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Books to Support You This Stress Awareness Week

Stress Awareness Week is an important time to reflect on the effects of stress on our minds and bodies, especially in today’s fast-paced, pressure-filled world. The statistics around stress speak for themselves: in the UK, it’s estimated that 74% of adults have felt overwhelmed or unable to cope due to stress at some point in the past year, according to the Mental Health Foundation. Stress is often a silent driver of other health issues, impacting everything from mental resilience to gut health. This Awareness Week, we’d like to highlight two books from Hammersmith Health Books that can help you understand the body-mind connection and build resilience to manage life’s stresses more effectively.

Exploring the Mind-Gut Connection: The Gut Chronicles by Sandra Mikhail

In The Gut Chronicles, Sandra Mikhail takes readers through a journey of gut health and its surprising relationship to mental wellbeing. This practical book delves into the gut microbiome’s powerful role in influencing mental health, showing how a balanced, healthy gut can improve mood, reduce anxiety, and help manage stress.

Sandra shares her ‘four pillars’ approach to gut health, addressing common gut issues such as reflux, bloating, and IBS, which can all be exacerbated by stress. By focusing on how gut health can alleviate symptoms of stress and anxiety, Sandra offers a refreshing perspective on how nourishing the body’s ‘second brain’ may be one of the most impactful ways to manage stress naturally. Complete with recipes and lifestyle guidance, The Gut Chronicles provides a roadmap to optimising your gut’s health for overall mental and physical resilience.

Building Inner Strength: The Getting of Resilience From the Inside Out by Sally Baker

Resilience is a crucial tool in managing life’s unavoidable stresses, and The Getting of Resilience From the Inside Out by award-winning therapist Sally Baker is a practical guide for cultivating it. Baker explains that resilience is more than a personality trait; it’s a learned skill that enables us to navigate life’s challenges with strength and adaptability. Stressful experiences can lead to negative coping mechanisms like people-pleasing, anxiety, and self-sabotaging behaviour, often rooted in childhood experiences. Baker’s book provides tools for breaking these patterns and cultivating resilience.

Using her extensive experience in therapy, Baker explores the roots of stress responses and how to replace them with empowered coping strategies. By shedding guilt, shame, and self-blame, readers can build resilience that comes from within, better equipping them to face life’s inevitable challenges without being overwhelmed.

The Benefits of Reading

In addition to the insights from our featured books, it’s important to highlight the stress-reducing benefits of reading. Research from the University of Sussex has shown that engaging with a good book can lower stress levels by up to 68%, offering an escape from daily pressures. Whether you dive into a captivating story or practical health advice, reading provides a chance to relax and unwind. As you navigate Stress Awareness Week, consider picking up a book that resonates with you—it’s a powerful tool for promoting relaxation and mental wellbeing.

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Stress Awareness Week

Stress describes what we experience when we are physically, mentally or emotionally under pressure and feeling unable to cope. It activates our fight-or-flight response, with the outpouring of the stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. This response may have positive consequences in the short-term as it prompts us to take action, but prolonged stress and the feelings of helplessness that accompany it can have serious effects on our health.

We have compiled some key pieces of advice and top tips from a range of our books on the effects stress can have on our physical and mental wellbeing, as well as how to manage it:

 

‘Curing the Incurable’ – Dr Jerry Thompson

We already know that stress increases the incidence and severity of many diseases. A meta-analysis of nearly 300 studies found that stress lowered immunity. Stress increases inflammation, which in turn increases the risk of cancer. It activates the ‘fight or flight’ response, triggering the sympathetic nervous system, releasing hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, and reducing levels of growth hormone. Both adrenaline and noradrenaline block the body’s ability to destroy tumours. One study showed tumours grew 225% faster in stressed mice.

However, it isn’t just that we produce harmful chemicals when under stress. We also produce less of those anabolic hormones essential for healing and repair, as raw materials get diverted to produce more adrenaline and cortisol.

It is obvious that if we want to promote healing, then reducing stress becomes a priority. However, there is more to stress than meets the eye. In the study on rats subjected to electrical shocks mentioned in the Introduction, those that learned to avoid the shocks rejected their tumours three times as often as those that couldn’t. What’s more, 20% more of these rats rejected their tumours compared with those rats not subjected to any shocks. Here the stress proved beneficial and adapting to it had a positive survival effect. […] So reducing stress, or adapting to it in a positive way, can enhance our ability to fight a disease.

Many of the mental strategies that survivors have used are based on two simple ideas. Both are backed by a substantial amount of research:

  1. The body goes into healing mode once it becomes relaxed, and conversely healing of the body stops when we are under stress.
  2. Thoughts are creative and can modify health.

‘Eating Plant Based’ – Dr Shireen Kassam and Dr Zahra Kassam

Oxidative stress is an imbalance between the normal cellular processes of oxidation and reduction and is a result of the generation of metabolic products known as ‘reactive oxygen species’ (ROS). Certain ‘stressors’ can lead to increased levels of ROS, including cigarette smoking, medication, pesticides, radiation and also our diet choices. Oxidative stress then leads to the damage of proteins, DNA and cell membranes. The body requires antioxidants to counter the effects of these damaging ROS.

Plant foods contain hundreds of antioxidant compounds and have vastly higher antioxidant content than animal-derived foods. These antioxidants come in two broad categories: carotenoids and bioflavonoids. Both are large groups of structurally related compounds that help plants cope with radiation exposure from sunlight. Studies consistently show that those eating a predominantly plant-based diet have higher levels of antioxidants in the body compared with omnivores so, add more colourful fruit and vegetables into your daily diet as the intake of these anti-inflammatory foods reduces the very hormones that increase our stress levels.

‘Living PCOS Free’ – Rohini Bajekal and Dr Nitu Bajekal

Dr Nitu and Rohini Bajekal, writing in relation to PCOS but with aphttps://www.hammersmithbooks.co.uk/product/living-pcos-free/plication to all aspects of health, make these creative suggestions for managing our stress:

It helps to try and figure out if your stress is acute or chronic. It may be that it is a family member who needs your attention because they are sick, or it may be your relationship, work-related stress and deadlines, or even bullying and harassment. Chronic stress is a prolonged and constant feeling of stress that can negatively affect your health if it goes untreated. By identifying and acknowledging stress triggers, you may feel better equipped to deal with the situation.

[…] Regular exercise improves the feel-good factor and can help reduce anxiety levels. Walking or working out, especially in natural light, can help increase endorphins, also known as the happy hormones. Spending time outdoors in nature has been found to ease stress. […]

Gratitude practices and thinking of a few positive areas that are going well in your life can help relieve stress levels. Yoga, meditation or simple mindfulness and breathing techniques can calm the mind and reduce anxiety levels. Writing your fears or concerns in a diary or journal may help you to see the situation more clearly.

[…] Spending time in nature reduces stress. Studies have found that the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, translated as ‘forest bathing’, can lower blood pressure and improve immune function and mental health. Forest bathing involves immersing oneself in nature by mindfully using all five senses.

[…] Affirmations are powerful and positive simple statements that can help us challenge negative thought patterns. They can decrease stress, increase well-being, and make us more open to behaviour change.

‘Ecological Medicine’ – Dr Sarah Myhill and Craig Robinson (Second Edition available Jan 2023)

Life is inevitably stressful, and we all have skeletons in the cupboard. During sleep we relive the events of the day and remember the important things and rationalise the damaging memories. But if sleep is disturbed by adrenaline, then those memories are relived in a hormonally stressful environment, thereby reinforcing them. This is an obvious vicious cycle. The treatment is obvious too – stop adrenalin release at night with the Paleo-Ketogenic diet, thereby blocking any damaging memories that may be lurking.

 

 

 

‘The A-Z of Yoga for Cancer’ – Vicky Fox

 Breathing is key to helping to release anxiety by bringing us into the present moment. When we are conscious of our breathing we are fully in the moment because we can’t breathe in the past and we can’t take a breath in the future. This means we are in this moment with whatever this moment brings. […] There are many tools we can use to help bring us into the moment and it is about finding what works for you. I recommend beginning with a simple wave breathing exercise.

[…] Find a comfortable sitting position where your spine feels long. This maybe in a chair or seated on some cushions on the floor. […] shift from side to side until you feel there is equal weight on both sitting bones. Your spine should feel long, and you should not be shifting forwards or backwards. As you breathe in, sense the wave-like motion of your breathing.

Follow these steps:

                Inhale and sense or feel the wave rising.

                As you exhale, silently say to yourself ‘1’.

                Inhale and sense or feel the wave of breath rising.

                As you exhale, silently say to yourself ‘2’.

                Inhale and sense or feel the wave rising.

                As you exhale silently say ‘3’.

                Inhale and sense or feel the wave rising.

                As you exhale silently say ‘4’.

… and continue in the same way, Incrementally counting upwards to ‘10’ with each exhale and back down again to ‘1’ (this takes about 2 minutes).

This wave breathing is a form of meditation because meditation is giving your mind something to focus on; here the focus is movement of breath and counting.

 

National Stress Awareness Day (2nd November) is an annual initiative by Rethink Mental Illness which highlights the ways that stress can affect people and what you can do to manage your stress before it becomes a problem. The causes of stress and the best way to manage it can differ for every person and what works for some may not be as effective for others, so if you are struggling to cope with stress, make sure to consult your GP or look on the NHS website for more information.

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Have a Heart that Exercises your Power of Choice

Blog post written by Dr Trevor Griffiths, co-author of ‘Emotional Logic’.

 

I discovered the other day, to my great surprise, that men are as emotionally literate as women, but they simply handle their emotional energy in a different way. Those people who say that men are rational and women emotional are like the dodos of old, unable to fly and heading for extinction.

If you doubt what I am saying, please check out the string of books produced by the award-winning neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio. He found that people, men and women equally, need their emotions to make decisions whenever a choice is needed between equally rational options. The reason is: your emotions are gender-neutral, non-verbal information about your heart-level values. They are like the lights on a car dashboard, or blips on a radar screen, telling you that something is changing out there and needs attention. But they need interpreting to make the right decisions for action.

 

Emotions tell us about our values

Believe it or not, men have values! The thing is, though, that men tend to simply act straight away on the values-driven emotional movements within their hearts, their inclinations, not bothering to name their emotional feelings. Women (however you define gender) tend to be better at naming and talking about those inner movements. But there is one thing that men and women truly do share equally here. They both have heart-level values that move them. And they both, in different ways, tend not to be good at shifting their conversations from talk about feelings or behaviour onto naming their values and agreeing action plans that could build more responsive relationships around them. They tend to get stuck in a rut, a bit mindlessly, with either their feelings or their behaviours. That’s not good. So I wanted to find a way to change that.

 

By recognising our values we can make action plans rather than simply reacting

It so happens that my wife was quite pleased with my discovery of this. She’s a GP, and started using the method I came up with in her work. Cutting a long story short, we ended up writing a book together about what happened, getting permissions to tell the anonymised stories of how the emotional card-sorting tool and the Loss Reaction Worksheets transformed the way she handled common mental illnesses, and suicidal thoughts, and self-harming or compulsive behaviours for both men and women. I then added some chapters about how I had used the method in various community settings, at what I call the rough end of emotional literacy, where accumulating unrecognized grieving can lead to violence or other outbursts that irritate the law. In both settings, private and public, the same truths emerged. Accumulating hurts affect physical, mental, and social health equally. And learning a bit about healthy emotional adjustments to change reversed the harm.

 

The power of emotional literacy is gender-neutral but men and women tend to handle their emotional energy differently

If men are willing to learn how their heart-level loss emotions are there to protect their values, in other words for good reasons, they could harness their energy to make better decisions. They could then also become more responsive in their relationships around guess-checking someone else’s values. It opens a whole new way of talking that brings reasoning and emotions into a healthy partnership. Doing so usually sorts out the symptoms that often trouble people quietly in their hearts, or trouble them noisily outwards, removing their peace and driving them and perhaps others scatty. It is all so correctable with a bit of understanding and self-respect for naming values!

“So, what’s important to you in this situation?” Or, even better, “So, what did you miss when things went wrong?” Or, closer still to the point of this blog, “Listen, I’m on your side, okay. What are you worried you might have lost in this situation? Perhaps we can find a way to get that back together?”

 

Caring for your emotional heart is as important as caring for your physical heart

E-motions are energy in motion! They e-motivate people to act, either moving towards the signal or away from it. Either way, when you are next out taking some exercise to protect your physical heart, and choosing how to watch your diet, then try choosing also to exercise your increased power of choice by revising what you have learnt about naming your hidden heart-level values. You could learn to use the Emotional Logic method to do this, activating it as you face new situations. It has opened doors to people on all five continents to see themselves and life differently, and to get on better than before.

 

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Family approach to therapy

Blog post written by Lynn Crilly, author of the Hope with Mental Health series, available here. 

Counselling and therapy have a number of benefits for those suffering from mental ill health. Firstly, it allows them to feel valued; it also provides a forum for them to explore their feelings and, by its very nature, is tailored to the individual.

There is no set format for counsellors, which means that they must, to some extent, treat everyone’s case individually. As such, it is crucial in counselling, perhaps more so than in any other type of therapy, to find the right ‘fit’ in terms of a practitioner. A good counsellor should make their client feel safe, secure and valued at all times. They should establish a bond of trust with their clients and make it easy for them to discuss potentially painful or difficult issues.

As a mental health counsellor myself, I ensure I have met with a sufferer’s parents or carers before I commence working with them, if they are under 18. Many people are surprised that I insist on this. I have always been of the opinion, however, that rehabilitating any mental illness is a group effort and one which will involve constant channels of communication between the client and the people who are most influential in their life. If a client is over 18 and they have approached me independently, I will usually bring carers into the process a little further into therapy. Under the Data Protection Act, I of course have to gain the client’s permission to share information with the carers. Once I have explained the paramount importance of trust and communication, this permission is normally granted. I like the families of my clients to understand my methods and the work I will undertake with their loved ones, so, they can be as helpful and supportive as possible throughout the recovery process. Recovery can sometimes be a long process, with the sufferer’s mind-set changing at each stage, sometimes on a day-by-day basis.

It is important that carers are aware of the changes to help them to gain a real insight into how their loved one is thinking and feeling at each juncture within the process. This is why I prefer to keep them in the loop so they can give the support, non-judgmental communication and empathy that I give in my sessions, at home.

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Mental Health Awareness Week Blog Special

Blog post written by Dr Trevor Griffiths and Dr Marian Langsford, authors of Emotional Logic. Available for pre-order now, launches 27th May.

The authors of Emotional Logic: Harnessing your emotions into inner strength have been married for nearly forty years. Marian still practices medicine under her maiden name of Langsford. They both now teach internationally the Emotional Logic method of preventing stress-related mental and physical illnesses, which Trevor developed while in medical practice. The best compliment they have received, they say, was from a medical student in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, who stood up after a training session and said, “I have learnt today that it is really cool to be old, and married, and still together, ‘cos you get to travel the world and inspire people like us!” We don’t look very old; we received that as the honour it was intended to convey in that culture.

Learning to activate your inbuilt Emotional Logic helps to build more responsive relationships in any new situations you face. And it can be learnt at any age. An active schools programme in the UK has a wide range of age-appropriate materials, such that a five-year-old boy took an emotion leaf from a ‘Talking Together Tree’ they had made in the classroom, and took it to the teacher saying, “I would like to tell the class why I am feeling angry about something.” Imagine the difference that ability to talk sensibly about emotions rather than only act them out, or regulate them, might have.

In Chapter 1, Trevor comments on Marian’s story about a misunderstanding with a friend who had offered to help tidy her garden one autumn. She had told how understanding the emotional logic of her many loss reactions that followed helped to avoid a break-up. Here is an extract from Trevor:

As the eldest daughter in a Devon farming family, Marian grew up on a mixed dairy and horticulture farm overlooking rolling hills, surrounded by buckets of early flowers that needed bunching each evening for market the next day. They were not rich. She loved it. She has a wisdom from nature that I had missed, having been brought up in the London suburbs. For example, she once said, “Gardening isn’t all about pulling up weeds. You have to plant something in the earth in its place, and care for it.” A comment like that can leave me fixed into a garden chair for ages while I watch her getting her hands covered in earth and planting. Something simple like this can lead me to a lot of thinking, which I consider is my core skill.

So, what do I think about? I think a lot about human nature. I think things like, ‘Seemingly small things that break out on the surface of people’s lives can have deeper roots than we realise at first.’ It took me a few decades to realise that it did me a lot of good to listen to Marian. I think many men discover the same at some point in their married lives…

Emotional Logic was born out of years of experience in general medical practice, and out of a disrupted family background that Trevor experienced as traumatising. With a depth of emotional memories to draw upon, Emotional Logic harnesses the language of emotions into the inner strength needed to come through times of trouble stronger and healthier. Post-traumatic growth is encouraged as a way forward from post-traumatic stress. As a senior Community Psychiatric Nurse who uses Emotional Logic in her work said, “Emotional Logic heals the broken heart behind mental illness.”

Once learnt, people can share their new trauma-responsive conversational skills in their daily encounters with others. This prevents isolation following hurts. It reduces the risk of illness by building greater resilience and a realistic hope for recovery into relationships. Even if setbacks and disappointments occur, knowing how to activate one’s inbuilt Emotional Logic provides a world of constructive options to talk about. And where is there better to talk and to explore new ways forward than in nature, where the seeds of something beautiful in life can take root and grow.

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How not to be blue this Blue Monday

Blog post written by Lynn Crilly, author of the Hope with Mental Health series. 

The third Monday of every January has been named ‘Blue Monday’; the theory behind this is that this time of year is when it is cold, we find ourselves stuck with credit card bills and less money, our New Year’s resolutions (if we have made them) have often already failed or are not going to plan which creates an element of guilt and we are just not feeling our best. This year, in the UK we have the added anxiety of being in a lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would like to help you to feel more positive and hopeful this January and to feel more optimistic about what the now has to offer and what the future holds. Below are some – I hope – helpful ways to change how you think and to turn some of the ‘blue’ negative thinking into positive.

At the moment we are all looking at updates on the news about the COVID-19 pandemic, which are often quite depressing and rarely the good news we are hoping for. Instead, try to look for the good news that is going on in the world. Whilst writing this blog I came across a website that focuses on good news only: Good News Network. Take some time to learn all the positives that are happening around us. Dwelling on the negative will keep you stuck in a dark place.

We all have a way of thinking we can predict the future; even though we have no idea what will happen tomorrow, we still like to predict the doom and gloom scenarios we think are going to happen. When we imagine negative scenarios, whether it is about the current pandemic or a work meeting, this negative ‘guessing game’ can turn into a self-fulfilling prediction if we are not careful. Focus on the now. If you want to look to the future, look at the positive scenarios that could happen rather than the negative.

This last tip might be the hardest to achieve but, once you nail it, it is the key to a more positive outlook, replacing negative with more realistic and motivating thoughts. This can inspire you to create the kind of life you want to live. For example, instead of thinking to yourself, ‘at this rate I will never be able to afford my own place’, this negative thought could be replaced with, ‘I am unsure of what the future holds, but if I make a clear savings plan, it is possible I may be able to afford my own place.’

I do hope these simple but effective changes can help to create a more optimistic mindset, for you or someone you know who may be struggling with Anxiety or Depression. You can learn more about these mental illnesses and ways to cope in my books Hope with Anxiety and Hope with Depression.

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How The Beginner’s Guide to Sanity was co-produced

Blog post written by authors of The Beginner’s Guide to Sanity, Erica Crompton and Professor Stephen Lawrie. The Beginner’s Guide to Sanity has been shortlisted in the Non-Fiction category of The People’s Book Prize 2020/21. Click here to give it your vote. 

Our self-help guide for people with psychosis is, we believe, the first written by a doctor and a patient. In a review in Therapy Today our book is described as ‘the epitome of co-production’. Unlike some accounts of co-production in clinical or academic settings, we’ve come together on an even footing to write this – and even shared the advance equally. Here’s how we got started and created something we feel is equal in every way.

How we met

Erica: Stephen and I met at a conference in London titled ‘Schizophrenia: new routes to better outcomes’ in March 2014 where we were both speaking about our areas of interest regarding schizophrenia. It was my first conference and I attended in glittery tights.

I’d been invited to the event by a speaking agent in Sweden who approached me on Twitter. What made me stand out to her was my pro-medical stance on treatment for schizophrenia and my journalism about my experiences with this. I jumped at the chance to present at the conference and pre-recorded an interview with Elyn Saks for this too. It was while this was showing on a big screen to the packed auditorium, that Stephen came over to my table and introduced himself. He asked if maybe he could tempt me to give a lecture on the stigma I’d experienced as a result of my illness at the University of Edinburgh, where at the time he was Head of Psychiatry.

Stephen: We do a regular external speaker ‘Special Lecture’ slot in Psychiatry in Edinburgh and are always looking out for new speakers and topics. I have always admired Elyn Saks and the account of schizophrenia in her book The Centre Cannot Hold and remember Erica doing a great job of interviewing her.

How we got started

Erica: It’s been a life-goal of mine to write a book for as long as I can remember but a few things were holding me back – my inexperience writing long-form copy, and ‘getting it right’. I wanted to write about my experiences of psychosis but felt another voice (in particular a ‘sane voice’) would add weight to all that I could say.

There are a lot of other voices from people with experience of psychosis I could include too. Every piece I write about my own journey with illness usually means someone gets in touch on email or via social media who can relate. I hoped to include these people’s thoughts in a book, too.

It was his mix of seriously impressive clinical expertise but also approachability that inspired me to ask Stephen if he’d be interested in working with me on a book.

He’d already helped with many articles I’d written for newspapers and Stephen is always an utter pleasure to work with.

Stephen: Thanks and ditto! I had been wanting to write an accessible book about schizophrenia for a general audience for many years but hadn’t really appreciated the importance of getting the voice of lived experience until around the time I met Erica – and when I also attended an event for pitching ideas to agents, who told me the same thing.

The write-up

Erica: We used a shared Google Doc to write the book and both added content, and notes over the course of a year. During this time I learnt so much from Stephen that is helpful for me in managing my psychosis. As I get very little time with my own care team, reading everything Stephen thinks we should know about psychosis has answered many of the questions I’m left with after an appointment with my own psychiatrist.

Stephen: The writing was a shared and fairly dynamic process. I put in everything that I thought someone with schizophrenia or any other psychotic condition, and those who care for them, might want to know. I tried to keep it as simple as possible – and then had to make it even more so and easier to digest after feedback from Erica and others.  Erica brought the text to life with quotes from others and was remarkably open about her own experiences.

Twitter trashing

Erica: One thing that unnerved both of us was a potentially negative reception from the latter-day anti-psychiatry and anti-meds brigade on Twitter. However, we’ve been lucky enough to avoid that so far. I do think some of these prolific ‘pill shamers’ on Twitter – many with fancy psychology doctorates – may have some unpacked attention seeking issues of their own.

Stephen: Yes, I remember saying to a friend that Erica would probably ‘get shit’ for co-authoring a book with a psychiatrist which is unashamedly pro-diagnosis and pro-medication – and him being appalled to hear that. Maybe we have got away lightly so far  because we are also pro-many other ways of handing psychosis – or maybe it’s because it was genuinely co-produced – or maybe the abuse will kick off later on. Even if that happens, the positive feedback we’ve had from people who have been helped by our book is hugely encouraging.

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Welcome to Society by Samantha Crilly

In honour of National Poetry Day, Samantha Crilly has provided a moving poem from her debut book Hope through Poetry. Launches 10th October, available for presale now.

Welcome to Society

Hello and welcome to society, we hope you enjoy your stay

We will make it as relaxing as possible as long as you do things our way

First of all and most importantly, make sure you fix up your exterior

If you slack at any point we will soon make you feel inferior

Secondly your life will be controlled by pieces of paper,

We will count it up and decide how important you are later

Thirdly, we want you to make your time here look as perfect as possible

Even if you’re having a bad day this is not optional

Fourthly make sure you post everyday on social media

One is fine at first, but we’ll soon get needier

In fact we can guarantee we’ll be getting greedier and greedier

Oh and In terms of your meals

We tend to advertise things to make you ill

Keeps our drug company’s going if you will

Trust us the more pills you pop, the better you’ll feel ……..

Lastly, just so you know, our planet is on its way out

But it has to keep up with our needs so that’s not something we talk about

So good luck and we hope everything is clear

Oh and don’t smile too much, people will think you’re weird.

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Trying to provide the best environment for someone with dementia in the present crisis: the three ‘Ss’

Dementia

It’s a difficult time for all of us – and particularly so for anyone with dementia. We are all being urged to stay at home and people in care homes are no longer allowed even to see visitors. How can those of us caring for people with dementia provide an environment that gives them the best experience in these circumstances?

First, it is important that the environment is supportive. Life does not always run smoothly and those of us who still have plentiful cognitive reserves learn to cope with that fact. We can acknowledge the need to limit our social contacts and our outings in the present circumstances. We can accept that we may feel anxious, bored and annoyed and we all hope to ‘come out the other side’ when life resumes its normal path.. Someone who has little cognitive reserve, for whom even following a routine is difficult, will find any change or complication doubly difficult. People with dementia need support. They need support from those around them and it is doubly important that those they rely on for support continue to give calm and consistent care.

As much as possible carers should keep to the habitual routine. There is no need to force the person with dementia to stay indoors, for example. If the rest of us are allowed outdoor exercise then so are they. ‘Social distancing’ can easily be maintained simply by walking in quieter areas or gently directing the person you care for in the right direction.

Secondly, the environment should feel safe. Note that I am not saying here that the environment should be safe but that it should feel safe to the person with dementia. Naturally, we should aim for a clean home environment – but becoming over-protective about touching surfaces or cleaning areas is not going to help someone with dementia to feel more safe and secure. It is more likely to cause extra stress as they cannot understand the need for such precautions. And bear in mind that most people with dementia confronted with a person wearing a mask and gloves are likely to feel terrified rather than safe.

Thirdly, the preferred environment for people with dementia should be stimulating to the senses and provide an opportunity for social interaction. Now that day centres and dementia cafes have been forced to close many carers are finding it quite challenging to provide activities for people with dementia and even more challenging to provide social interaction.

The fact is that without stimulation any of us may become bored and doze off. How often has this happened to you whilst watching a boring TV programme? People with dementia are frequently bored because many of the occupations with which they passed the time previously are now closed to them. Boredom can lead to difficult behaviour and restlessness, but often it just results in sleepiness. Simple tasks can be enjoyed – think sorting books by size, pairing socks, ‘tidying’ shelves, dusting and polishing. And remember that an impaired memory can be an advantage. If you ask someone to dust a piece of furniture more than once they are unlikely to remember that they have just completed the task. Outdoor jobs like watering plants, raking up leaves, and carrying trimmings to the compost heap combine fresh air and exercise as well as passing the time and ‘tidying the shed’ can occupy a good few hours even if the result doesn’t live up to the job description! Watching visitors to a bird table can be absorbing and this can be done through a window if the weather is not so good.

Providing social interaction is more challenging. Today we are being urged to use technology and social media to keep in touch with others but this is not an acceptable alternative for people with dementia who progressively lose the ability to work even simple devices such as a remote control. Many people with a cognitive difficulty will also be unable to associate screen pictures with the ‘real thing’ and may even find them frightening.

Telephone calls are often still acceptable as this is a method of communication that is still familiar so ask your relatives and friends to use the telephone to make contact.

You can also talk to neighbours ‘over the fence’ or whilst keeping an acceptable distance on a walk. Carers from care agencies are still allowed to visit to provide personal care or companionship if this is necessary so don’t cancel your regular care and remember to give them tips about chatting to the one you care for.

Blog post written by Mary Jordan, author of The Essential Carer’s Guide to Dementia

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Coping with loneliness and depression if someone has to self-isolate

Lonliness

The word ‘isolation’ can also be described as ‘the condition of being alone’, so it is no surprise that many of us are struggling with being lonely, low mood and depression. This is especially worrying for those who are over 70. In the younger generation, the term ‘self-isolate’ means staying at home with family, for those who are older, they may already live on their own, and their only human connection is when they go out and visit friends.

If you have an elderly loved one, or neighbor who is self-isolating, check up on them as often as you can, it need only be a short phone call, but you may be the only person they have spoken to that day. If you are the person who is struggling with the loneliness whilst having to self-isolate, there are many help lines who can offer support and a friendly voice when in times of need, such as The Silver Line, who offer a confidential, free helpline or telephone friendship for the elderly; call them on 0800 470 80 90.

Encourage your loved one or neighbor to limit their intake of the news. The more you hear, the more you buy into the panic. This only adds to the current anxiety. Instead, encourage them to watch a lighthearted TV programme or film.  You can even watch it alongside them whilst chatting on the phone so it gives them the feeling of company.

Encourage them to stay in touch with the outside world via Skype, WhatsApp or other messaging apps. Many of the elderly now have smartphones and will be aware of these forms of contact, even though it might not be their instinct to use them.

I hope some of these tips will help to keep our loved ones and neighbours in a positive state of mental wellbeing, after all…..self-isolation does not have to mean mental isolation.

Blog post written by Hammersmith author, Lynn Crilly, author of Hope with Depression, Hope with OCD and Hope with Eating Disorders