10,000 more clinical psychologists in UK?

I sit listening BBC radio over the internet, particularly Woman's Hour, when I am doing some repetitive task at work, washing the dishes or when the flat is too quiet without fiddle rehearsals of frantic reels and jigs. Usually it is a wonderful mix of ladies making jam and cakes for the village fair, intensely earnest discussions of women´s rights and blushing discussions of gynaecology and sexual technique! It blends up-beat recipes for sticky toffee pudding with perhaps a little too much negative news about the state of the world and male dominance in business.

Sad?

Today, I heard on trusty Radio 4 that there is a suggestion that clinical psychology centres for "talking therapies" may be opened across the UK, up to 125 centres, and 10,000 more clinical psychologists will be trained over the next 7 years. The decision will be made in October. This is interesting to me.. that cognitive behavioural therapy might become a mainstream approach to depression and many other psychological problems. Where on earth will the 10,000 psychologists come from?

Fallacies of thought

I wonder how this "talking therapy" could help people in Britain, and how it could change the UK. There is something more personal about life in Iceland where you can really focus on getting the best from life. A friend of mine recently who is also a foreigner here said that Iceland acts life a magnifying glass on his life and feelings .. when things are good they are really really good and when things are bad they are horrid! I think this is true .. but I´d add that it is possible to swing more quickly between these two states, that is more possible to get help out of those dark times and that particularly in the winter there is widespread, nationwide recognition that life is a little harder, more subdued and sometimes more sad in the darkness and it is easier to talk about it, easier to reach out a hand and help and to accept the hand of help.

The helping hand even drops by in unsuspected ways. In my first summer here I was living in a small flat about my landlord and landlady. I was homesick and sad being away from friends and was thinking of going back to Scotland. My landlord at that time started being woken around 3am by someone knocking at the door to his flat. Nobody apart from me and his wife could be knocking and his wife was asleep in bed. I knew nothing of it until later in the week. Each night he got up and went to the door but opened it to find nobody was there. He wasn´t scared, just puzzled, particularly since it occurred for a few nights in a row. Eventually he asked a friend who was in touch with spiritual issues about it and she told him it was me .. although I was sound asleep .. something, someone or some thought was alerting him to my distress. He promptly invited me to dinner and discussed meditation with me and I decided to stay!

There can be a fear of psychological problems, depression and sadness. The UK seems to thrive on shame of this.. on shame in general .. to distribute it widely.. single mothers, mental health problems .. I am so glad that shame is less popular here! Why is that?

I also wonder if the lifestyle in western Europe, particularly the UK is the problem? Is life so stressful and depression so prevalent all over the world? I love the idea of slow living, developed particularly in Italy along with the slow food phenomenon.. taking time to enjoy things, access good quality produce and skills from local sources rather than from the other side of the world, supporting small, local and creative businesses. But can we live in a slow way in the modern western world and still be able to earn enough to survive? To pay those high mortgage and rental prices? Wow, the property prices in Reykjavík are mad! Maybe the idea of slow living sounds lazy but isn´t it worth taking time to enjoy life?

Well, for those interested, the radio program I heard was called "All in the Mind". A good book that is not too glib and shallow is David Burns´"Feeling Good". If you look at the website, try to ignore the polished smiling face .. read the book instead. More on the slow movement is to be found in an article by the BBC, the slow food movement site and also Carl Honoré´s excellent, though sometimes repetitive book "The Art of Slow" and his website and blog.