mental wellbeing

Study on the “ABCs of Mental Health” finds that simply believing you can improve mental wellbeing helps actually improve it

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The num­ber of peo­ple strug­gling with poor men­tal health and men­tal dis­or­ders has been ris­ing around the world over the past few decades. Those who are strug­gling are increas­ing­ly fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties access­ing the kind of sup­port they need – leav­ing many wait­ing months for help, if they even qual­i­fy for treatment.

While it’s clear that more needs to be done to improve access to treat­ment, it doesn’t mean peo­ple inevitably have to strug­gle with their men­tal health as a result. In fact, there are many things peo­ple can do on their own to main­tain good men­tal health – and even pre­vent men­tal health prob­lems from devel­op­ing in the first place. Accord­ing to our recent research, one of the steps you can take to improve your men­tal well­be­ing may be as sim­ple as believ­ing that you can.

In our recent study, we asked 3,015 Dan­ish adults to fill out a sur­vey that asked ques­tions about men­tal health – such as whether they believe they can do some­thing to keep men­tal­ly healthy, whether they had done some­thing in the past two weeks to sup­port their men­tal health, and also whether they were cur­rent­ly strug­gling with a men­tal health prob­lem. We then assessed their lev­el of men­tal well­be­ing using the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Men­tal Well-being Scale, which is wide­ly used by health­care pro­fes­sion­als and researchers to mea­sure men­tal well­be­ing. [Read more…] about Study on the “ABCs of Men­tal Health” finds that sim­ply believ­ing you can improve men­tal well­be­ing helps actu­al­ly improve it

Study finds ultimate hack to protect teen brains from harmful screen time: Exercise (and good role-modeling)

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Recent­ly, the Wall Street Jour­nal ran an arti­cle about how Insta­gram was affect­ing teen men­tal health. In par­tic­u­lar, some inter­nal stud­ies at Face­book (which owns Insta­gram) appeared to con­firm that when teen girls used the site, they suf­fered poor­er body image and were at increased risk for depres­sion and eat­ing disorders.

But is social media use itself at fault for mak­ing teen men­tal health worse? While some stud­ies sug­gest it is, oth­ers paint a more nuanced pic­ture, find­ing it dif­fi­cult to pin­point prob­lems with screen time itself ver­sus oth­er fac­tors some­times asso­ci­at­ed with social media use that may reduce teen well-being—like cyber­bul­ly­ing or social iso­la­tion. Plus, cur­rent con­clu­sions are often based on data from a sin­gle point in time, which makes it hard to prove that extend­ed screen time actu­al­ly caus­es poor­er men­tal health.

Now, find­ings from an inter­na­tion­al study on teens (details below) add more to this debate and point toward poten­tial guide­lines for screen use. Focus­ing on over 577,000 ado­les­cents from 42 coun­tries across Europe and North Amer­i­ca, the study’s results sug­gest that we might not have to wor­ry about screen time in small­er dos­es, until it reach­es a cer­tain harm­ful lev­el, and that exer­cise can play a pro­tec­tive role no mat­ter how much time a teen spends on screens. [Read more…] about Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-modeling)

Study: Higher mental wellbeing (in 2016) seen to lower healthcare costs (in 2017)

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There are many rea­sons why men­tal well­be­ing is impor­tant. Not only is it pro­tec­tive against phys­i­cal ill­ness­es and linked to greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, but the men­tal well­be­ing of a pop­u­la­tion is essen­tial for a country’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty, long-term growth and development.

But despite the clear ben­e­fits, gov­ern­ments tend to focus pub­lic spend­ing on treat­ing and pre­vent­ing dis­ease, and pro­vid­ing care for those who are ill. While this is impor­tant and should con­tin­ue to be pri­ori­tised, such strate­gies alone won’t increase lev­els of men­tal well­be­ing overall.

Not only would enhanc­ing men­tal well­be­ing across all seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion lead to bet­ter health on aver­age, it would also be ben­e­fi­cial from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive. [Read more…] about Study: High­er men­tal well­be­ing (in 2016) seen to low­er health­care costs (in 2017)

Tuesday April 28th, online: Explore strategies and tools to boost mental wellbeing during (and after) Covid-19

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Heads-up about a very time­ly vir­tu­al event next week.

When: Tues­day, April 28th, 9am — 6pm US Pacif­ic Time (San Fran­cis­co time zone)

Where: Online

What: Find Well­be­ing Dur­ing Covid19 — Dis­cov­er 200+ Free and Dis­count­ed Tools to help you find some relief and emerge even stronger

How: Learn More and Reg­is­ter HERE

Confirmed Speakers include:

[Read more…] about Tues­day April 28th, online: Explore strate­gies and tools to boost men­tal well­be­ing dur­ing (and after) Covid-19

Smart brains in action: 17 Sustainable Develoment Goals (SDGs) To Build A Better World

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SDGsYou may have already seen in the news that the U.N. Dreams Big: 17 Huge New Goals To Build A Bet­ter World (NPR):

“At the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly this week­end in New York, U.N. mem­ber states are set to adopt the new Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals. The goals are meant to guide devel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties around the globe over the next 15 years [Read more…] about Smart brains in action: 17 Sus­tain­able Devel­o­ment Goals (SDGs) To Build A Bet­ter World

Six New Speakers @ 2011 SharpBrains Summit

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We are proud to con­firm six addi­tion­al excel­lent Speak­ers at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (remem­ber, this is a ful­ly vir­tu­al event so it requires no trav­el). Three Speak­ers are based in the US, two in the UK, one in Aus­tralia, and they tru­ly rep­re­sent a range of per­spec­tives and exper­tise to dis­cuss, as the Sum­mit tagline promis­es, Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tu­ry. [Read more…] about Six New Speak­ers @ 2011 Sharp­Brains Summit