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BBC Radio 4


The show on how we think, feel and behave. Claudia Hammond delves into the evidence on mental health, psychology and neuroscience.


All in the Mind

In the first of two special holiday episodes, Claudia Hammond and an expert panel of psychologists look back, nostalgically. 

At this festive time of year, you might be thinking wistfully about Christmas past – perhaps you’ll be rewatching old films, arguing over a game of Monopoly, or listening to Christmas music that drives you mad. Maybe you are looking back with rose-tinted spectacles on the Christmases gone by that seem somehow more magical than they are now. Or perhaps it’s hard to look back without feeling a tinge of sadness. Whether you fall on the more bitter or more sweet side of bittersweet, this is the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. And it is particularly rife at this time of year.

But nostalgia wasn't always just a feeling. Historian Agnes Arnold Forster tells Claudia and the panel that once it was viewed as a disease so deadly that it appeared on thousands of death certificates. And now this poignant emotion stirs political action, bonds us to others, and guides our very understanding of ourselves.

Peter Olusoga, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Sheffield Hallam University, Daryl O’Connor, Professor of Psychology at the University of Leeds, and Catherine Loveday, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Westminster, join Claudia in the studio to discuss how leaning into nostalgia can help us feel better, reduce pain and even inject a bit of romance into life.

Presenter: Claudia Hammond
Producer: Lorna Stewart
Content Editor: Holly Squire
Studio Manager: Emma Harth

The Psychology of Nostalgia

In the second of two special holiday episodes Claudia Hammond and an expert panel of psychologists look to the future. 

A new year is upon us, a time when we often find ourselves reflecting on the year gone by and thinking about what comes next. Thinking about the future comes so naturally to most people that we don't realise what a complicated - and essential - skill it is. 

Catherine Loveday, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Westminster, explains how our ability to mentally time travel into the future is useful for everyday tasks as well as fundamental to shaping our identity.

Daryl O’Connor, Professor of Psychology at the University of Leeds, discusses how thinking about the future motivates us in the present.

And Peter Olusoga, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Sheffield Hallam University, describes how professional sportspeople use visualisation and future thinking to improve sporting success - and what the rest of us can learn from that.

Together they discuss how we hold ideas of the future in mind, whether unbounded optimism is the best way ahead – or not, and how to science-proof our favourite future planning at this time of year - new year's resolutions.

If you are suffering distress or despair and need support, including urgent support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Presenter: Claudia Hammond
Producer: Lorna Stewart
Content Editor: Holly Squire
Studio Manager: Emma Harth
Production Co-ordinators: Siobhan Maguire and Andrew Rhys Lewis

Future Thinking

A new series of All in the Mind kicks off with the first of the finalists in the All in the Mind Awards. Seven hundred of you entered the awards and our judging panel had the tricky task of choosing just nine finalists. The first of those is Rachel who was nominated by her husband Sam for all the support she offered him through his depression and psychosis. They tell Claudia Hammond their story.

And in the studio with Claudia is Daryl O'Connor, Professor of Psychology at the University of Leeds. He's got research about a new approach to persuading people with psychosis to look for and accept psychological support. 

And Claudia speaks to psychotherapist Sophie Scott about how to persuade a loved one to get professional help when they don't want to.

And finally, new research showing that the psychological benefits of a holiday last longer than you think - but only if you really do switch off from work. And you can make them last even longer by being active on holiday rather than flopping by the pool every day. Daryl and Claudia discuss.

Presenter: Claudia Hammond,
Producer: Lorna Stewart
Studio Manager: Sue Maillot
Programme Coordintator: Siobhan Maguire
Content Editor: Holly Squire

How to help someone who doesn’t want help, and well-being benefits of holidays

You’ve probably heard the term ADHD – or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – more and more in recent years. Almost 200,000 of you are waiting for a diagnosis and services are struggling to keep up with the demand. Last year twenty four different services told BBC Verify that it would take them eight years to get to everyone on their waiting lists. Now the NHS in England is setting up a taskforce to look at ADHD diagnoses.

In this special programme on Adult ADHD, Claudia Hammond and guests ask how did we get to this point, and what can be done to shorten the waiting lists and to make sure people get a timely diagnosis if they need one? 

Claudia's guests are: Robin Ince - stand-up comedian and science presenter who recently received his own diagnosis of ADHD as an adult; Dr Jessica Eccles - a psychiatrist who does assessments for ADHD and has ADHD herself; and Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan - a neurologist who says we should be more careful about who receives a diagnosis.

Producer: Lorna Stewart

Adult ADHD: Why are waiting lists for diagnoses so long?

Are you ok? 

It’s a question that might be at the front of your mind during a traumatic event. But how helpful is it and can it even make matters worse? We answer a very intriguing listener question. 

And in the studio with Claudia is Catherine Loveday, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, who’s excited about a study that has uncovered a fascinating way of measuring just how precise our memory is. Clue: It’s all about the eyes. 

We also reveal the latest finalist in the All in the Mind awards. This week it's Dr Rajeev Kumar who was nominated by Holly Batyka-Berry for his support through Holly's experiences of severe postnatal depression. 
 
The awards take place at the BBC Radio Theatre in London on 18 June and there is a ballot for free tickets which closes at midday on 31 May. You can enter online by going to www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/shows. 

If you’d like information on sources of support for post-natal depression do go to bbc.co.uk/actionline 

Presenter: Claudia Hammond 
Producer: Gerry Holt and Hannah Fisher 
Studio Manager: Bob Nettles 
Production Coordintator: Siobhan Maguire 
Content Editor: Glyn Tansley

Is ‘are you ok?’ a good question and how your eyes give away memory precision

John, an infantry officer for 19 years, was held up at gunpoint, bombed and saw friends and colleagues killed in action. He tells Claudia Hammond about the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that he suffered when he left the armed forces. And in the first-ever UK study of military personnel in a theatre of war, in Iraq, to test mental health, the military is revealed to have experienced less psychological distress than police or fire officers. One of the study's co-authors, Professor Simon Wessely, Director of the King's Centre for Military Health Research, describes the mental health lessons that are being being learned from the front line.

Antidepressants and Morality: 
Molly Crockett from the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge says how a particular group of anti depressants, SSRIs, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, have been found to increase morality by raising the levels of Serotonin in the brain. 

Community Treatment Orders:
Introduced two years ago to enable people with mental illness to leave hospital and continue their treatment at home, new figures show ten times more CTOs have been issued than original Department of Health predictions. Reka, who has a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, describes her experience of spending a year subject to a CTO, compelled to take injections of anti-psychotic medication which she says left her "like a zombie". Anthony Deary from the Care Quality Commission, Tony Maden, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry from Imperial College in London and Dr Tony Zigmond, mental health law lead for the Royal College of Psychiatrists discuss the reasons for the ballooning use of CTOs. 

Producer: Fiona Hill.

Battlefield Military Mental Health - Antidepressants and Morality - Community Treatment Orders

Psychologists at the University of Exeter have found that young offenders are two to three times as likely as everyone else to have had a head injury. 
Huw Williams, Associate Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at Exeter University spoke exclusively to Claudia Hammond about the implications of his study.

Twenty Four Hour Memory Loss:
A few years ago a film came out called 50 First Dates. It starred Drew Barrymore as a woman who had had a car accident which resulted in her losing her memory for the days' events every time she went to sleep. Now its happened in real life, a 48 year old woman asked Dr Christine Smith of the Department of Psychiatry at University of California San Diego for help. Dr Smith's account of this unusual case study has been published in the journal Neuropsychologia. 

How to Stop Worrying: 
Ad Kerkhof is a clinical psychologist at VU University in Amsterdam. He written a book aimed at any of us who worry, explaining how we can train ourselves to stop worrying.

Young Offenders - Twenty Four Hour Memory Loss - Worrying

Forensic Science, Psychology and Human Cognition: 
When the Oregon attorney, Brandon Mayfield, was arrested for the Madrid bombings six years ago, the FBI's fingerprint examiners claimed they were 100% sure that his fingerprints were on the bag containing detonators and explosives. But they were wrong. And this sensational error has drawn attention ever since, to the widely held, but erroneous belief, that fingerprint identification is infallible.
Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists have challenged forensic science as a whole to raise its game; and acknowledge that errors in fingerprinting and other forensic disciplines are inevitable because of the architecture of cognition and the way our brains process information. 

Claudia Hammond talks to Dr Itiel Dror, cognitive neuroscientist, whose groundbreaking studies first drew attention to the fact that individual forensic examiners can be swayed by context and affected by bias. Jim Fraser, Professor of Forensic Science from the University of Strathclyde and the Forensic Science Regulator for England and Wales, Andrew Rennison, discuss the steps being taken to amend procedures and protocols. 

Testosterone and City Traders: 
Dr John Coates used to work on Wall Street as a derivatives trader, and during the Dot Com bubble became convinced that he was witnessing hormone surges and slumps in his fellow traders that amounted to clinical levels. His subsequent research at the University of Cambridge has established the size of the changes in the naturally occurring steroids like testosterone and cortisol changes and he's now trying to demonstrate in the laboratory how these changes actually affect decision making and the willingness to take risks. 

The psychology of Would-be Suicide Bombers and Organisers of Suicide Missions:
In the first study of its kind, Ariel Merari, Professor of Psychology at Tel Aviv University, has analysed failed suicide bombers in prison in an attempt to establish what motivated them to volunteer to kill themselves, and others.

Producer: Fiona Hill.

Cognitive Psychology - Testosterone and City Traders - Suicide Bombers

Flashbacks are intrusive memories that can plague people after a traumatic incident. Now there's a possibility that playing certain kinds of computer games in the hours after the traumatic event could prevent images flashing back into the mind when they're not wanted. Emily Holmes at Oxford University wants to develop what she calls a cognitive vaccine. This would be used in the hours straight after an event - not as a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder, but to prevent disturbing memories from taking root.

Taste and Music:
Professor Charles Spence is the Head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory based at Oxford University and is investigating how the brain can match up sounds and tastes.
And one restaurant in Switzerland is making music a crucial part of the dining experience with specially-composed tunes accompanying each course. 

Therapeutic Design:
Most people with dementia want to stay in their own homes for as long as possible, provided they can cope. Researchers from Stirling University have found that the adoption of simple design tricks can extend that period at home. The university's Dementia Services Development Centre has designed a dementia-friendly home and Director Professor June Andrews told Claudia that it's all about trying to see a home from the point of view of the person with dementia.

Producer Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Preventing Flashbacks - Taste and Music - Therapeutic Design

John O'Donoghue's first admission to a psychiatric hospital came when he was 16 years old. He experienced the final days of the huge old asylums like Claybury and Friern Barnet well as ECT, homelessness and prison. He tells Claudia Hammond about how education turned his life around. He's a poet and now teaches creative writing. This year his memoir, Sectioned: A Life Interrupted, scooped the MIND Book of the Year prize. 

Digital Memories: 
When family members die, many of us inherit photos and maybe even old love letters. But in the digital age, with huge amounts of data stored on hard drives, servers and even in the cloud, how will our family members make sense of our digital legacy ? Dr Richard Banks and Dr Abigail Sellen from the Microsoft Research Laboratory at Cambridge University talk to Claudia Hammond about technology heirlooms, digital curation and the emotional importance of memories.

Mental Illness, fairness and the Work Capability Test: 
All In the Mind hears from Linda in Carlisle, Cumbria, who suffers from depression, panic attacks and agoraphobia but failed the new, compulsory medical assessment and lost her benefits. Sue Thomson from DACE, Disability Association Carlisle and Eden tells Claudia Hammond how her organisation is overwhelmed by the number of people who've been judged as being fit for work after the controversial new medical, but who want to appeal. And, in the wake of Professor Malcolm Harrington's critical report into the WCA, Jane Harris from Rethink calls for the mass migration of claimants on Incapacity Benefit onto the new benefit to be halted, until the current medical assessment can be judged as being fit for purpose.

Producer: Fiona Hill.

Is ‘are you ok?’ a good question and how your eyes give away memory precision

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