Learning to focus on smiles not frowns: challenging unhelpful attention and interpretation patterns #ActiveIngredientsMH

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Jennifer Lau summarises a recent systematic review relating to her own Wellcome Trust funded research into promoting helpful attention and interpretation patterns to reduce anxiety and depression in young people.

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Going beyond the Mental Capacity Act in assessing capacity: recognising and overcoming biases and stereotypes #MentalCapacity2020

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Health and social care professionals routinely assess the mental capacity of people to make decisions about their lives, in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act, 2005. A new briefing note for policy makers and mental health professionals looks at how we can mitigate the risk of assumptions and biases in assessments of mental capacity.

Alex Ruck Keene, an expert in mental capacity and mental health law, summarises the briefing and looks forward to the live streamed #MentalCapacity2020 debate at 12pm on Thursday 26th March.

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Cognitive biases in adolescent depression: the more you have, the worse you feel

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Maria Loades explores a cross-sectional study of the combined influence of cognitions in adolescent depression, which investigates biases of interpretation, self-evaluation and memory, and concludes that a negative evaluation of the self is strongly associated with depression severity and with a diagnosis of depression.

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Cognitive bias modification for anxiety and depression in children and adolescents

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Shirley Reynolds writes her debut Mental Elf blog on a recent meta-analysis of cognitive bias modification (CBM) for anxiety and depression in children and adolescents. The review suggests that, on the face of it, we should not be investing in future CBM research, but is it that simple?

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Are we jumping to conclusions in our understanding of psychosis?

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Andrés Fonseca appraises a longitudinal study in people at high risk of psychosis, which looks at misattributing speech and jumping to conclusions.

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