It's all in the mind

Mindfulness-based therapy
In Hansard on the 4 December 2012 there was a very interesting speech by Chris Ruane, he was talking about Mindfulness-based therapy and unemployment.
The statistics he mentioned were staggering “the World Health Organisation states that by 2030 mental health will be the biggest cause of burden of all health conditions, including heart conditions and cancer.”
He also mentioned that the number of prescriptions issued for antidepressants have gone from 9 million to 46 million over the past 10 years. That by the way is a 500% increase.

He states that some 25% of UK citizens will suffer mental illness, there are many theories about this - some state it is to do with the rampant individualism brought on by the 1980s, some by the rise of advertising in the post-war period has promoted consumerism. Others state that it is the social breakdown and people retreating to their home, the television, or spending 3 hours a day commuting or computing.
Mr Chris Ruane states that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said that mindfulness was a better way to treat repeat-episode depression. It is a proven and scientifically accepted way of improving mental illness.

But what is mindfulness, it is an integrative mind-body based approach that helps people to change how they think and feel about their experiences, especially stressful experiences. It involves paying attention to our thoughts and feelings so that we become more aware of them, less enmeshed in them, and better able to manage them. It uses breathing to slow the mind and the body down – it uses breath as an anchor to help us to live in the present moment.

It was a very interesting debate and worth having a look at it. It can be found in volume no. 554 shelfmark GHC.5.

Beware of the wrong holiday souvenirs

I listened to this Medical Matters podcast today, about parasites which can invade our bodies.
Three of them feature heavily in the Medical History of British India project - malaria, leishmaniasis and schistosomiasis. Far from being diseases from remote jungles or only threatening to health 100 years ago, these can be caught on foreign holidays today.
Make sure that you don't bring home a dangerous souvenir by checking out travel advice from your local GP or from the NHS fit for travel site.

There is an article in the latest issue of Wellcome History magazine about the discovery of the cause of Oriental sore, or cutaneous leishmaniasis.

(Photo of leishmaniasis parasite from www.bbc.co.uk)

Bulletin of the World Health Organisation (WHO)

The Wellcome Library has digitised the WHO Bulletin right back to when it began in 1948 and it's now freely available on PubMed Central.

TB or not TB

Tuesday 24th March is World TB Day which is a continuation of a two-year campaign to stop TB. The day raises awareness of people who are affected by tuberculosis (TB) throughout the world.
Here in Official Publications, we have many leaflets about TB from the UK's Department of Health as well as information from the World Health Organization.
Some may think TB is an illness of the past - TB is well known for killing writers Katherine Mansfield, Anne and Emily Bronte, Anton Chekhov and John Keats - and that it has no place in today's society. But TB has been on the increase since the 1990's in European cities and whilst antibiotics have been an efficacious treatment for the tuberculosis bacilli, the emergence of Multi-drug resistant TB (MDR TB) and Extensively drug resistant TB (XDR TB) is a serious concern.
(Picture credit: TBalert.org)

Dr WHO?

It's the 60th anniversary of the World Health Organisation. To mark this occasion they've got a nice potted history, plus an online photo exhibition of their work.