All in the Mind

People with severe mental disorders are at much greater risk of dying prematurely compared to the general population. How much are the drugs for some mental illnesses contributing to their risk of disease? Anti psychotic drugs can cause people to rapidly put weight on and increase the risk of developing conditions like heart disease and diabetes. Claudia talks to psychiatrist, Dr Alex Mitchell about whether psychiatrists are doing enough to monitor these potentially health threatening side effects in their patients and what needs to be done.

Can bad eating habits be changed just by changing the hand you use to eat? New research on cinema going popcorn eaters has found that these kind of strategies could be a very effective way of disrupting the brain processes in habitual behaviour. Dr David Neal from the University of Southern California explains.

Also in the programme marine, Jess Goodell talks about about her role in Mortuary Affairs in the US Marines. Her job was to recover the remains of soldiers in Iraq so they could be returned to the US. She talks about the psychological impact of retrieving bodies often in the aftermath of Improvised Explosive Devices. In her training she was told "PTSD is real - like 'flu." She discusses the reality of living with PTSD and how she dealt with the nightmares and depression on returning home to civilian life.

What makes somebody become an arsonist ? Every week in England and Wales sixty five people are either killed or injured by somebody who has deliberately started a fire. But surprisingly little is known about the different kinds of arsonists, apart from the worrying fact that once they've shown an interest in fire, they then tend to carry on risking life and property by starting more. Claudia Hammond talks to one of the leading experts in the field, Dr Theresa Gannon from the University of Kent. Dr Gannon's research is aiming to fill the gaps in our knowledge about arsonists - mostly men - and from this develop the country's first treatment programme.

All In The Mind is given unique access to the country's first peer to peer parenting group, designed to reduce long term mental health problems of children. Piloted in South London, 400 parents have already completed the course, and Dr Crispin Day from the Institute of Psychiatry, tells Claudia Hammond about the results of this unique new approach to early intervention and talks about the possibility of a national roll out.

The brothers and sisters of people with autism show a similar pattern of brain activity to their siblings when they're looking at emotional facial expressions. Dr Michael Spencer from the University of Cambridge's Autism Research Centre, led the study, published today. He tells Claudia Hammond that his team have identified reduced activity in a part of the brain associated with empathy and argue it may be a 'biomarker' for a familial risk of autism.

New research from the only NHS funded clinic to treat pathological gamblers is the first of its kind to study the psychological profile of UK gamblers. Claudia finds out about the results of their new study into the links between impulsivity and irrational beliefs, superstition and ritual and why some people may go on to become problem gamblers while others don't. Dr Luke Clark from Cambridge University explains.

Gardening for Mental Health:

The Power of Metaphor:

Nobody knows exactly how many people experience mental illness in Hong Kong, but as this former British colony undertakes its first-ever survey of mental health, it's widely believed that rates will match every other developed, industrialised country.

And when that data comes in, as Claudia Hammond reports in a special All In The Mind from Hong Kong, the gaps in mental health care will be exposed.

For years, the reality of mental illness in Hong Kong has remained hidden: a combination of shame, stigma and denial. Claudia hears from those who have experienced mental distress about the discrimination they suffer, and talks to mental health campaigners and professionals about the urgent need to expand and modernise the service to meet the soaring demand for mental health care.

Producer: Fiona Hill.

What exactly is stress and how does it affect our mental health? In collaboration with BBC Lab UK, this week's All in the Mind is launching a pioneering online scientific experiment to test the nation's mental health and well being. Complete the test online and you can get personalised feedback about your own levels of stress, your coping strategies and tips on how to manage stress. Peter Kinderman, clinical psychologist at the University of Liverpool explains how the experiment will help us understand the causes of mental health problems like anxiety and depression.

Also in the programme - Angela Clow from the University of Westminster unravels the way the physical effects of chronic stress can hijack the very sensitive workings of the brain to cause long term effects on our mental well being. Also in the programme Mark Williams from the University of Oxford offers practical tips on the techniques of mindfulness and he explains why changing your awareness of your body and surroundings has proven effects on tackling depression and anxiety and can ward off the possible effects of stress.

Siblings with mental health problems - while parents often care for young people with mental health problems it can also raise issues for their siblings. They might have fears for their own mental health or worry about the change in their relationship to their brother or sister. How easy is it to share worries about your own mental health if you feel it's minor in comparison to your brother or sister? And what of the future and the responsibilities you may one day inherit from your parents. The mental health charity, Rethink has launched a new website where siblings can not only get information, but can also share experiences with one another. Lorraine and Olivia share their experiences with Claudia.

Is there a way we all grieve? The five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance were proposed more than forty years ago by the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and are now taught across the world, But with little evidence that these stages are what people really experience when they are bereaved - how did they become so popular and what research has been done into the process of grief.

Predicting the future - why expert forecasters aren't very good at it but we believe them anyway. Why did so many economists not foresee the financial crisis in 2008? But are experts in their field actually better at predicting future events? Psychologists have found experts are often as accurate as chance yet we consistently ask them to predict the future. Claudia is joined by author Dan Gardner and by psychologist Dylan Evans to discuss the reasons why expert predictions fail but why we are still attracted to those who predict confidently even if they end up being spectacularly wrong. Could it all be down to a human aversion to uncertainty?

Compassion for our fellow human beings is something that's long been taught by different faiths and traditions. But could it be used as a tool within therapy to improve mental health? There's a growing interest in compassion-focussed therapy - both for other people and for oneself. It has its roots in the understanding of how the brain evolved. At the moment it is being used most often with people from neglectful or abusive backgrounds. Professor Paul Gilbert, who's the Director of the Mental Health Research Unit at Derbyshire Mental Health Trust and one of his patients - "Jo" - explain what's involved.

Could a "junk food" adverts watershed help in the battle against childhood obesity? Since 2009 there's been a ban on adverts for junk food during children's TV programmes and on dedicated children's channels. But advertisements for high fat, salt or sugar foods are still allowed during programmes like soap operas - which families often watch together. At a conference in London this week - "Marketing to Children: Implications for Obesity", Dr Emma Boyland is calling for a 9pm watershed on such adverts to help reduce their influence on children. She explains the psychological responses of children to such advertising in her study in primary schools.

Magicians persuade their audiences that their eyes are indeed deceiving them - when they dazzle with disappearing rabbits and great feats of memory. But can our knowledge of the brain teach a magician a thing or two? A husband and wife team of neuroscientists from the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona - Susanna Martinez Conde and Stephen Macknik - have written a book "Sleights of Mind", explaining how magicians can make the mind work against you.

This week: the exclusive results of new research on the emotional, physical and sexual violence happening in teenage relationships.

Two years ago Christine Barter, the NSPCC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, published a research on how teenage boyfriends and girlfriends treat one other. Nearly three quarters of girls and half of boys reported some form of emotional bullying by their partners, while one in three girls reported some form of sexual violence. This week she discusses exclusively on All in the Mind her new research which focuses on young people not in full-time education who weren't covered by the original study. Also in the programme, two young women who've been helped by the youth charity, Fairbridge to help overcome abuse by their ex-boyfriends discuss their experiences.

Most of us forget much of what happens to us in everyday life - which is why lists, photographs, memos and reminders are an important part of life. A newly-discovered group of people have an extraordinary capacity to remember nearly everything that's ever happened to them, however trivial. Scientists at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine have dubbed this skill "superior autobiographical memory". They are studying ten exceptional individuals who can recall nearly every experience, however minor, to work how come they don't - or can't - forget. Dr James McGaugh is leading the team and explains why he thinks this could change the whole way we think about memory.

Can mess encourage racism? New research by Dutch researchers has found that in a messy and disordered environments people think more in stereotypes and even racist thinking. Claudia Hammond speaks to Professor Siegwart Lindenberg, a social scientist at Tilburg University in Holland, who also explains how the experiment examined unconscious negative responses to race too. In a messy railway station, people sat on average further from a black person than a white one, whereas in the clean station there was no statistical difference. What implications does this research have for social policy and keeping areas prone to racial violence tidy?

Sport and one man's win is another's despair. How we bounce back from defeat is a matter of huge psychological debate. Claudia speaks to Dr Tim Rees from Exeter University who has co-authored a recent paper examining the influence of different feedback on improving performance. The research (in which the participants played darts, blindfolded) found that when positive feedback to failure put the emphasis on change being within your control, there was significant improvement in performance.

From psychiatric ward to Psychiatric Tales. Darryl Cunningham's interest in mental health because of his own problems, led him to work in that field too. Although he found he was not quite cut out for such a stressful job, he tells Claudia how he's turned a diary from that time into a published book of comic strips.

Thousands of people across the world who survive devastating earthquakes are living with the trauma of the disaster compounded by the experiences of aftershocks. Claudia Hammond talks to Metin Basoglu, a psychiatrist who has developed a method of mass psychological treatment for survivors of disasters like these, based on his research with over 10,000 people who lived through the Turkish earthquake of 1999. Could a single session of this kind of therapy really make a difference?

How strong is the placebo effect? Can sugar pills make you feel better even when you know that's exactly what they are? Claudia talks to Ted Kaptchuk from Harvard University about his findings that for people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, knowingly taking a placebo pill twice a day improved their symptoms. But is it the placebo or the ritual that surrounds taking it?

Professor Irene Tracey, pain researcher at Oxford University, says the power of placebo is all about manipulating expectation of the person taking it. She believes this research still required deception. Her research on pain and the brain had led her to suggest that rather than using placebo, changing people's expectations of active drugs could be medically beneficial.

Also - why to read someone else's emotion your own face needs to minutely mimic their facial expressions. When the brain gets feedback from the face it gets information on what that person is feeling. And why Botox, which paralyses those muscles reduces the ability to understand emotion.