“On January 1st I’m going to give up drinking, smoking and start exercising. On January 2nd I’m going to get therapy for my compulsive lying! “ 

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has developed a proposal for its first update in 12 years to the guideline to identify, treat and manage depression in adults. This is significant in the light of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reporting that about 1 in 6 adults experienced some form of depression in the summer of 2021. 

At the end of World War 1, more than 80,000 soldiers were treated for what became known as ‘shell shock’. Traumatised by what they had witnessed and experienced under the brutal conditions and sheer horror of the trenches, some came back mute or blind with no apparent physical cause, others found that they were unable to eat or sleep. I believe that my paternal grandfather was one such sufferer, but he died before I was born, and it was one of those things that the family never talked about. 

CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) may seem like a relatively modern form of psychotherapeutic treatment, but it’s been around in some form since the work of behaviourist John B. Watson in 1913 and became popular through advances made by Albert Ellis (with REBT in the 1950’s) and Aaron T. Beck in the 1960’s.

As so many people keep saying, “These are unprecedented times” and many of us are navigating through a lot of change and uncertainty at the moment. How well we cope with all this heavily depends on our emotional resilience, which in turn relies on us adequately fulfilling our primal needs.

This may seem like a sensational tabloid headline, and I don’t mean that one day you will probably wind someone up so much that they will murder you (although this could happen) – this is about risks to your health and well-being.