There is increasing interest and public concern about the relationship between diet and physical health. There has been less focus on the relationship between diet and behaviour and mental health. Despite this, there is some evidence of a relationship between breastfeeding and cognitive development, which may be genetically mediated and between hyperactivity and diet. In this podcast, Dr Margaret Murphy talks to Dr Simon Moore about the present study which uses a longitudinal design to explore the relationship between confectionary consumption in childhood and adult aggression.

In this podcast, Professor Simon Gowers gives an overview of the different psychological therapies available for children and adolescents with eating disorders, discussing in some detail family therapy, interpersonal therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.

Professor Shôn Lewis discusses the latest on prodromal psychosis.

In this telephone interview, Dr David Klonsky discusses self-harm; non-suicidal self-injury, outlining what we mean by self-harm, its prevalence and discussing ways of making an assessment and assessing severity.

In this podcast, Professor Michael King describes the first risk algorithm for major depression that he and colleagues have recently developed, modelled along the lines of risk algorithms for cardiac disease and other illnesses.

In this telephone interview, Dr Rose McCabe discusses the importance of communication for the therapeutic relationship, the role of communication among non-specific effects and she describes how we can go about improving communication in the therapeutic setting as a means to improving patient outcome.

Dr Amy Iversen talks on the topical subject of mentoring, highlighting the value it can bring to both mentee and mentor. Speaking from personal experience, she advises on the issues to bear in mind when setting up a mentoring programme; highlights qualities which make for a good mentor; and describes typical problems to occur. Discussing evidence to support mentoring she also emphasises the need for further research if we are to take mentoring forward in medicine.

In this podcast, Dr Daniel Freeman gives an introduction to the cognitive behavioural approach for dealing with paranoid thoughts.

In this telephone interview, Dr Matthew Nock discusses the clinical assessment of suicide ideation and behaviour, and raises some of the problems faced by clinicians in this challenging field. He discusses in detail the development of a test known as the implicit association test which may be used in the future to help measure suicide risk without the need to rely on a patient’s self report. Talking about the common mistakes made by clinicians during clinical interview he also flags the importance of understanding a patient’s motivation and the need for clinicians to continue to develop predictive skills in assessing what is otherwise considered relatively unpredictable behaviour.

In this podcast Martin Bohus gives an overview of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), explaining the condition in terms of its features and symptoms, and describing a number of psychological treatments available including that of his own specialty, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. He also addresses the limited evidence for medical treatments. He discusses theories of aetiology including links with genetics and childhood physical traumatisation.