mental health charity Mind "We welcome this research because it recognises that patients should have the right to a wide range of treatment options based on individual needs".

To read the full article via NHS Mental Health, click here.

PsychologyOnline offers professional support for those struggling with mental health issues. Our service is professional and confidential. For more details, see our website.