Practical EQ

Paul Keedwell on the benefits of depression

An interesting article in the Guardian by psychiatrist Paul Keedwell argues that depression can have some benefits:

The truth is that short-term pain can lead to longer-term gain. A recently published follow-up study of depression in Holland - the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (Nemesis) - used a sample of 165 people with a major depressive episode, and provides some preliminary scientific evidence to suggest that depression is indeed helpful in the longer term. Researchers who were looking for evidence to suggest that depression leaves people chronically disabled were surprised to discover the opposite.

His new book, How Sadness Survived: The Evolutionary Basis of Depression, looks fascinating - at the time of writing, the reviews that I've seen have all been five-star!

Depression: Prozac doesn't work (all that well)

From Ben Goldacre's essential Bad Science blog:

Yesterday the journal PLoS Medicine published a study which combined the results of 47 trials on some antidepressant drugs, including Prozac, and found only minimal benefits over placebo, except for the most depressed patients. It has been misreported as a definitive nail in the coffin: this is not true. It was a restricted analysis [see below] but, more importantly, on the question of antidepressants, it added very little. We already knew that SSRIs give only a modest benefit in mild and moderate depression and, indeed, for some time now, the NICE guidelines themselves have actively advised against using them in milder cases since 2004.

The full Bad Science posting is well worth reading - it makes some interesting points about how clinical trials could be regulated to stop drug companies burying studies that don't support their product and also includes a link to download the full text of the study, for free.

It's interesting, in news reports, to see the pharmaceutical industry protesting that the results of the study are "at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice" - e.g. the Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline statements near the end of this report.

Meanwhile, psychoanalyst Darian Leader writes an interesting history of The Creation of the Prozac Myth, charting how the marketing of drugs has affected the diagnosis of depression over time to include the symptoms that the drugs have an effect on. As so often with articles written by psychoanalysts, he concludes with a swipe at cognitive therapies, likening them to drugs for offering a "quick fix" and not addressing underlying problems.

This rather leaves aside the effectiveness of psychoanalytic approaches, which haven't shown up well in trials (although a small study last year on psychodynamic psychotherapy for panic disorder is "among the first to prove clinical efficacy for a psychoanalytic therapy for any major psychiatric disorder").

I believe that the intelligent application of NLP modelling and second-order change interventions could actually achieve the holy grail of combining a quick fix with addressing underlying causes, because it works at the unconscious level (as opposed to trying to reach the underlying causes through conscious understanding, which takes a long time and probably makes you feel worse the more you talk about the problem).

Sorry about the rather impenetrable nature of the 'second-order change'  linked article. If anyone knows of an article on the web explaining the not all that difficult concept of first- and second-order change in understandable language, please let me know. Otherwise I'll write one soon!

Split brain experiments game

Here's an online animated game to help you get your head round Roger Sperry's split brain experiments, where he discovered what happens to mental processing if the corpus callosum linking the two hemispheres of the brain has been severed.

More fun than it sounds!

Split brain experiment game

The benefits of swearing at work

Allowing staff to swear at work can benefit them and their employers, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia.

Prof Yehuda Baruch, professor of management at the UEA-based Norwich Business School (NBS), and graduate Stuart Jenkins looked at the use of expletives and swearing in the work place from a management point of view.

They identified the relevance and even importance of using non-conventional and sometimes uncivil language at work and how it may have a positive impact.

The study found regular use of profanity to express and reinforce solidarity among staff, enabling them to express their feelings, such as frustration, and develop social relationships.

The results of the study, Swearing at work and permissive leadership culture: when anti-social becomes social and incivility is acceptable, are published in the current issue of the Leadership and Organization Development Journal (Vol 28 Issue 6, pages 492-507).

The research suggests that while a ban on swear words and reprimanding staff might represent strong leadership, it would remove the source of solidarity and in doing so could lead to decreased morale and work motivation.

However, Prof Baruch and Mr Jenkins stress that abusive and offensive swearing should be eliminated where it generates greater levels of stress, rather than helping to relieve it.

Prof Baruch said the use of swearing would continue to rise in the workplace and become more of an issue for leaders and managers.

"The question is what should we do about it? We offer a model and some practical advice. Certainly in most scenarios, in particular in the presence of customers or senior staff, profanity must be seriously discouraged or banned" he said.

"However, our study suggested that in many cases, taboo language serves the needs of people for developing and maintaining solidarity, and as a mechanism to cope with stress. Banning it could backfire."

He added: "Managers need to understand how their staff feel about swearing. The challenge is to master the art of knowing when to turn a blind eye to communication that does not meet their own standards."

Get the full story here.

If you would like to improve the standard of your swearing, I can recommend Roger's Profanisaurus, from the makers of Viz comic.

Positive Psychology articles - a useful source

I've just come across a potentially useful (I say potentially because I've
not had time to read all the articles yet) source of articles - Positive
Psychology News Daily at http://pos-psych.com/.

"Positive Psychology News Daily is authored by graduates of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania and by guest authors.

Positive Psychology News Daily provides the latest news about happiness, the “science of happiness,” and Positive Psychology.  Our goal is to be your fun, collaborative place for a research-based daily boost of happiness."

Philosophy lessons boost children's IQs

Primary school children in Clackmananshire (Scotland) who were taught 'philosophical inquiry' maintained an average IQ gain of 6.5 points into secondary school. Clackmananshire is now to bring in philosophy lessons from nursery to secondary school level. [full story here]

Thinking skills are about the most valuable thing you can teach to children. This item caught my eye because one of my NLP Practitioner graduates, Tim Luckock, teaches philosophy for kids. More about Tim here.

What makes a multidisciplinary team work well?

Some studies in the past have suggested that having diverse disciplines in teams can actually be a drawback, particularly if the team fragments into cliques.

New research by Doris Fay at Aston University suggests that diverse teams do actually come up with more innovations - but the quality of those innovations is dependent on effective group processes being in place, including: all team members being committed to the same cause; everyone in the team being listened to; the team reflecting on its own effectiveness; and there being plenty of contact between team members.

Research reported in the BPS Research Digest blog (recommended!)

If you would like some tips on effective group processes for your team, download our Checklist For An Emotionally Intelligent Team.

What thinking about money does to you

Recently I attended a talk by a wealth coach about the differences between what rich people believe and what poor people believe.

Much of the talk was in the form of questions followed by the "correct" answers, as in: "Would you rather have more money, or more time with your family and friends? Would you rather have more money, or more spirituality?... Rich people say 'I want both!'"

To me the talk came across as sneering at poor people, and making rich people feel better about themselves. I wasn't sure that much of it was based on any kind of evidence, and today I came across some research (by Kathleen D Vohs of the University of Minnesota) which suggested a different conclusion - that even thinking about money  tends to make you more independent, but also more selfish.

There's an article about this research, plus earlier some earlier studies that back it up, by JohnJoe McFadden in the Guardian today.

The original research, The Psychological Consequences Of Money, is published in Science magazine:

Money has been said to change people's motivation (mainly for the better) and their behavior toward others (mainly for the worse). The results of nine experiments suggest that money brings about a self-sufficient orientation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and dependents. Reminders of money, relative to nonmoney reminders, led to reduced requests for help and reduced helpfulness toward others. Relative to participants primed with neutral concepts, participants primed with money preferred to play alone, work alone, and put more physical distance between themselves and a new acquaintance.

Elephants Join The Self-Awareness Club

Very few animals can recognise their own image in a mirror - a crucial test of how self-aware they are. It used to be thought that this ability was only possessed by humans and the great apes. More recently dolphins have been found to recognise themselves. Now we find that elephants can do it too.

In the video attached to this New Scientist article, an elephant tries to touch a mark painted on its head  (where it can only be seen in the mirror). Previous experiments to measure the self-awareness of elephants have failed because the mirrors weren't big enough.

Emotional ambivalence fuels creativity

I found this item on the excellent management-issues.com web site:

People who are emotionally ambivalent – simultaneously feeling positive and negative emotions – tend to be more creative in the workplace than those who feel just happy or sad, or lack emotion at all, according to a new study.

That's because people who feel mixed emotions interpret the experience as a signal that they are in an unusual environment and respond to it by drawing on their creative thinking abilities, according to Christina Ting Fong, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Business School.

This increased sensitivity for recognising unusual associations, which happy or sad workers probably couldn't detect, is what leads to creativity in the workplace, she says.

Get the full story here.

I do wonder what results they would have got if they had looked at levels of excitement, rather than whether the respondents were happy, sad, neutral or ambivalent.