Being Well
Black Dog Institute Blog for Health Professionals
e-Mental Health in Practice
Exercise is not a Dirty Word
April 02, 2019
When I returned to work from maternity leave, I was struggling with weight issues and general poor health following a tough flu season. My mood also plummeted from over-work and family responsibilities. Being a clinical psychologist, I worked hard at cognitive challenging and behavioural interventions but found it difficult to maintain. One critical factor that enhanced the above-listed strategies was exercise. For the first time in my life, I began to exercise with a different focus.
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Do as I say, not what I do!
March 05, 2019
In the country town where I grew up there was a GP who got very drunk at the golf club on a regular basis. His antics were a source of community amusement, and he had a lot of patients with similar alcohol misuse problems – mostly because he never talked to them about their drinking habits.
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Men are from Mars… or are they?
February 19, 2019
Men and women are different from each other. What a profound statement that is! Also one that could get me into a lot of trouble, particularly if it led to a discussion about whether that difference was genetically or culturally determined. I’m going to say it anyway, because I’m thinking about depression and suicide and the ways in which men and women express their distress differently.
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Bots and ‘digital humans’ in mental healthcare – the next wave of technology?
February 05, 2019
Are you having difficulty getting your head around the use of technology in mental health care? The idea that computer programs might interact with humans in a humanlike way has been around for decades but ideas about implementation are getting more and more sophisticated.
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The Status Symbol of Being ‘Busy’ Comes at a Cost to Our Wellbeing
January 22, 2019
I was called in by my Head of Learning and Teaching to discuss my ‘workload’ recently. My first thought was “oh no, they will add more to my workload as they’ve discovered that I’ve been working under my contracted hours”.
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