Who will sponsor mental health research?

The good thing about blogging on mental health is that everyone looks out for topics for you! Last week a colleague told me about a new mental health research charity – it’s called MQ and wants to be “the Cancer Research UK of mental health research.” The Wellcome Trust has pledged £20 million to pump prime the charity’s activities, and the first MQ Fellows programme has been announced. 

Many people seem to be aware of the huge amounts of research work being done by cancer and heart charities into their specific areas of interest (let’s face it, we have either walked ourselves or sponsored family & friends to raise funds), but what about mental distress? There seem to be so many unanswered questions (not least those recently debated here about the validity of a mental health diagnosis), so surely there would be a corresponding numbers of projects?

Well, according to the Mental Health Foundation – “Mental Health Research investment is disproportionately low in relation to the relevant disease burden.” 

The charity Mental Health Research UK  has an innovative idea – but it too depends on a sponsor. One of the co-founders of the charity, “the first UK charity dedicated to raising funds for research into mental illnesses, their causes and cures,” has set up a fundraising blog called The Backpacking Barrister. Lawyer Dr Laura Davidson is currently working in Rwanda, “assisting the government with its mental health policy and legislation.” She writes powerfully from her experiences as a lawyer about her motivation for setting up the charity and the blog, describing a British system “of trial and error…. and legislation which permits the forcible medication of those detained in psychiatric hospitals means patients often feel like guinea pigs.”

The MHRUK website has links to the research projects that the charity has funded, including “Development and evaluation of an online intervention for the treatment of depression in university students” by Bethan Davies at Nottingham University.

What areas would you like to see new research focus on? Maybe if we had some good ideas we could pass them on to that new charity MQ and they could start spending the £20 million....? 

Blue Monday

Going on the amount of snow heaped up on the roofs outside my office window, today should be called White Monday rather than Blue Monday. But apparently the Monday in the last full week of January is now known as Blue Monday - the day out of all 365 (or 366 in a leap year) which is supposedly the most depressing of the year. Not just because we are laid low by the bad weather, post-Xmas debt, and possibly the size of our waist-lines following a bit of seasonal binging, but because of a complicated equation devised by a certain Dr Cliff Arnall (formally a tutor at Cardiff University psychology department) a few year ago. 

You can find out more about that here.

Personally I don't do maths (well only in a pathetic finger-counting rubbish sort of way), so equations are out for me. But really, is mid - late January each year really so much more depressing for people than any other time of year? And are the factors quoted in the equation likely to affect most of the population in this same way at this same time each year?

At The Guardian Dean Burnett calls it a "depressing day of nonsense science (again)".

On a more serious note, for those people that experience SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) then any day with low light at this time of year could potentially be challenging. There is more information about SAD here. Mental Health Research UK is running a campaign called Blooming Monday to encourage people to dress more brightly to raise awareness about SAD. (There is a bright blue streak in my otherwise purple scarf if that counts....)

But back to Blue Monday. All kinds of organisations have taken advantage of the media hype to promote their own ways of overcoming the blues of this particular January Monday. If a man in blue lycra takes your fancy, then there's even a video: