New research has concluded that “there is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective”.

Read the research

Editors comments:

The research showed that anti depressants were no more effective than placebo (a sugar pill). The placebo is all about the positive emotion of hope - the belief that something is going to work. 

Research shows that stress management is more cost effective than exercise in treating people with coronary heart disease (CHD).

This study involved male patients with CHD who were assigned to either 4 months of aerobic exercise 3 times per week or to a 1.5-hour weekly class on stress management. The participants were compared to another group of patients who were receiving usual care (medication). The participants were followed up every year for 5 years.

The researchers found that those who exercised or learnt to manage stress required less treatment by a GP and were less likely to be hospitalised when compared to the usual treatment group.

Economic analyses revealed that stress management was associated with lower medical costs than usual care and exercise in the first 2 years, and that the cumulative cost over 5 years was also lower for stress management relative to usual care.

The researchers concluded ”These results suggest that there may be clinical and economic benefit to offering the type of preventive stress management and exercise interventions provided to patients with CHD. Moreover, these findings suggest that the financial benefits that accrue from an appropriately targeted intervention may be substantial and immediate”.

The American Journal of Cardiology, January 2002

Tal Ben-Shahar is a lecturer at Harvard University. He teaches the largest course at Harvard on “Positive Psychology” and the third largest on “The Psychology of Leadership”–with a total of over 1,400 student.

The 2006 lecture series can be accessed for free by clicking here

Watch a video on Tal talking about happiness.

Research consistently shows that Denmark is the happiest country. Researchers have explored the Danes happiness and found its because they have lower expectations.

Watch a video that explains the research 

Workplace stress is the most frequently cited reason U.S. employees consider leaving their jobs. While employers acknowledge that stress is affecting business performance, few are taking steps to address it, according to two surveys by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a leading global consulting firm.

Read article

Researchers have found that having a slow worker in the vicinity will slow you down.The researchers had subjects perform a simple computer task alone, then with a partner performing a different but related task, and alone again after being told that the partner was going to continue to perform the task in another room.

“When an individual could see their partner performing the task, they performed more slowly. When the partner left the room and the individual could only see the results of the partner’s action - not the action itself –there was no deterioration in performance.

According to the researchers the reason we slow down is that “if we see someone performing a task we automatically imagine ourselves performing that task. This behaviour is part of our mirror neuron system.”

Journal of Human Movement Science, December 2007

I seems that more and more people have a food allergy. Researchers believe that stress might be the culprit.

Researchers looked at the intestinal wall of the mice, who had eaten egg albumin (a common food allergen) whilst stressed.

According to the researchers “the intestinal wall becomes more permeable under stressful conditions. Harmful substances penetrate the permeable intestinal wall where they then cause a panic response by the immune system. That could be the start of an allergy.“

Related article: Probiotics and stress

Researchers have identified a key reason why people make mistakes when they try to predict how much they will enjoy future events.

The research involved people eating potato chips. Participants predicted how much they would like eating potato chips before, after, or instead of eating a much better food (chocolate) or a much worse food (sardines). They then ate the chips and reported how much they liked them.

The researcher found that the chocolate and the sardines had a large impact on participants’ predictions, but no impact whatsoever on their actual experiences. Those participants who compared the chips to sardines overestimated how much they’d enjoy eating the chips, and those who compared them to chocolate underestimated how much they’d enjoy eating the chips.

In another experiment participants were asked eat the potato chips at a much slower pace. These participants who ate slowly actually did enjoy the chips more when the alternative was sardines and enjoyed it less when the alternative was chocolate. (The opposite to what was found when people ate the chips at a normal pace)

The researchers believe that slowing down the experience of eating gave participants the opportunity to think about the chocolates or the sardines.

The researchers concluded “A very slow family reunion may well be worse if the alternative was Bermuda than if the alternative was working an extra shift. When experiences don’t demand our attention, our minds are free to wander to all the other things we might have been doing instead. If those things are better, we feel worse, and if they are worse, we feel better.”

American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2008

Click on comment to see the editors interpretation of the research

A significant percentage of children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder did just as well when harmless placebos, pills without any specific effect, replaced some of their medications.

Read article

Depressed patients who got better after taking a placebo for six weeks showed brain changes that were remarkably similar to patients who responded to an anti-depressant drug.

Read article

American Journal of Psychiatry, May 2002