Over the weekend we have added a new series of Self Help and Information booklets. These have been published by L-PIN, the Lothian Psychological Interventions Network.

The booklets were originally produced by Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Trust a few years ago. They have been brought up to date and local contacts and resources have been added.

Although primarily written with a Lothian bias, the booklets will be useful to anyone with an interest.

Find them on our site by clicking this link or navigating to our Self Help Leaflets section under the Resources heading.

We are now heading towards the Christmas break and historically this has been a surprisingly quiet time for the group work service.  In the past we have continued to run a group or two through the holidays but this has never been a successful tactic.

This year we are going to take a couple of weeks break whilst the schools are off.  This means that there will be no groups the weeks of the 22nd and 29th December 2008.  Our programme will resume on Monday 5th January 2009.  There will be new groups starting shortly after the New Year so we will publish a new Timetable as soon as possible.

After reporting an imminent change of management in the newly formed CMHT.  We can now report that this will not happen…..just yet!

David Haldane’s secondment as Clinical Services Development Manger (CSDM) to the new Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) will come to and end in the first half of the new year.  Hopefully this will allow the new team to settle in before we experience even more change.

The new team launch seems to have been successful and the new teams have fitted into their role.  Obviously it’s early days and some parts of the service have experienced more change than others.  However, other than a few minor procedural hic-ups, there is nothing exciting to report!

The NHS Choices website has reported on a Mindfulness story from the Daily Mail in their weekly round up.  The article gives a concise description of what Mindfulness is plus an explanation of the science involved.  There is some critism of the way a recent research article was reported.  This appears to be fair since there were reports of Mindfulness being ‘As good as medication’ and there were comparisons made with Buddist Meditation.

The study referred to does not directly test the efficacy of Mindfulness compared to medication.  It looked at relapse rates and compared the use of Mindfulness along with medication.  The results showed that people treated with Mindfulness were less likely to relapse compared to people that had only been treated with tablets.

Although Mindfulness uses Meditative techniques, it does not have any particular links to religion.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/12December/Pages/Meditationanddepression.asp

The BBC published an article at the beginning of the week reporting the benefits of Mindfulness groups in treating Depression.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7754632.stm

The study they report on claims that Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, taught as part of a group programme, is as effective as prescription medication.

We first trialed Mindfulness at Soutra a couple of years ago.  We’ve had very successful results and have run the groups a number of times since.  It is certainly a group that will be on the Psychotherapy timetable in the new year.