Blog

Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular dates to propose on, meaning wedding bells may soon be sounding in some of our clients’ material. As psychotherapist Annette Byford understands all too well, the impact of an engagement isn’t always confined to the couple in question. The author of a new book of interviews with mothers of brides and grooms, she explains why weddings present families with a huge adaptive task – and highlights some difficult feelings they may stir up.

There has been a huge shift in public consciousness recently when it comes to the scale of sexual violation endured by women at the hands of men. But what about those men and boys who are themselves survivors of sexual abuse? Sarah Van Gogh, author of a recent book on this subject, has seen the impact of such experiences on those men that do find their way to therapy – and suspects far more male survivors remain overlooked and unsupported in their shame and despair.

To conclude her blog series marking Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Fiona Pienaar shares new research findings about the impact of sleep on young people’s capacity to cope with worries – and offers some tips on how adults can model attitudes and behaviours that foster healthy bodies and minds.

Time is a fundamental element of the therapeutic frame, which we go to lengths to boundary and protect. But outside the consulting room, it can seem as though our relationship with time is getting out of hand. In the fourth of her week-long series of blogs to mark Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Fiona Pienaar reminds us of the importance of ‘finding time’ – that elusive but critical ingredient in our relationships and wellbeing.

Getting away from technology and out into nature is fundamentally important for our mental health. In the third of her week-long series of blogs to mark Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Fiona Pienaar explains why we should all be stepping away from technology and engaging with the Great Outdoors – and reflects on the key skills this can foster, not just in children, but in therapists.

Young people’s digital use is in the headlines at the moment. But it is adults who face the challenge of monitoring children’s time on social media, and who have a responsibility to model healthy behaviour. In the second of a week-long series of blogs to mark Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Fiona Pienaar draws our attention to the Family Media Use Plan, and suggests parents – and practitioners – get involved in thinking about digital mental health.

In the first of a week-long series of blogs to mark Children’s Mental Health Week, Dr Fiona Pienaar draws our attention to key findings from the recent survey into the mental health of children and young people. What are the current rates of mental disorder in this age bracket? Which groups are particularly at risk? And what are the trends in preschool mental health? When it comes to meeting our collective responsibility, these statistics are a galvanising place to start.

Reading, writing and arithmetic may be the ‘three Rs’ of schooling. But when it comes to the internal education of children, we have a new set of Rs: reflective skills, relational intelligence, and resilience. Leading neuroscientist Dan Siegel is the author of several bestsellers about child and adolescent minds, and believes interpersonal neurobiology can offer profound insights for the future of young people’s mental health. Here he introduces some of the key ideas he will be presenting at February’s Developing Minds conference as part of Children’s Mental Health Week 2019.

In the late Nineties, psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan decided to stop seeing clients and focus solely on supervision. From this vantage point, he found himself paying particular attention to the impact of working in foreign countries, and the importance of attending to the ‘deep currents of history’ in clients’ material. Drawing on the case detailed in his forthcoming book, Ghosts in the Human Psyche, he explains why supervisors need to attend to historical, cultural, and political issues.

Divorced couples are saying something important about regret.