Psychology
Let's Think About... Booklet (1971- )
The Let's Think About... booklet was published by Scarfolk Council Schools & Child Welfare Services department in 1971. It was designed for use in the classroom and encouraged children between the ages of five and nine to focus on a series of highly traumatic images and events.
Parents and teachers assumed that the booklet was based on psychological research but it had no scientific basis whatsoever. The booklet's medically untrained author was one of the dinner ladies from the council canteen before she was fired for attempting to slip strychnine into bowls of blancmange.
Despite the scandal, the booklet remained on the school curriculum for many years and the author was invited by the council to pen an updated edition from her prison cell in 1979.
Inequality breeds stress and anxiety. No wonder so many Britons are suffering | Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
In equal societies, citizens trust each other and contribute to their community. This goes into reverse in countries like ours
The gap between image and reality yawns ever wider. Our rich society is full of people presenting happy smiling faces both in person and online, but when the Mental Health Foundation commissioned a large survey last year, it found that 74% of adults were so stressed they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope. Almost a third had had suicidal thoughts and 16% had self-harmed at some time in their lives. The figures were higher for women than men, and substantially higher for young adults than for older age groups. And rather than getting better, the long-term trends in anxiety and mental illness are upwards.
For a society that believes happiness is a product of high incomes and consumption, these figures are baffling. However, studies of people who are most into our consumerist culture have found that they are the least happy, the most insecure and often suffer poor mental health.
Tuesday, 18 July 2017 - 3:23pm
I was just in the chemist shop, waiting for a prescription to be filled. I became aware of a customer behind me, asking an assistant if she had anything to help with insomnia. She said she was very, very stressed, and having trouble sleeping. I am not a psychologist (and in fairness nor was the shop assistant), but the lady was clearly not in a happy place, psychologically. So did the shop assistant at least suggest that the customer pop in to see her GP to find out if there was anything they might recommend?
Did she f***. She sold her some f***ing valerian pills!
It's like calling a crisis hotline and being told "It's probably nothing. Have you tried a nice cup of hot chocolate?"
It's bad enough that pharmacists are allowed to sell snake oil from the same shelves as real medicines. In a sane world any pharmacist caught doing this would be instantly deregistered. At the very least, staff should be instructed to err on the side of caution in the case of any ailment with a potential psychological component. The above conversation should have gone something more like this:
"Do you have anything for insomnia?"
"Yes, we do. This is a mild sedative. For anything stronger you'll need to see your doctor, which would be a good idea anyway if it's a persistent problem. And this here is a medieval folk remedy. Might do you some good. Might do you harm. No solid evidence either way. In fact I've no idea why we stock it. Given there's nothing to recommend it beyond uninformed heresay, you'd be a fool to try it."
The poison of inequality was behind last summer's riots | Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
A year on from the riots, the government is still failing to identify their underlying causes
If you're trying to explain the riots that started a year ago, the safest strategy is not to put all your eggs in one basket but to come up with a long list of contributory factors. That is what the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel set up by the government did. It lists lack of community, family difficulties, low social mobility, poor relations between police and young people, consumerism – and of course the panel is right. But we need to think a bit further. We need to join up the dots and think about the causes of these causes.
None of these things crop up by chance, quite unrelated to one another. That's like thinking it's just bad luck that smokers are not only at greater risk of lung cancer, but also of cancers of the bladder, larynx, mouth and throat, and of respiratory diseases and cardiovascular diseases too. The truth is that just as tobacco is a physiological poison, Britain's high levels of inequality are a social poison that increases the risks of a wide range of social ills.