UnLtd Blogs - happystance

'Tis the season for tension and re-hashing old scores

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 10:38:24 +0000

There are lots of kill-joy stories circulating about elderly people being upbraided for asking about the switching-on of the Christmas Lights rather than Winter Lights. And stories about singing services being cancelled for being insufficiently multi-denominational. In the US, some groups have brought successful law suits against towns whose public displays are reportedly too secular. In contrast to these stories, the Guardian has a thoughtful piece that suggests that many of these Grinch stories have little or no basis in fact: The phoney war on Christmas.

Rather than the usual, “the personal is the political”, it seems as if the personal experience is spreading to the political. If your family’s version of holiday spirit has usually been interpreted rather too literally (and liberally), leading to family tension and the annual re-hashing of old scores, then this is your kind of public holiday season. And, by and large, no alcohol has been required, just plain mean-spiritedness.

A friend works for a dictionary publishers and is the go-to person in many circles for linguistic niceties. She and her siblings now have their own families and gather together at her mother’s on set-piece days. A while ago, her mother was watching a reality programme and asked her, “What’s a dysfunctional family?”. In an admirable economy of words, my friend replied, “You know the way we all get on Boxing Day”; her mother nodded, “Well, dysfunctional families are like that the whole year round”.

Answering "How are you?": counting blessings

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:18:36 +0000

Apparently, in Latin, you can ask a question that anticipates the answer. So, you use some grammatical forms if you expect the answer ‘No’, and others (presumably), if you expect the answer ‘Yes’. It sounds like an ancient form of mind-games and casts a new light on the art of conversation. But so often, our conversations can be formulaic, and this is especially true when it comes to social comments.

When I worked in Loughborough I was initially taken aback when the response to my polite enquiry, “How are you?”, was met with, “Fair to middling”. I was so accustomed to, “Fine”, that I didn’t know if the correct social action was to overlook it, or to enquire further and run the risk of learning more about IBS or the agonies of an enlarged prostate than I cared to know.

Throughout the UK there are local customs that dictate the answer to the question “How are you?”. I came across an item on blessings and the tricky task of navigating the appropriate answer to this question.

When someone asks me: How are you? 99% of the time I will answer “fine”. In Hebrew, you say, beseder, literally, in order, ok. It’s, “thanks for asking but I don’t need any special consideration right now, I’m ready to proceed”.

The Cost of Being Upbeat

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:33:28 +0000

An article in the Sunday Times discusses The price of keeping up a brave face. Cathy Galvin gives her own response to the news that friends of Gordon and Sarah Brown report that they have remained upbeat since learning that their baby son Fraser has cystic fibrosis, a chronic, incurable condition.

Galvin doesn't pull her punches and paints a picture of poor support and family tensions that is too familiar to too many families in the UK. She says that being "upbeat" had become

the ultimate betrayal of the estimated 1.9m families in Britain whose children have some kind of special educational need, who play down the load they are carrying and rarely tell it how it is. Why? Because to say, �Well, he�s doing well on the medication but we were up all night because he couldn�t breathe. And we�re worried because his sister is being bullied at school because he�s different. And we�re running short of money because one of us needs to be at home in case there�s an emergency during the day� is not what people want to hear...

To hint at the daily, gruelling realities of looking after a disabled child is to risk � especially if you move in healthy, wealthy circles � being boring, to sound as though you�re not coping, to awaken in your listener the worrying prospect that the gap between their lives and yours is so vast that you and your family have become something alien and other and, among your colleagues, the suggestion you might not be up to the job.

It's a good piece but I have to criticise the Sunday Times for failing to provide an outline of what adequate provision would look like or what it would cost (an UnLtd colleague attempted a costing of mental health care and school provision for 1 million children earlier this year).

You Tube's Contribution To Well-being

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:44:06 +0000

Rachel on Sisyphus' Ledge has a discussion going about Hugh Laurie in the comments of her post, Just a note. I had to echo the House, MD/Laurie support and call attention to the many excellent clips of both Fry & Laurie and House on You Tube.

You Tube lots of montages of clips from the various series of House set to music. There are some superb angsty pieces that Frank Zappa might have had in mind when he made his, �It�s like listening to Weber at 4 am on a foggy November morning� (such as 4 a.m.). However, because Rachel recently commented that she enjoyed the smiles on the pictures that I posted from a recent Happystance event, I�m going with a couple of recommendations for smiley, blithe montages: Shoop Shoop Song and Smile.

I've previously enthused about blogging as a creative outlet. I think that facilities like You Tube and affordable software are providing even more creative and entertainment opportunities for people: both as creators and consumers.

Happiness Adjusted Age Relative To Chronological Age?

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:50:29 +0000

There are several age-adjusted health scales used to horrify or shame us about our lifestyle choices and health. Real Age claims to calculate the biological age of your body, based on how well you maintain it. HeartAge can be used to tell a 42-year-old man that after a cardiovascular risk-adjustment, he has the heart of a 70-year-old man. There are anxiety and depression scores and quality of life scores. I'd like to propose an risk-adjusted happiness and resilience score for age. Imagine hearing, "You have the body of a 23-year-old but your lifestyle choices and general grumpiness gives you the Mind-Body score of 58-year old".

HeartAge is a novel use of the Framingham Heart Score: it has been reported in Patients' Perceptions of Cholesterol, Cardiovascular Disease Risk, and Risk Communication Strategies. A series of focus groups compared three strategies for communicating cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Participants saw three visual displays that represented the CVD risk for a 42-year-old man with a Framingham Heart Score that predicted a 25% probability for a CVD event within the next 10 years. A crowd chart showed 100 stick figures with 25 of them shaded to indicate the proportion predicted to have a CVD event over the next 10- years: this was contrasted with a similar chart for a same-aged man with no risk factors (1 figure shaded). Similarly, this same information was compared and contrasted in a simple bar graph. The HeartAge was also presented as a chart. But this time, a horizontal bar chart represented age. The first bar depicted the chronological age (42 years);

the second bar showed how this individual compared with the average age of a same-sex person in the Framingham Heart Study having the same 10-year probability of experiencing a CHD event. For the demonstration case, the 42-year-old had the same risk as a 70-year-old.

Analysis of the participants' reactions and responses revealed that the standard visual representations that show statistical probabilities of risk are confusing and uninspiring. However, a strategy that provides a cardiovascular risk-adjusted age calculation was

evaluated as clear, memorable, relevant, and potentially capable of motivating people to make healthful changes.

The BODE index is gaining in popularity for assessing people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). BODE is a combination of physical and physiological indices and measurements: it can be used in conjunction with quality of life questionnaires to present a full picture of a patient's health and well-being.

Laughing with the Greater Manchester Police

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 17:16:38 +0000

I was pleased to be invited to participate in a Carer's Day, organised by the Women's Group of the Greater Manchester Police. So, if you've ever wondered what a Happystance workshop looks like, this is it!

Here, a Laughter Chorus performed Happy Birthday with laughs of different tones rather than in song.

We finished with a laughter conga line and some ingenious shoulder and neck rubs.

The picture is generally bleak for carers in the UK but it is essential that carers have some attention paid to their own needs. After the Happystance slot a number of the participants came up to say how much they had enjoyed the event. They had been a little apprehensive that the day would be worthy but very dull and had appreciated the unexpected levity.

Is It Depression or Bleak Life Circumstances?

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:40:25 +0000

Have you come across the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9)? Pfizer is terribly proud of the PHQ-9 and claims that it is an

easy to use patient questionnaire [which] is a self-administered version of the PRIME-MD diagnostic instrument for common mental disorders.

I'm met a number of carers who have been put through the PHQ-9. By anecdotal report, the lowest score to date is 20 (severe depression). Oddly enough, lots of carers have trouble falling/staying asleep, particularly if they are listening out for sounds of illness or an indication that someone is up and wandering (e.g., someone with Alzheimer's Disease). Some carers lose their appetite with anxiety and others overeat for comfort. A number are in such distressed financial straits if they've given up work to care for someone that it's not unusual for them to feel like they're failures and face a future that is so bleak that they don't want it. These questions would catch a lot of carers and their everyday circumstances.

Is it hopelessly naive to say that the PHQ-9 is describing a state of mind that would disappear in many of the affected carers if they had appropriate resources and their future didn't look quite so bleak? The GPs who administer the PHQ-9 are familiar with the circumstances of carers: do they administer anti-depressants or offer talking therapy (good luck with that waiting list), or do they look at the score and decide that it is not really indicative of depression?

Being a Murder Victim v. Winning The Lottery: Calculating Happiness

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 10:26:02 +0000

I was intrigued to come across a ready-reckoner for calculating the size that a US lottery jackpot needs to be before it is worth the investment of a one dollar ticket. The values need to be adjusted to account for UK jackpots and the greater price of a UK ticket. It's a pretty sobering read to drill down into what the return has to be to justify the expenditure of a dollar.

...for a $1.00 ticket, the amount of the grand prize had to be at least equal to the odds for winning it. In the case of the Powerball lottery, that means the grand prize has to be at least worth $120,526,660 to make the value of the benefit worth the $1.00 cost of the risk.

According to this source, the jackpot has to be more than 120 million dollars to justify buying a 1 dollar ticket. So, very roughly (using all my fingers and toes), that means we need a jackpot of around 102 million pounds to make it worth the financial risk of investing 1 pound. Of course, this doesn't take different population sizes into account, it's just a straight conversion at the exchange rate of 1.40 dollars to the pound.

I have previously quoted the figure (I read it in a news summary) that we are 14x more likely to be murdered than to win the lottery. And I have used that as an argument that we are theory poor if our sole response to "What would make you happy?" is "Winning the lottery".

Making a small difference

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:00:09 +0000

I've just had a lovely note from one of the carers who joined in with a Laughter session I ran in Ealing a few weeks ago. Along with the playful laughter exercises, we talked about some simple things to try to help lift our mood every day. One of them is simply to write down 3 blessings (things that went well) during the day. They can be small things (a stranger smiling "hello!" walking down the street, the smell of a rose, etc.). The trick is just to actively recall a blessing, without denying the stress and strain of the day. Over time this becomes a habit and you naturally realise that life isn't all bad.

Yes, this does sound Pollyanna-ish but for a number of people, including this carer, it can be surprising helpful. She now finds herself walking down the street actively looking out for a blessing. In line with the findings reported by Richard Wiseman in The Luck Factor, more often than not she finds them. She said she is surprised at how much of a difference this is making to her day. She feels happier and less stressed than before.

Of course, this note is a lovely blessing for me to include in my list today. Along with the beautiful Campanulas Sainsbury's were almost giving away this afternoon and the fun of watching a Spaniel trying to jump about 6 feet up a tree as it chased a squirrel in the park (well, fun at least for me, if not the squirrel).

Happiness and The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 08:40:54 +0000

Polly Toynbee has written a piece asking "why have we never had it so good". She argues that:

There has never been a better time to be alive in Britain than today, no generation more blessed, never such opportunity for so many. And things are getting better all the time, horizons widening, education spreading, everyone living longer, healthier, safer lives.

However, it doesn’t seem as if all of these "[u]nimaginable luxuries and choices" have increased our happiness levels: it is also not clear that the opportunities and benefits that she describes with such approbation are available to all. Many people are involuntary participants in the postcode lottery that governs whether or not you are eligible for a variety of procedures on the NHS (e.g., cardiac catheter ablations). And the increase in foreign travel and holidays is limited: the number of British people who did not take a holiday over the course of a year has remained stable at 41 per cent over the last three decades.

Brad DeLong has posted an extensive and interesting review of Ben Friedman's thought-provoking The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth.

FEAR, And The Fear Of Terrorism

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:47:27 +0000

It’s a cliche in positive psychology that FEAR is an acronym: depending on your preference it is either False Experience Appearing Real or False Experience Accepted as Real.

Happiness teacher and writer Robert Holden says that a lot of his work consists of showing people that they are already happy. When working with people it is not unusual to discover that if people look through their present circumstances, there is much for which they are grateful, and much that contributes to a sense of happiness.

Participants in my Happystance workshops can be initially reluctant to join in some of the group exercises: they frequently say that they can not visualise and have no power of imagination. Yet, in my experience, most of those people are experts at being frightened by something that hasn’t happened yet. They are afraid of something that may happen in the future: they can imagine this event of set of circumstances in full technicolour gore, and may even be capable of experiencing some of the accompanying emotions in advance.

“They need to do better than what is going on to make a dent in the fear that is affecting a million people.”- ANDY APAID, a businessman in Port-au-Prince, on the United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti.

I read the above quotation some time ago in the New York Times. And I had it in mind when I met a few people this morning who all reported themselves as unhappy. After we had worked together for a while it became apparent that none of them was unhappy because of their current circumstances. The unhappiness lay in their expectation of future unhappiness, and they brought that emotion into their present, although it doesn’t belong there, and there is no guarantee that a future event will occur that will justify their present emotional state. It is well established that negative emotions have an adverse impact on people’s immune systems and can undermine their health and wellbeing. Fear of an adverse event in the future can undermine an individual’s ability to cope with it.

Happy Danes and Miserable Brits?

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 10:51:31 +0000

A researcher has put together a map of happiness in the world. The map shows that Denmark is the No. 1 destination. Health levels, prosperity and education were the strongest determinants of happiness. Money might not guarantee happiness, but it does make a significant contribution when it is spend on healthcare and education. It probably comes as no surprise that Zimbabwe and Burundi come bottom: oddly enough, the USA is placed at 23 and UK at 41 out of 178 countries.

The researcher makes some interesting comments about why countries appear in the places that they do. He remarks that Asia showed up poorly despite the strong sense of family and collective identity. However, I would speculate that questions that emphasise subjective wellbeing are not culturally appropriate in several countries. Although there is some mention of lower levels of happiness in countries with large population, the examples cited seem to relate more to high population density than large populations (they may overlap but are not necessarily synonymous).

Of course, according to a recent item in The Guardian, happiness is over-rated. Happiness does seem to be a red-rag that precludes discussion of the benefits that it confers. Apart from novels and philosophical/religious speculations about the spiritual ennoblement that suffering gives us, where did we develop the idea that lessons in how to develop our mental and physical fortitude would reduce us to the blandly chipper, annoying others with our mindless cheer and groundless optimism? We can't eradicate sadness or adversity: they are a natural part of life's rhythms. But, for some people, it does seem as if we can do something about our ability to cope with such circumstances.

Can You Have Choice Agoraphobia?

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 08:13:01 +0000

I was caught up in yet another discussion about choice recently. We were exchanging views on whether choice adds to our sense of freedom and happiness or whether being immersed in choice actually distracts our energy from more significant matters. The discussion ranged from the "we've never had it so good" school to Schwartz's recent account of the freedom to choose and Harbaugh's "falling behind the Joneses".

I was trying to express my experience that I meet many carers in Happystance workshops who relish some choices but are bewildered by others (e.g., to do with complex benefit/allowance applications; or indecision about what care package meets the needs of everybody involved). In the press of conversation I managed to mangle a cross between a spoonerism and a malaproprism. The spoonerism was between choice and consumer; the malapropism was substituting agoraphobia for a word that I no longer recall.

After my initial surprise, I thought about it and have decided that the phrases are apposite. Agoraphobia is literally fear of the marketplace. I think that 'consumer agoraphobia' can describe a condition where consumers are overwhelmed by choice. Some people are so overwhelmed by choice that they no longer want to take even small decisions because they trigger so much anxiety.

No Photos But A Nice Note...

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:38:10 +0000

I ran a Happystance event on Monday. The carers were a lively bunch which always helps if you're incorporating laughter into the event. Unfortunately, none of them had used a digital camera before so I don't have any pictures as a memento.

However, I did receive this note from the organiser:

I would just like to say thank you for running your Laughter Session on Monday 10th July 2006 at XXXX Carers Centre.

I have had such fantastic feed back from the carers who attended, they absolutely loved it!
I was wondering, if it would be at all possible for you to do another session? It was so well received that I have had carers calling me up asking for a repeat!
I can understand that you must be very busy, but on the off chance that you can, I have a few proposed dates.

It's feedback like that that makes running this project such a joy. I loathe the admin, I hate the time and resources that are sucked into paperwork etc. but the actual events are so rewarding - it's a real pleasure.

Happiness-Adjusted Age Relative To Chronological Age?

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:48:56 +0000

the second bar showed how this individual compared with the average age of a same-sex person in the Framingham Heart Study having the same 10-year probability of experiencing a CHD event. For the demonstration case, the 42-year-old had the same risk as a 70-year-old.

evaluated as clear, memorable, relevant, and potentially capable of motivating people to make healthful changes.