Category: Mental Health

Adult learners reported feeling greater satisfaction with their lives along with improved mental and physical health.

Classes in singing, crafts and creative writing all boost wellbeing, a series of three studies concludes.

Weekly sessions over seven months at all three subjects left people feeling in better mental and physical health.

Dr Eiluned Pearce, the first author of all three studies, said:

“The students reported benefits including increased self-confidence, a greater feeling of control over their lives and more willingness to take on new challenges.

Some said the classes made them more motivated to be more active, despite the classes not specifically involving physical activity.

Participants also said that the classes broadened their networks of friends and gave them an increased sense of belonging.

We also found that the more someone felt part of their group, the more their health and wellbeing improved.”

Participants in the study attended seven different day-time adult education classes in the UK.

While the results were positive, the classes did not all have the same benefits, Dr Pearce explained:

“The results showed that those in the singing and creative writing groups built up relationships with other individuals more quickly than the crafters, and singers felt more connected to the class as a whole more quickly than both the other groups.

‘While this confirms our earlier finding that singing has an ‘ice-breaker effect’ compared to other activities, it shows that other activities may enable people to increase their social networks just as much, even if it takes them longer to feel connected to their group as a whole.”

Howard Croft, the Worker’s Educational Association Regional Education Manager, said:

“The findings reiterate the feedback that we have had from our students over the years: learning is a fantastic way to boost your self-esteem and confidence.

Also of note, is its therapeutic effect.

For many students, creative courses are a means of finding a new outlet for expressing their feelings.

This can be of immense help during times of personal difficulty or emotional upheaval, such as divorce or bereavement.

Simply going to a course can offer much-needed respite.

For others, learning can be an opportunity to reignite a former passion.

This could be anything from a subject which you enjoyed at school to an area which you are interested in.

Whatever your reason, there are so many benefits to be gained by signing up to a course.”

The studies were published in the journals Arts & Health, The Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology and Psychology of Music (Pearce et al., 2016; Pearce et al. 2016; Pearce et al. 2016).

How coffee consumption is linked to both mental and physical health.

Moderate coffee consumption is linked to reduced depression risk and lower levels of Parkinson’s and dementia, research finds.

Not only that, but the review of more than 200 studies found that drinking 3 to 4 cups of coffee a day is linked to many other benefits.

These include lower levels of heart disease, reduced risk of some cancers, diabetes and liver disease.

The study’s authors write:

“Coffee consumption was consistently associated with a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease, even after adjustment for smoking, and across all categories of exposure.

Decaffeinated coffee was associated with a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease, which did not reach significance.

Consumption had a consistent association with lower risk of depression and cognitive disorders, especially for Alzheimer’s disease.”

Coffee was also associated with a lower risk of several cancers:

• prostate cancer,
• endometrial cancer,
• skin cancer,
• and liver cancer,

Risk of type 2 diabetes, gallstones and gout was lower in those drinking coffee as well.

Coffee’s apparent effect was particularly strong for liver conditions, such as cirrhosis.

The evidence for drinking decaffeinated coffee was not as strong.

So, if you don’t drink coffee already, should you start?

Writing in a linked commentary, Professor Eliseo Guallar, an expert in public health, gives the answer:

“Should doctors recommend drinking coffee to prevent disease?

Should people start drinking coffee for health reasons?

The answer to both questions is “no.” “

But if you do already drink coffee, then how much should you drink?

Professor Guallar explained:

“…the lowest risk of disease is associated with drinking three to five cups of coffee a day.

Higher intake may reduce or reverse the potential benefit, and there is substantial uncertainty, both in individual studies and in meta-analyses, about the effects of higher levels of intake.

Conclusions on the safety of coffee should thus be restricted to moderate intake, generally considered as ≤400 mg of caffeine a day (about four or five coffee drinks).”

The research was an ‘umbrella review’ which is a kind of review of the reviews.

It aggregates data from lots of different studies including many participants.

However, the way the studies were designed, it cannot tell us that drinking coffee causes these health benefits.

It just tells us there is a link to be explained.

The study was published in The British Medical Journal (Poole et al., 2017).

It reduces depression and anxiety, increases happiness and leads to higher social-emotional well-being.

A couple more servings of fruits and vegetables per day is enough to lift your mood in only 2 weeks, research finds.

The young adults in the study who ate two extra portions of fruit and veg for 2 weeks saw increases in both motivation and vitality.

It also made them want to carry on eating more fruit and veg.

Dr Tamlin Conner, the study’s first author, said:

“The message from this study is we should be giving people more fruits and vegetables to eat, not simply reminding people to eat their 5+ a day.

People in dormitories, children in daycare centres, patients in hospitals, employees in the workplace, could be provided with fresh fruits and vegetables on a regular basis.”

For the research, 171 young adults were split into three groups.

They either ate as normal, were given vouchers to buy fruit and veg, or were actually handed the fruit and veg directly.

Only those given the fruit and veg directly saw the improvements.

Those given vouchers for fruit and veg tended to cook them with other foods, while those given them directly tended to eat them raw.

Perhaps, eating the fruit and veg raw is vital to the wellbeing boost.

This is far from the first evidence that fruit and veg can make you feel better.

The study’s authors write:

“There is also growing evidence that people who eat more FV have better mental health.

Higher consumption of FV is correlated with several psychological outcomes including a lower incidence of depression and anxiety, greater happiness, higher life satisfaction, and greater social-emotional well-being or “flourishing”.”

The study’s authors conclude:

“We conclude that providing young adults with high-quality FV [fruits and veg], rather than reminding them to eat more FV (with a voucher to purchase FV), resulted in significant short-term improvements to their psychological well-being.

These results provide initial proof-of-concept that giving young adults fresh fruit and vegetables to eat can have psychological benefits even over a brief period of time.”

The study was published in the journal PLoS One (Conner et al., 2017).

People eating the right diet experience better mental health and a stronger sense of wellbeing.

Diet can have a very real effect on mental health, according to the latest review of the research.

People eating the right diet experience better mental health and a stronger sense of wellbeing.

For example, there is good evidence that the Mediterranean diet can improve depression and anxiety.

Here are ten typical ingredients of the Mediterranean diet:

• Green leafy vegetables,
• other vegetables,
• nuts,
• berries,
• beans,
• whole grains,
• fish,
• poultry,
• olive oil,
• and wine.

The Mediterranean diet is anti-inflammatory as it includes more vitamins, fibre and unsaturated fats.

Vitamin B12 has also been shown to help with depression, poor memory and fatigue.

For those with epilepsy, a ketogenic diet, which is high in fat and low in carbohydrates, can be helpful.

However, in other areas the effects of diet on mental health are less strong.

For example, the evidence that vitamin D supplements are beneficial for mental health is relatively weak.

Professor Suzanne Dickson, study co-author, said:

“We have found that there is increasing evidence of a link between a poor diet and the worsening of mood disorders, including anxiety and depression.

However, many common beliefs about the health effects of certain foods are not supported by solid evidence.”

The conclusions come from a review of the research in nutritional psychiatry.

For some conditions, the evidence was comparatively thin, said Professor Dickson:

“With individual conditions, we often found very mixed evidence.

With ADHD for example, we can see an increase in the quantity of refined sugar in the diet seems to increase ADHD and hyperactivity, whereas eating more fresh fruit and vegetables seems to protect against these conditions.

But there are comparatively few studies, and many of them don’t last long enough to show long-term effects.”

Nutrition during pregnancy is very important and can significantly affect brain function, the researchers found.

However, the effect of many diets on mental health is small, said Professor Dickson:

“In healthy adults dietary effects on mental health are fairly small, and that makes detecting these effects difficult: it may be that dietary supplementation only works if there are deficiencies due to a poor diet.

We also need to consider genetics: subtle differences in metabolism may mean that some people respond better to changes in diet that others.

There are also practical difficulties which need to be overcome in testing diets.

A food is not a drug, so it needs to be tested differently to a drug.

We can give someone a dummy pill to see if there is an improvement due to the placebo effect, but you can’t easily give people dummy food.

Nutritional psychiatry is a new field.

The message of this paper is that the effects of diet on mental health are real, but that we need to be careful about jumping to conclusions on the base of provisional evidence.

We need more studies on the long-term effects of everyday diets.”

The study was published in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology (Adan et al., 2019).