Posts Tagged ‘anxiety’

We’re pleased to announce that Leeds Anxiety Clinic has opened its doors. Here are my personal thoughts about it.

I’ve been working in mental health for around five years now, running the charity Anxiety Leeds, blogging over at Worfolk Anxiety and conducting research into mental health technology as part of my master’s degree. Getting involved with a company like this seems the next logical step.

The feedback we’re getting at the moment is that Leeds IAPT has a 9-month waiting list. Therapy takes time to work, so if you’re looking for help, realistically you’re looking at more than a year of your life before you can see any change. That’s too long.

And whether you go via the NHS, or you go via private therapy, you will usually get a generalist. Some organisations run “mental health” group sessions, for example. You might be a high functioning anxiety sufferer but you find yourself sat next to a schizophrenic. They’re both very different conditions that require different skills. Or your counsellor also does bereavement or addiction, and sidelines with anxiety. They don’t have the specialist skill set. It’s like taking your boat to Kwik Fit because “all vehicles are pretty much the same”.

We’re aiming to fix both of these problems by providing specialist care, with a range of options to suit different circumstances. Including some educational events that we’re planning to announce shortly.

All of this runs alongside my existing commitments to research and Anxiety Leeds, which will be unaffected by anything we’re doing here. Although, I very much hope that what we do at the charity will be informed by anything we learn at LAC, so that we can continue to improve the group.

As part of my research at Leeds Beckett University, we’re recruiting people with anxiety to take part in a 4-week trial you can do from home using your mobile phone.

We’re giving people a range of different phone apps designed to reduce anxiety, to see which ones work and which ones don’t. As part of the research, you will need to complete some short questionnaires and use the app for four weeks. Or, you may be allocated to a waiting list in which case you will just need to complete the questionnaires.

To find out more information, and to see whether you are eligible, please see the project’s website.

Below, I’ve collated a bunch of my blog posts on mental health into a list of interesting stuff to read. It’s all been published here or over on the Worfolk Anxiety blog.

Does social media damage your mental health?

In May, Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and Young Health Movement published a report on the impact of social media on mental health. The TL;DR is that yes, social media can be harmful. But it also has its uses, so when used in moderation, like most things in life, can be a useful tool.

Things you should know about antidepressants

This is a pretty old article now, and if I wrote it today I would probably say way more. But it highlights a few key things to think about when deciding to go down the antidepressant route or not, and more widely, what opinion you hold of them.

Things to do when you’re well, according to people with anxiety

Mental hygiene is the things you regularly do to keep yourself mentally healthy. Just like we have a daily routine for physical hygiene and dental hygiene, there are things we can do to keep our mental health on the right track. But what actually helps? We asked people who live with anxiety.

Things to tell yourself when you’re not well, according to people with anxiety

In last week’s blog post, we looked at some good things to do when you are feeling well. But what about when you are having a rough patch and can’t find the energy to do anything? What should you tell yourself?

Will suicide nets stop jumpers at the Golden Gate Bridge?

When it comes to stopping people throwing themselves off the bridge, the question is, can a one-time intervention really save lives? Turns out the answer is yes.

We don’t need more money for mental health

You regularly hear politicians talking about how the NHS needs more money for mental health. In today’s post, I want to challenge this idea and offer a very different explanation and very different solution.

What would a mental health workout look like?

If you want to improve your physical fitness, you might work out. Maybe you would eat a high protein breakfast, hit the gym, do a warm-up followed by some intervals and then take a warm bath to recover afterwards. But what about mental wellness? What would a training session look like? What specifically would you do?

After much hard work, I’m pleased to announce the launch of my new course, Mindfulness for Social Anxiety. It follows on from the free 5-Day Mindfulness for Anxiety that already has thousands of students registered.

Today, we’re launching the first Anxiety Leeds impact report.

We regularly take feedback from our group members and survey them to see what is working and what is not. However, this is the first time we have systematically reviewed the results and published a report about it.

Here are the headline figures:

• We support a wide range of ages across both genders
• We support a broad range of anxiety conditions, often compounded by depression and physical health issues
• 71% feel less alone after attending our meetings
• 29% feel a lot more positive about life
• 40% even see a reduction in day-to-day anxiety, despite us not being a treatment group

This is set on a background of us working with people who have anxiety, and therefore have a negative outlook on the world, compounded by also suffering from depression, which is the case of 62% of our members.

Here is the headline graph:

It is clear that not everyone sees a benefit in attending our group. This is consistent with other mental health programmes, all of which typically experience high drop-out rates.

The majority of people who do attend do see a benefit. This benefit increases the more they attend. This result should be viewed with caution: although it is highly plausible that there is a causative effect here, it is not direct evidence of one.

We’re also delivering an internal plan to group members on how we can continue to improve the group as we go forward.

You can download the full report here.

In May, Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and Young Health Movement published a report on the impact of social media on mental health. We wrote about it extensively on Worfolk Anxiety and you can read the full write-up over there.

The infographic was too good not to re-post, though. The TL;DR is that yes, social media can be harmful. But it also has its uses, so when used in moderation, like most things in life, can be a useful tool.

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Mindfulness is a powerful tool for reducing anxiety and increasing our enjoyment of life. Practising it allows us to re-train our minds to focus on the present, rather than wandering off into worry-land.

Which is why during the 30-Day Challenge I ran in April, we did two mindfulness meditations.

They were really popular. So, I have expanded them out into a full course. It’s called 5-Day Mindfulness for Anxiety and provides you with an introduction to what mindfulness is and how it works, before giving you five guided meditations, one for each day.

Best of all, it’s free. It’s hosted by Udemy, and you can preview the course here.

It has already proved a hit with the Udemy community. Nearly 500 people have enrolled and it has an average star rating of 4.8/5.

That slightly beats out the 30-Day Challenge, also available on Udemy, which has an average rating of 4.6/5. Though the challenge has over 1,500 students enrolled.

They’re both awesome. Give them a go.

Mark Manson came to fame because of his blogging and has since gone on to publish some bestselling books, including The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

His writing style shines through his book, too. It’s engaging and entertaining. You laugh at points. You identify with all of the material. It keeps you interested.

This made me think about longevity, though. Manson’s style is entertaining partly because of all the pop culture references. But a few times, it did cross my mind that in ten years time, nobody would know what he was on about. The truth is, my memory of _Everybody Loves Raymond_ is already fading.

His storytelling is compelling. I was with him on the edge of that cliff. I felt the same feelings.

He makes some good points, too. Life is about giving a fuck about the right things, and not caring about the rest. Nobody who is happy needs to stand int front of a mirror saying positive affirmations. But I think the reason you do that is that you’re not happy. And given how often our emotions are driven by our behaviour, I don’t write it off as a useless tactic.

Given all of that great delivery, though, I am wondering how much I take away from the book. He threw so many great ideas at me that I struggled to take it all in. And, which a not very conclusive conclusion, I was a little confused by the end. I’m a simple man: I need the take-home message spelling out for me. And maybe that was the title. But I would have liked a clearer finish.

This book is an entertaining and enjoyable exploration of Manson’s philosophy. Whether it helps you, I’m not sure. But you are unlikely to feel it was time wasted.

I’m pleased to announce the launch of Do More, Worry Less: Small Steps to Reduce Your Anxiety. As of yesterday, it is available in the Worfolk Anxiety web store, as well as via Amazon and iTunes.

Like any book, it takes a long time to put together. Arguably, this was a quick one: it’s taken me over six months, but the restaurant guide took years. However, it has been a long time in the making. The research in the book has taken years to accumulate. And there is a lot of it. 291 footnotes and citations to be exact.

The book takes you on a journey, exploring what anxiety is, why it prevents us from reaching our goals and the proven strategies and tactics to overcome these problems and hit your targets. It then explores every aspect of lifestyle: exercise, diet, sleep, relaxation, personal growth, relationships and community to find the things that improve your mental health and what to do about them.

You can find out more about the book here.

Over at Worfolk Anxiety, we’ve just launched our 30-day challenge to help people reduce anxiety. It’s a free month of coaching where people get a different challenge to complete every day and a private support community to share experiences and access encouragement.

Pretty cool. But will it work?

The science says it will. The challenges are based on the lifestyle changes that drive improvements to mental health. I wrote about these in my book Technical Anxiety and look at them in far more detail in my upcoming book Do More, Worry Less.

But, of course, the science can say one thing: whether you can translate into success for people in real life is another. We’re working on a small scale: a few hundred people have signed up for the challenge. That is still enough to make me nervous, though. It needs to deliver.

We’re measuring the success as best we can so I will be able to write about the results next month. Until then, wish me luck!