Monthly Archives: November 2015

The prevalence of mental health problems

A reuters article last week (available here) reported that according to a release from Mayor Bill de Blaiso’s office ahead of his mental-health initiative, one in five adult New Yorkers suffer from depression, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts or other psychological disorders every year. This seems to have caused some surprise in some quarters but the […]

Headspace as online intervention

A client recommended an online intervention to me called Headspace (available here) that they have found useful. I am very enthusiastic about these online cognitive therapy based resources and think they can really complement counseling and psychotherapy. I always recommend such resources to my clients in Tokyo. However, a recent study published in BMJ (available […]

What talking therapy for me?

There are many types of so-called talking therapy and with each practitioner claiming that `their` particular brand of talking therapy is the most effective, it can be quite difficult to work out which type of counseling or psychotherapy is the right one for you. In an age when health providers aspire to provide provide personalized […]

Find a counselor or psychotherapist

For those in Japan, I wanted to provide this link to International Mental Health Professionals Japan (IMHPJ) of which I am currently the board secretary. The IMHPJ website is a very useful resource for those who are seeking to find a counselor or psychotherapist in just the Kanto/Tokyo area or anywhere in Japan. IMHPJ is […]

Psynary: online psychiatric assessment for depression

Psynary is an online psychiatric assessment tool that helps patients make sense of their own mental health and monitor the effectiveness of any treatment they start. There is ample evidence in the literature that treatment outcome monitoring is central to maximizing the effectiveness of any intervention, particularly treatment with medication.  Psynary aims to help patients […]

Validation in relationships

I found an interesting article on `validation` by Hall at Psychology Today (here) . It divides the techniques used for validation into 6 steps and has some worked examples. The article seems to be targeted at couples where one side feels the other is not sufficiently attentive or empathic. I would recommend the article for […]

Schizophrenia and Psychosis in children and young people

Here are the National Institute of Clinical Excellence guidance on the assessment and management of psychosis in young people. While adult services are very familiar with these disorders, due to very low frequencies in childhood, I feel that primary care child services may often not consider such diagnoses. These guidelines are simple, easy to read […]

Diagnostic manuals in Psychiatry

The controversies around the American Psychiatric Association`s DSM-5 have cast a spotlight rather on diagnostic systems in Psychiatry. While we all eagerly await publication of the WHO`s new diagnostic manual – ICD-11 – I thought it worthwhile to quickly review ICD-10. Whereas DSM-IV and DSM-5 are expensive manuals to come by, the WHO publish ICD-10 […]

Workouts for depression at Moodgym

There is a growing evidence base behind several online cognitive-therapy-based interventions for major depressive disorder. Among my patients Moodgym seems to be the most popular. I cannot recommend this free service enough for patients with depression. Please give it a go.

What is counseling and psychotherapy?

NHS Choices is an excellent website providing reliable information on health matters, including mental health, for the general public both inside and outside of the UK. I discovered that their website (link here) has some very nice and simple descriptions of what counselling (counseling for our US colleagues) and psychotherapy are, also including a description […]