All in the Mind

Is it possible to take the guesswork out of the prescription of medication for psychosis? Medication is available for the distressing experiences of hallucinations or delusions, but anti-psychotics only work for about three quarters of people and psychiatrists currently have no good way of working out who those people are. New research at Kings College London is trialling a type of scan that's been around for some time - a PET scan - but using it in a new way to detect whether a person's brain has an overactive dopamine system which might be able to predict which drugs will work. Claudia Hammond talks to Oliver Howes, Professor of Molecular Psychiatry, King's College London and Sameer Jauhar, Senior Research Fellow, King's College London who've been conducting this game changing research.

We hear from the latest finalist in the All in the Mind Awards - someone who knows just what it's like to struggle for many years with mental health issues and to deal with some of worst things that can happen in life. Douglas, who's had to deal with a combination of physical and mental pain, nominated his GP Jens Foell for an award in the Professional category.

What type of personality dictates whether we're prepared to stand up to someone dropping litter, chatting during a movie or more serious transgressions such as verbal abuse? It takes a certain type of person to say something, rather than to sit there and fume. So who is the most likely to stand up to anti-social behaviour? Markus Brauer, who's Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, has been investigating just that. How did he go about it?

Claudia Hammond visits the RHS Feel Good Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. The garden is part of the 70th birthday celebrations for the NHS and was proposed by occupational therapist Andrew Kingston and designed by Matt Keightley. It highlights the benefits of gardening for mental health. After the show the garden will be replanted in the grounds of a hospital in Archway.

Michael Scullin is Director of the Sleep, Neuroscience and Cognition Lab at Baylor University in the US and he has a useful suggestion to alleviate exam stress.

All in the Mind awards, this week the finalist is Fiona Sadler a pastoral support advisor at a primary school in Norfolk. Fiona was nominated by Stephanie because of all the support she has shown over the years. They first became friends when Fiona found a note in Steph's son's school bag.

Post Olympic Blues. Dr Mathijs Luccassen from the Open University reports on the difficulties athletes face when they return from the Olympics.

Claudia hears from Fiona who nominated the nurse who gave her treatment for bladder cancer for the 2018 All in the Mind Awards. Fiona explains why her experience of childhood trauma re-surfaced when she realised what her treatment for bladder cancer would involve. And why nurse Tanya went the extra mile to manage her anxieties and make the treatment as trauma free as possible. Also in the programme for people who find it difficult to drop off at night, how does writing a to-do list help? Michael Scullin from Baylor University explains. Studio guest, Professor Daryl O'Connor from the University of Leeds talks about the relationship between conscientiousness and stress. And,is yawning really as contagious as we think it is, or does it depend on who is doing the yawning? John Drury from Sussex University talks about his latest research.

Claudia Hammond's guest is University of Cambridge clinical psychologist Tim Dalgleish

The vision of autonomous vehicles on our roads is becoming a reality, but in order for driverless cars to succeed, not only does the technology need to be faultless, but it's essential they can interact with pedestrians safely. So we need to know more about how pedestrians deal with the cars. Claudia Hammond takes a driverless ride with Prof Ed Galea of the University of Greenwich who's just conducted a trail to assess the detailed response of other road users.

Some of us are much more likely to take risks than others. One way of spotting the risk-takers is to look at how they behave, but do our brains hold clues as well. Joe Kable, Associate Professor of Psychology at the university of Pennsylvania, has unravelled the system in the brain that could help predict the degrees of risk we're prepared to take.

And Claudia meets the third of the nine finalists for the All in the Mind Awards 2018. We hear from Maddie, a professional actor- nominated by her childhood friend and now health economist Stephanie.

How do our minds view policies that we don't really like, once they become a reality? New research shows that once they actually take place, our mind set changes - and surprisingly we stop minding quite as much. So have we been overestimating the amount of opposition to new initiatives? Kristin Lauren from the University of British Columbia has found that we rationalise the things we feel stuck with.

There's been much research on the link between exercise and depression, but to what extent does exercise prevent depression, rather than help with it? An international team including Brendon Stubbs, a post-doctoral research physiotherapist at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, has identified 49 studies from around the world which followed non-depressed people for an average of seven years asking them how much exercise they did. The results are striking.

And Claudia meets the second of the nine finalists for the All in the Mind Awards 2018. We hear from Nathan who's nominated Judith, a counsellor at the Oxfordshire Association for the Blind who has played a huge role in addressing Nathan's mental health issues since his sight began to decline.

In the first of a new series Claudia Hammond meets the first of the nine finalists for the All in the Mind Awards 2018. We hear from Helen who nominated Sarah's Runners, a running group in Tunbridge Wells who helped her after her husband took his own life when she was pregnant with their second child. The group meets twice a week and their ethos is far from personal bests on the track but all about people being included and getting the best they can from exercise. Claudia goes running with Helen and finds out why Sarah and the group have been such a huge support to her after her bereavement. Catherine Loveday explains how running helps with improving mood and even cognitive function. Also in the programme, Claudia talks to Professor Coral Dando about research published this week showing that eye witnesses recalled more information more accurately when interviewed by an avatar in a virtual reality environment rather than a real person. So why do the social pressures of an interview with a human impact on our ability to recall events in the past? Have you ever felt 'Gigil'? It's a Tagalog word meaning 'to want to squeeze or pinch someone because you cherish them so much. Claudia talks to Tim Lomas about his lexicon of 'untranslatable words' related to wellbeing from other languages which can't easily be translated into English. Catherine Loveday discusses a new way of understanding how different parts of the brain communicate: brain entropy. What is it and why might caffeine increase it.

All in the Mind: The Loneliness Experiment launches the world's largest ever survey of its kind on loneliness.

The Loneliness Experiment, devised by Professor Pamela Qualter and colleagues, aims to look at causes and possible solutions to loneliness. And we want as many people as possible to fill in our survey, even if they've never felt lonely, because we want to know what stops people feeling lonely, so that more of us can feel connected. To launch the Experiment Claudia Hammond is joined by Olivia Laing, author of Lonely City, and psychology professor, Pamela Qualter, an expert in loneliness in young people.

Building on the success of 2016's Rest Test, which was the largest global survey on rest, Radio 4 will explore the topic of loneliness in a further collaboration with the Wellcome Collection.

Claudia finds out what can be done to help children whose parents have a mental illness and who may end up becoming their carers. She talks to Kiera and Ambeya who have lived with their parents' depression and schizophrenia and she meets Alan Cooklin, the founder of Kidstime, a charity which aims to support families where one or more parent has a mental illness.

Claudia talks to the psychologist who finds out why our perceptions of the amount of exercise we do can change its health benefits. And Dame Kelly Holmes is one of the judges for the All in the Mind Awards. She talks about the mental health struggles she faced just months before winning two gold Olympic medals. She explains why it was so hard to talk about her feelings at the time and why she believes it's so important people are more open about their own mental health difficulties. Also another awards judge, Mandy Stevens, explains how to do square breathing and why it's such a good technique to help tackle anxiety and panic attacks.

How good is your intuition - those hunches you follow because you're convinced you're right? Alas, if you think you're good at it, evidence shows you're probably not. Claudia Hammond hears the latest research from Dr Mario Weick from the University of Kent

There's still time for you to enter the 2018 All in the Mind Awards. This is your chance to nominate someone who's made a difference to your mental health. You could nominate a group or project or maybe a friend, a therapist, a partner, a nurse - anyone who's really been there for you. We hear from GP Daniel Dietch - one of last year's finalists on the impact being nominated had on him after being put forward by a patient with bi-polar disorder.

Medication taken by some people with psychosis or schizophrenia is designed to reduce delusions and hallucinations. What it doesn't tackle are the additional problems with memory and decision-making. Claudia Hammond meets Dr Natasza Orlov of Kings College London who's been trialling mild electrical stimulation to the brain aimed specifically at these symptoms. Could it improve everyone else's memory as well?

And we catch up on what's happened to the very first high flying graduates we've been following who've been fast- tracked into mental health social work.

Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Claudia Hammond finds out why films are being made of residents of a care home in South West London. They all have dementia and the story of their lives is told through photos, interviews and music and their beneficial effects are being studied in a small NHS trial. Claudia meets 92 year old May and her daughter, Valerie to find out what the film has done for her and why this kind of reminiscence therapy is so effective. Claudia talks to psychologist John Bargh about the power of the unconscious mind, why sad music makes people spend more and how we can use our unconscious mind's susceptibility to our own advantage. And why a community organisation in Tyne and Wear called Citizens UK has brought together people from schools, mosques, churches, politicians and the NHS to ask what their top priority should be. Find out why they all voted for mental health and what they're going to do about it. Psychologist Dr Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster also explains why just believing that you do less exercise than your friends is likely to make you die earlier even if it's not true and a she discusses a recent study investigating the therapists' habits that most annoy their clients.