'Time To Talk Day' Is Encouraging Lads To Open Up About Mental Health

When we were kids, if one of us fell from a rope swing and broke our arm, we'd go straight to the doctor and come back to school, proudly showing off our cast.

Now that we're older, we're less likely to fall from a rope swing, but far more susceptible to issues surrounding mental health. Even so, we're reluctant to talk about them. Just like that cast, being treated for a mental health illness is a sign that you've been through shit, but you're still here. That should be celebrated. You shouldn't be ashamed to talk about it.

The reason so many of us suffer in silence is because discussing anxiety, depression, eating disorders or mental distress is still seen as a sign of weakness among young men. Your mates will probably tell you to 'man up' - that is the problem.

Sometimes it's important to just be blunt. This reconstructed machismo is killing thousands of young lads every year. Masculine pride is taking the lives of more young people than cancer. Let that sink in.

The statistics are seriously alarming. Men under the age of 45 accounted for 76% of all suicides in the UK in 2014.

Statistics from the CALM report show that roughly half of all the 1,000 men and women surveyed said they had experienced some form of depression, yet women were much more likely to seek professional help or confide in a friend. 74% of women who had suffered from depression said they had spoken to someone about it, while only 53% of men had done the same. 69% of men who had suffered depression said they preferred to deal with it themselves. 

It doesn't take a mathematician to work out that significantly less women are taking their own lives, because they're opening up and getting help. Let's learn from them.

You'll read a lot in the papers about how the mental health system is in crisis. And regardless of whether it's failing us or not, there's help out there and it's important we don't fail ourselves.

It's time to talk, lads.

The guys over at The CALMzone offer amazing support to anyone when things get tough.

The helpline and web chat service are open 5pm to midnight, every day of the year.

How Walking in Nature Changes the Brain

A walk in the park may soothe the mind and, in the process, change the workings of our brains in ways that improve our mental health, according to an interesting new study of the physical effects on the brain of visiting nature.

Most of us today live in cities and spend far less time outside in green, natural spaces than people did several generations ago.

City dwellers also have a higher risk for anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses than people living outside urban centers, studies show.

These developments seem to be linked to some extent, according to a growing body of research. Various studies have found that urban dwellers with little access to green spaces have a higher incidence of psychological problems than people living near parks and that city dwellers who visit natural environments have lower levels of stress hormones immediately afterward than people who have not recently been outside.

But just how a visit to a park or other green space might alter mood has been unclear. Does experiencing nature actually change our brains in some way that affects our emotional health?

That possibility intrigued Gregory Bratman, a graduate student at the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University, who has been studying the psychological effects of urban living. In an earlier study published last month, he and his colleagues found that volunteers who walked briefly through a lush, green portion of the Stanford campus were more attentive and happier afterward than volunteers who strolled for the same amount of time near heavy traffic.

But that study did not examine the neurological mechanisms that might underlie the effects of being outside in nature.

So for the new study, which was published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mr. Bratman and his collaborators decided to closely scrutinize what effect a walk might have on a person’s tendency to brood.

Brooding, which is known among cognitive scientists as morbid rumination, is a mental state familiar to most of us, in which we can’t seem to stop chewing over the ways in which things are wrong with ourselves and our lives. This broken-record fretting is not healthy or helpful. It can be a precursor to depression and is disproportionately common among city dwellers compared with people living outside urban areas, studies show.

Perhaps most interesting for the purposes of Mr. Bratman and his colleagues, however, such rumination also is strongly associated with increased activity in a portion of the brain known as the subgenual prefrontal cortex.

If the researchers could track activity in that part of the brain before and after people visited nature, Mr. Bratman realized, they would have a better idea about whether and to what extent nature changes people’s minds.

Mr. Bratman and his colleagues first gathered 38 healthy, adult city dwellers and asked them to complete a questionnaire to determine their normal level of morbid rumination.

The researchers also checked for brain activity in each volunteer’s subgenual prefrontal cortex, using scans that track blood flow through the brain. Greater blood flow to parts of the brain usually signals more activity in those areas.

Then the scientists randomly assigned half of the volunteers to walk for 90 minutes through a leafy, quiet, parklike portion of the Stanford campus or next to a loud, hectic, multi-lane highway in Palo Alto. The volunteers were not allowed to have companions or listen to music. They were allowed to walk at their own pace.

Immediately after completing their walks, the volunteers returned to the lab and repeated both the questionnaire and the brain scan.

As might have been expected, walking along the highway had not soothed people’s minds. Blood flow to their subgenual prefrontal cortex was still high and their broodiness scores were unchanged.

But the volunteers who had strolled along the quiet, tree-lined paths showed slight but meaningful improvements in their mental health, according to their scores on the questionnaire. They were not dwelling on the negative aspects of their lives as much as they had been before the walk.

They also had less blood flow to the subgenual prefrontal cortex. That portion of their brains were quieter.

These results “strongly suggest that getting out into natural environments” could be an easy and almost immediate way to improve moods for city dwellers, Mr. Bratman said.

But of course many questions remain, he said, including how much time in nature is sufficient or ideal for our mental health, as well as what aspects of the natural world are most soothing. Is it the greenery, quiet, sunniness, loamy smells, all of those, or something else that lifts our moods? Do we need to be walking or otherwise physically active outside to gain the fullest psychological benefits? Should we be alone or could companionship amplify mood enhancements?

“There’s a tremendous amount of study that still needs to be done,” Mr. Bratman said.

But in the meantime, he pointed out, there is little downside to strolling through the nearest park, and some chance that you might beneficially muffle, at least for awhile, your subgenual prefrontal cortex.

Here’s What No One Tells You About Having Both Depression And Anxiety.

[Editor’s note: Anxiety and depression affect everyone differently — but dealing with both is extremely common. Nearly one-half of people diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Anxiety and depression are deeply personal, and although this list represents only one experience, we hope you find some solace in knowing others might be going through what you are.]

1. It’s freaking out at the idea of getting anything less than a stellar score on a test, but not having the energy to study.

2. It’s having to stay in bed because you don’t have the will to move, but unraveling at the thought of what will happen if you miss school or work.

3. It’s feeling more tired the less you move, but your heart racing at the thought of taking the first step.

4. It’s getting more tightly wound the more mess piles up, but only staring at it and thinking, I’ll clean tomorrow.

5. It’s making six million to-do lists just to untangle your thoughts, but knowing you’ll never actually cross anything off.

6. It’s believing that every canceled plan will end your friendships, but not having it in you to follow through.

7. It’s feeling hopelessly low that you’re still goddamn single, but canceling every first date because the thought of going through with it gives you heart palpitations.

8. It’s fearing every day that your partner will get fed up and leave, but your anxiety whispering in your ear that they deserve better and should.

9. It’s ignoring texts and turning down invitations, and it’s aching when the texts and invitations stop.

10. It’s the constant fear of winding up alone, but accidentally isolating yourself because you sometimes just need to hide from it all.

11. It’s wanting nothing more than to crawl home and sleep at 2 p.m., but your skittering, panicked pulse keeping you awake at 2 a.m.

12. It’s alternating between feeling paralyzed in the present and scared shitless about the future.

13. It’s not enjoying the good days because you’re too gripped by the anxiety that the next low is around the corner.

14. It’s sleeping too much or not at all.

15. It’s needing a break from your racing thoughts, but not being able to climb out of the pit of yourself.

16. It’s needing to do everything, but wanting to do nothing at all.

17. It’s coping mechanisms and escapism, because when you’re not trying to hide from one part of your brain, you’re hiding from the other.

18. It’s wondering if the things that are making your heart feel heavy are things your anxious mind just made up.

19. It’s sitting awake at 3 a.m. worrying about a future you’re not even sure you want to have.

20. It’s feeling too much and nothing at all at the same time, which means feeling like you can never win.

But you can. And you will. You’re not alone.

31 Secrets of People Who Live With Anxiety

Anxiety disorders are the most common form of mental illness in America, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. The condition affects 40 million adults in the United States. That’s 18 percent of the U.S. population.

Despite this, people with anxiety disorders still live with a stigma often associated with invisible conditions. So we asked our readers with anxiety what they wished the world could understand about it. This is what they had to say.

1. “I do realize the things I worry about are ridiculous. Even though I’m aware, I can’t just stop it.” — Erika Strojny Myers

2. “I might look like I’m doing nothing, but in my head I’m quite busy.” — Diane Kim

3. “I don’t always know why I’m anxious.” — Teri-Marie Harrison

4. “It’s paralyzing.” — Marlene Pickering.

5. “I don’t just ‘get nervous.’ Heck, half the time I’m not even nervous when I’m having a panic attack — I’m anxious. Sometimes it’s for no reason I can identify. When I’m anxious and nervous I recognize some of it is irrational, but I can’t just snap out of it. My mind and body aren’t cooperating with reason.” — Alex Wickham

6. “I’m not being ridiculous or dramatic.” — Melissa Kapuszcak

7. “We don’t need someone to look at us like we’re crazy. We need someone to be compassionate.” — Kristen Cunningham

8. “I don’t want to feel this way.” — Jenny Genoway.

9. “After a hectic day, especially after being in crowds or dealing directly with multiple people, I have a ‘people hangover’ the next day. I need alone time to reboot from all the energy used. I have to rest and reset my mind. If I don’t, I will become bone-tired, overwhelmed and moody.” — Lisa Shuey

10. “It’s totally possible to have social anxiety and be a raging extrovert.” — May Daonna

11. “You can’t just stop worrying. There is no ‘on’ or ‘off’ switch.” — Kim Derrick-Bené

12. “Even though we look OK on the outside, our anxiety is wreaking havoc on our insides.” — Cynthia Adams McGrath

13.  “I’m being attacked by something I can’t escape from.” —  Sherri Paricio Bornhoft

14. “No matter how irrational I may sound, it’s real to me.” — Lorri Smith

15. “Saying, ‘you will be fine’ doesn’t help.” — Thea Baker

16. “It’s not a choice. You don’t choose to have anxiety. It chooses you.” — Patricia Lynn

17. “It’s sometimes so exhausting and distracting that I may be forgetful or unproductive, but it’s not me trying to be thoughtless, lazy or make excuses.” — Anna Powers

18. “It’s real. I’m not overreacting.” — Kimberly Warren

19. “Anxiety [is] an illness. You can’t just get over mental illness.” — Heather Morello

20. “Anxiety and worrying are not the same things.” — Amy Hrynyk

21. “Prayer doesn’t make it disappear.” — Kayla Gosse

22. “Just because I can’t explain the feelings causing my anxiety, doesn’t make them less valid.” — Lauren Elizabeth

23. “I’m not crazy.” — Peggy Hess

24. “All the logic in the world won’t keep my heart from hammering in my chest.” — Rebecca V Cowcill

25. “Even the simplest tasks can be overwhelming at times.” — Rhonda Bodfield

26. “It’s uncontrollable.” — Asia Pope

27. “Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean my fears aren’t real.” — Vicki Happ

28. “It feels as if the weight of the world is on your shoulders. You feel suffocated.” — Danielle Nicole Box

29. “I’m not doing it for attention.” — Georgia Tsaganis Johnson

30. “The smallest things can set me off. The more trapped I feel, the worse off I am. Personal space will always make me feel better.” — Manda Ree

31. “My mind is my enemy, so I need you on my side. Sometimes I even need you to fight alongside me.” — Erin Farmer-Perrine

The Science Of Why You Should Spend Your Money On Experiences, Not Things.

Most people are in the pursuit of happiness. There are economists who think happiness is the best indicator of the health of a society. We know that money can make you happier, though after your basic needs are met, it doesn't make you that much happier. But one of the biggest questions is how to allocate our money, which is (for most of us) a limited resource.

There's a very logical assumption that most people make when spending their money: that because a physical object will last longer, it will make us happier for a longer time than a one-off experience like a concert or vacation. According to recent research, it turns out that assumption is completely wrong.

"One of the enemies of happiness is adaptation," says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University who has been studying the question of money and happiness for over two decades. "We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them."

So rather than buying the latest iPhone or a new BMW, Gilovich suggests you'll get more happiness spending money on experiences like going to art exhibits, doing outdoor activities, learning a new skill, or traveling.

Gilovich's findings are the synthesis of psychological studies conducted by him and others into the Easterlin paradox, which found that money buys happiness, but only up to a point. How adaptation affects happiness, for instance, was measured in a study that asked people to self-report their happiness with major material and experiential purchases. Initially, their happiness with those purchases was ranked about the same. But over time, people's satisfaction with the things they bought went down, whereas their satisfaction with experiences they spent money on went up.

It's counterintuitive that something like a physical object that you can keep for a long time doesn't keep you as happy as long as a once-and-done experience does. Ironically, the fact that a material thing is ever present works against it, making it easier to adapt to. It fades into the background and becomes part of the new normal. But while the happiness from material purchases diminishes over time, experiences become an ingrained part of our identity.

"Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods," says Gilovich. "You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nonetheless they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences."

One study conducted by Gilovich even showed that if people have an experience they say negatively impacted their happiness, once they have the chance to talk about it, their assessment of that experience goes up. Gilovich attributes this to the fact that something that might have been stressful or scary in the past can become a funny story to tell at a party or be looked back on as an invaluable character-building experience.

Another reason is that shared experiences connect us more to other people than shared consumption. You're much more likely to feel connected to someone you took a vacation with in Bogotá than someone who also happens to have bought a 4K TV.

"We consume experiences directly with other people," says Gilovich. "And after they're gone, they're part of the stories that we tell to one another."

And even if someone wasn't with you when you had a particular experience, you're much more likely to bond over both having hiked the Appalachian Trail or seeing the same show than you are over both owning Fitbits.

You're also much less prone to negatively compare your own experiences to someone else's than you would with material purchases. One study conducted by researchers Ryan Howell and Graham Hill found that it's easier to feature-compare material goods (how many carats is your ring? how fast is your laptop's CPU?) than experiences. And since it's easier to compare, people do so.

"The tendency of keeping up with the Joneses tends to be more pronounced for material goods than for experiential purchases," says Gilovich. "It certainly bothers us if we're on a vacation and see people staying in a better hotel or flying first class. But it doesn't produce as much envy as when we're outgunned on material goods."

Gilovich's research has implications for individuals who want to maximize their happiness return on their financial investments, for employers who want to have a happier workforce, and policy-makers who want to have a happy citizenry.

"By shifting the investments that societies make and the policies they pursue, they can steer large populations to the kinds of experiential pursuits that promote greater happiness," write Gilovich and his coauthor, Amit Kumar, in their recent article in the academic journal Experimental Social Psychology.

If society takes their research to heart, it should mean not only a shift in how individuals spend their discretionary income, but also place an emphasis on employers giving paid vacation and governments taking care of recreational spaces.

"As a society, shouldn't we be making experiences easier for people to have?" asks Gilovich.

6 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Charisma

While research on charisma is still in development, one of the most extensive studies on charisma has found that charisma is not so much a gift as a learnable skill you can master. 

What Presence Has to Do With It

If you meet someone at a cocktail party whose eyes are constantly flitting around the room, do they make a good impression? Do they appear magnetic or charming? Probably not. Their mind is clearly somewhere else—maybe trying to figure out if there is someone in the room who is more important than you. They are not focusing on the conversation, and they may glance at (or even focus on) their mobile devices. Are you likely to want to speak to them again? Chances are you will not. No one is interested in talking to someone who is not present. Worse yet is if they are not present and they are focused on technology. One research study showed that the mere presence of a cell phone impaired the sense of connection in a face-to- face conversation.

However, if you meet someone who is completely attentive to you and actively engaged in the conversation, you are much more likely to find them likable and interesting. If that person’s cell phone rings without them checking it, they get double brownie points. Why? Because in that moment, the only thing that seems to matter to them is you. You are the most important person there, and they have gifted you all of their attention at that moment.

A charismatic person is able to exert significant influence because he or she connects with others in meaningful ways. It’s no surprise that highly charismatic people—US presidents like Bill Clinton are a frequent example—are often described as having the ability to make you feel as if you were the only person in the room. Given how rare it is to receive that kind of attention from anyone, the ability to be fully present makes a big impression.

6 Ways To Increase Your Charisma

We often think of charisma as a special gift—the je ne sais quoi that makes someone starlike. Max Weber defined charisma as “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed withsupernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are . . . not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.”

What research(link is external) shows, is that charisma is not so much a gift, that "it factor" that you either were born with or not. Charisma has a lot to do with the ability to be fully present. The study pointed to six elements of a charismatic person:

1. Empathy—the ability to see things from another person’s perspective and to understand how that person is feeling. You can only be empathic and place yourself in another person’s shoes if you are fully attentive to them—which you are obviously only able to do if you are completely present with them.

2. Good listening skills—the ability to truly hear what someone is trying to communicate to you, both verbally and nonverbally. Think of the person at the conference social hour who inter- rupts you or can’t wait to interject her two cents. She is not truly listening to you because she’s thinking about herself—what she will say, how smart she will sound, how impressed you will be. If you are distracted or thinking about what to say next—not truly present—you are not truly listening.

3. Eye contact—the ability to meet and maintain someone’s gaze. Eye contact is one of the most powerful forms of human connection. We intuitively feel that when someone’s gaze shifts away from us, their attention has also shifted away from us. And this intuitionis backed up by neuroscience research, which has found that the same brain regions are used when your gaze wanders as when your mind wanders. When you are present and looking someone in the eye, the impact of that connection can be powerful. In addition to feeling heard, because of your empathy and good listening skills, people actually feel seen.

4. Enthusiasm—the ability to uplift another person through praise of their actions or ideas. Enthusiasm is difficult to fake because it is such an authentic emotion. It can only occur when you sincerely engage with what someone else is doing or saying. For your enthusiasm to come across powerfully, you have to sincerely feel it. Again, your ability to be fully present and engaged is essential.

5. Self-confidence—the ability to act authentically and with assurance without worrying about what other people think. Many people are so busy worrying about how they appear that they end up coming across as nervous or inauthentic. Their focus is on themselves rather than on the other person. When you are fully present, you are focused on others rather than yourself. As a consequence, you naturally come across as confident: instead of worrying about what others are thinking of you, you are com- posed, genuine, and natural.

6. Skillful speaking—the ability to profoundly connect with others. It is essential to know your audience if you want to make an impact. The only way to do so, however, is to tune in to them. When you are 100% present with your audience, you are able to understand where they are coming from and how they are interpreting your words. Only then can your words be sensitive and appropriate. When you speak skillfully, you will be truly heard.

Charisma, simply put, is absolute presence.