Our professional identities play out in tangible ways such as our language, clothes and everyday behaviour. Our identity is the external representation of our inner feelings, beliefs, experiences and values. We all have a number of identities – personal, professional, social which reflect our day to day experiences and the environments within which we operate.

So much medical focus is on the deficits in people that those of us who work within the medical model tend to forget to look for people’s strengths. We may eventually even fail to see and value our own strengths as they become, in our own minds, just things that everybody has.

This is a great video documentary about the new ways we have now to think about and to help manage our own mental health problems, or those of others.

Between 2007 and 2010 smoking rates in the general community dropped from 26% to 19%. For people with psychotic disorders the rate did not drop at all.

The Australian Birth Trauma Association https://www.birthtrauma.org.au/ defines birth trauma as “Psychological problems arising from the circumstances of the delivery ……...or the process” of childbirth.

In November 2017 the astronomical world was bubbling with excitement when the first interstellar object ever seen from Earth entered our solar system. Finally, after 8 months deliberation, the scientific jury decided that, despite lacking some of the usual characteristics especially the tail that we usually associate with them, this object could indeed be classified as a comet. To the great disappointment of many it turned that it wasn’t an alien spacecraft after all.

The emotional health of people living with diabetes has been receiving greater attention as we become increasingly aware of the often-unrecognised psychological distress experienced by the approximately 1.2 million people in Australia living with diabetes.

I think we’re all familiar with the Pharrell Williams catchy tune “Because I’m happy…” with lyrics asking us to “clap along if you know what happiness means to you.” But do most of us really know?

I consider myself a child anxiety expert. It’s my specialty trade in my private practice but I’ve also backed it up with published research studies.

As health professionals, we often live in a state of denial about our health, especially our mental health. Too busy to be sick, I’ll let someone down if I take time off work, others will judge me negatively if I admit to being unwell – all common and understandable thought processes for those whose job is to help others.