While depression and anxiety are often considered to be “diseases” of the affluent, new studies find them to be just as common in poorer countries. Can a Western model of interpreting and treating mental distress be applied to other cultures?
The issue of self-harm is gaining a higher profile, in the UK at least, but it still remains to some extent a hidden and misunderstood problem, as evidenced by the stereotype of a teenage girl cutting her arms in a dark bedroom.
Finding, cultivating, even celebrating an ability to accept ourselves in all our messy imperfection is a major element of counselling. The idea of the perfect counsellor is one which we need to dispel, rather than apologising for not living up to it.
Something about this article rubs me up the wrong way — maybe it’s the title itself, “Master your emotions”. The cheerful, practical, common sense tone reinforces the idea that we are messy souls who need keeping in line, and who need to enforce a certain wholesome discipline for our own good. It sounds as if an adult is taking charge of a child.
Our capacity for rational behaviour may stem from an ability to override automatic emotional responses, according to researchers at the University College London Institute of Neurology. The research is the latest in a long series of results from different fields that turn upside down traditional theories about human beings as basically rational creatures.
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