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Edited by Jill Wright,
Now might be a good time for a little social networking self-analysis. According to University of Melbourne psychologists and their counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania, social media can serve as a litmus test of community wellbeing. Their research, published in the journal Psychological Science, showed that Twitter tweets act as a psychological barometer, allowing them to predict elevated risks...
Edited by Jill Wright,
What exactly does clinical depression feel like? And would you know it if you had it? That's the question raised in a fascinating personal insight into the experience of depression in The Guardian, by a freelance writer, Rin Hamburgh. Despite the fact that her father was bipolar and her sister had been diagnosed with depression a decade earlier, Hamburgh suffered...
Edited by Jill Wright,
One of the newly emerging areas of research that I'm curious about is geographical psychology, which studies the links between people's environment and their personality and feelings. Cambridge University lecturer, Dr Peter Rentfrow has recently published a book on the topic which I'm saving up for ($US45.54 for a Kindle book is pretty steep). My interest has been stimulated by...
Edited by Jill Wright,
One of the traditions we've established with our grandchildren when they stay with us overnight is to take them down to the local children's bookshop - which happens to be quite close to Psychology Melbourne's Centre for Child and Family Care - and buy them a book of their choice. We follow that up with a bedtime reading. Our aim...
Edited by Jill Wright,
By the time the majority of the Psychology Melbourne team gets back from our short end-of-year holiday, most of us will have spent precious time with our families, some of whom live interstate or overseas. Because of the particular work we do, we are more likely than most people to be aware of how lucky we are to have people...
Edited by Jill Wright,
Having spent a good deal of my professional life writing daily and weekly columns in The Australian, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and the Financial Review, I can sympathise with the sort of pressure Lisa Pryor is under to produce something entertaining for her column in the Good Weekend (for which, as it happens, I used to write feature articles)....
Edited by Jill Wright,
The Australian Medical Association - the professional association for our doctors and medical students - says that it is committed to "enduring professional values, excellence in teaching and research and the delivery of high-quality health care to all". You'd therefore expect, when it comes to giving advice to young people on mental health, that it would be particularly careful about...
Edited by Jill Wright,
The ABC's recent MentalAs coverage of mental health was, as I've mentioned earlier, a positive initiative. It gave viewers - and listeners - more than a hint of the human dimensions of our mental health care system; it raised funds for research and who knows, might have encouraged people to be more understanding of those who are suffering personal distress...
Edited by Jill Wright,
A couple of days ago, I bought my two grand-daughters a packet of jumbo marshmallows. They are possibly their favourite treat, and the younger one, in particular, heads straight for the cupboard where they are "hidden" as soon as she arrives for a visit. If you spend any time around psychologists, you will learn that marshmallows and children have tremendous...
Edited by Jill Wright,
The ABC's Mental As coverage (as I've said) is wonderful. But it isn't looking at some of the critical issues relating to the delivery of effective mental health services in this country. The UK has some of the same issues, but at least they are being talked about over there, most recently by Professor Peter Beresford, in a piece in...