Becky Appleton 
Adolescence and young adulthood is the period of peak onset of mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression or psychosis (Kessler et al, 2005). However, young people are also amongst the hardest to engage in treatment for their mental health (O’Brien et al, 2009). They may also struggle to access mental health services due to the … Read more
How are your New Year’s resolutions going so far? Did you even make any this year? We’re now 10 days in to 2019 and the chances are that a few of us are starting to rethink (or maybe just forget) our plans and goals for the year ahead. I’ve written before about how to stick … Read more
Hi everyone and Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great festive period and got some time off to relax and recharge. Although I took a bit of a break from posting, I have been working hard on something very cool, with the help of my amazing web designer Hugues (ehawebdesign.com) and logo … Read more
At this time of year it can be hard to avoid all the adverts and promotions telling us to buy more. With Black Friday, Christmas shopping and soon the January sales, it’s as though there’s more out there than ever trying to persuade us to part with our money. Adverts are also getting more sophisticated, … Read more
Why is it that we often have an uncontrollable urge to yawn when we see someone else yawning? It happens all the time, but most of us have no idea why we do it – it occurs completely automatically. Interestingly, this phenomenon doesn’t just occur in humans, it has been shown in primates too (Anderson … Read more
Back in September, the charities Mind and Heads Together launched a new initiative to raise awareness of mental health in the workplace. This was in the light of a recent Mind study, which found that 48% of people reported experiencing a mental health problem in their current workplace (Heads Together, 2018). The Stevenson/Farmer report (2017) … Read more
It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog post purely dedicated to neuroscience, so this week I thought I’d write about a part of the brain that doesn’t always get much attention – the frontal lobe (also known as the frontal cortex). As the name suggests, the frontal lobe sits at the very front … Read more
This week’s post is inspired by some conversations I had over Halloween which got me thinking. Why are faces everywhere at this time of year (think carved pumpkins and ghost masks), and what makes them scary? Last year I wrote about the science behind horror movies and why we find things creepy. But what is it … Read more
There’s been a lot of stories in the news recently about young people’s mental health. More young people than ever before are being referred to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), young people are experiencing delays in trying to access treatment, and they can also have problems continuing to access care when they reach … Read more
Yoga is something that I really enjoy, and try to practice at least 3 times a week. As well as doing something which challenges me physically, I have found that yoga has been so useful for my mind. It helps me to switch off, something which I can find quite difficult, and I definitely feel … Read more