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Ever since I was born, I have always had a stutter (or stammer if we’re using UK English). This meant when I was a child, I had horrific difficulties with speech, forming sentences and I really struggled talking in general. Thankfully, as I’ve gotten older and more comfortable in myself and different situations, I have largely removed my stutter, but this week was a painful reminder at how badly I stutter in new situations. In fact, the other week in a job interview because I was stuttering, the interviewer actually asked me point-blank something along the lines of this role will involve talking to over 200 people in a hall, is that something you can do? I had to literally tell them whilst my interview performance wasn’t showing it, I was fine talking to massive groups of people and delivering large presentations when I was at university. I didn’t get the job and I strongly believe it was clearly because of my stutter and how they treated me as if I was stupid because of it. This reflects the sheer number of myths and misconceptions about stuttering. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is stuttering, what causes it and how is stuttering treated. As well as what are the myths and misconceptions about stuttering and how can we support people who stutter. If you enjoy learning about speech difficulties, clinical psychology and mental health, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide to Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Stuttering for Psychologists? According to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, stuttering is when someone repeats sounds or syllables, like “mu-mu-mu-mummy”, as a word gets stuck or doesn’t come out at all and/ or a person makes sounds longer like “mmmmmmummmmy”. As well as the intensity and frequency of stuttering does vary from person to person and it depends on the situation, so someone might have periods of stuttering followed by times when they can speak relatively fluently. Personally, when I was a child I would tend to get stuck on certain words and sounds, and sometimes they just wouldn’t come out at all. Also, I would definitely prolong my sounds and I would use filters a lot of the time. For example, whilst I tend to edit most of these out in the podcast you have heard me say “though” and “like” a lot. This is normally during my stuttering that I try to edit out of the podcast as best as I can. Equally, as a child, I used to repeat “yes so then” a lot before I started speaking and I would constantly repeat the syllables “li-li-like” and “well,” before and during my speech, because talking was just so hard because of my stuttering. Building upon the situational point, even now this is a very annoying part of stuttering because talking with people I know, like my friends, my peers and my family. I am fine, I do not stutter much and my speech is very close to being perfect. Yet if you put me in a situation that is new, that is filled with people I don’t know and I am concerned, then my stuttering increases dramatically. For example, job interviews and canvassing (also known as door-knocking) I tend to stutter an awful lot. Additionally, studies show that around 1 in 12 children go through a phase of stuttering, around 2 in 3 children with stuttering go on to speak fluently and stuttering affects around 1 in 50 adults with men being 3 to 4 times more likely to stutter compared to women. On the whole, stuttering is important for psychologists to understand because stuttering can decrease someone’s confidence, their ability to be taken seriously, their self-esteem, their ability to be employed and so much more. This can impact their mental health in turn. What are the Types of Stuttering? There are two types of stuttering. Firstly, you have acquired or late-onset stuttering and this is a relatively rare form of stuttering and it happens in older children and adults. This is caused by a stroke, head injury or a progressive neurological condition. As well as it can be caused by certain drugs, psychological or emotional trauma or medicines. Secondly, you have developmental stuttering and this is the most common type because developmental stuttering develops in early childhood when speech and language skills are developing quickly. I definitely have developmental stuttering because I’ve had this difficulty since childhood. Overall, it’s important for psychologists to be aware of the two types of stuttering because this allows you to understand the causes, potential treatments and how best to support your client who’s struggling with stuttering. How Does Stuttering Affect a Person? Personally, it’s really important to me that we all understand how stuttering can impact a person, because on the surface it just looks like a person who stutters just can’t speak. Yet that isn’t a problem and it isn’t actually true. A person who stutters can be remarkably intelligent, fluent and they can be very confident in certain situations, but we’ll explore that more in the next section of the episode that focuses on myths and misconceptions. Yet stuttering can impact someone in a wide range of ways. For example, stuttering can involve using a lot of filler words during speech. Such as “like”, “um” and “ah.” Personally, I use a lot of filler words and “like” is my favourite it seems and sometimes my use of filler words is extremely painful. Sometimes it seems like every other word that I say is a filler word and I actually feel sorry for the people who have to listen to me because it means they have to decode my sentence and get rid of the filler words. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen as often as it used to when I was a kid. Another typical feature of stuttering includes the prolonging of certain sounds and not being able to move onto the next sound. This is something that you might have heard a few times on The Psychology World Podcast because there are some sounds that I seriously struggle with. For example, the “ex” in experience. That really causes me to stutter for some reason. For other people, this feature of stuttering can look like “mmmmmmmmmmmmmilk”. Thirdly, stuttering can cause a person to avoid eye contact with other people whilst struggling with sounds and words. Penultimately, stuttering can cause a person to repeat certain words, sounds and syllables when talking, so instead of saying “apple” a person who stutters might say “a-a-a-a-a-a-apple”. I know I’ve done this a million times and it was horrifically severe when I was a child but no specific examples thankfully spring to mind. And I will be very open on this episode that this is actually a little difficult for me to write about. It’s probably why I haven’t done a podcast episode on stuttering in the 7 years and over 400 episodes of The Psychology World Podcast. Since my stuttering did result in a lot of bullying in my childhood and even now, my stuttering is causing me to miss out on job opportunities and it’s causing people to think that I’m less intelligent than I am. And it sucks. A final feature of stuttering includes lengthy pauses between certain words and sounds and it can seem as though a child is struggling to say the right word, sentence or phrase. Personally, this is really annoying for me because I know what I want to say, I just can’t get the word out and then someone corrects me as though I don’t know what I’m talking about. It just annoys me to no end. Another way how stuttering impacts a person is that stuttering is more likely to happen when a young child has a lot to say, they’re excited and they’re saying something that’s important to them. As well as stuttering is often worse in situations where a child feels self-conscious about their speech and they’re typically under pressure not to stutter. For example, when reading aloud, speaking on the phone, talking to a person in authority and saying their name in registration at school. Personally, I completely agree because even now these situations still impact me. I was doing some phone banking for a local cause a few weeks ago and I stuttered a lot during that, because I find it hard to talk on the phone, I had to follow a script and it’s just hard. Since I have a lot to say to these people and it’s important to me. I was tempted to joke to some of the people if I ever saw them in person something along the lines of “hey it’s Connor, we spoke on the phone, and as you can see I can actually talk and string a sentence together in-person,” Lastly, stuttering can impact a person because there are certain behaviours associated with it. For example a child who stutters might develop involuntary movements like quivering lips, grimaces, eye blinking, tapping their fingers or stamping their feet. Yet they might also change the way they speak to prevent stuttering, so this can include talking very softly or slowly or with an accent, they might avoid social situations because of their fear of stuttering and this can include not asking for items in shops or going to birthday parties, as well as they might avoid saying certain words or sounds that they normally stutter on. Also, a child with a stutter might adopt strategies to hide their stuttering, like claiming to have forgotten what they were trying to say when they’re having trouble getting the words out. In my experience, quivering lips is a massive pain because sometimes my face and mouth really contort when I stutter. I don’t know why but it’s just my muscles and mouth trying to get the words out. As well as this is a useful reminder about why learning about stuttering is important for psychologists because if you’re seeing a client who stutters and they’re socially isolating themselves by not going to birthday parties, not going to social situations that might cause them to stutter and they feel fear, shame or frustration because of their stutter. Then this will negatively impact their mental health and their self-esteem. This is why psychologists might be immensely useful because we can work with the client to overcome their fear and their social anxiety whilst they hopefully see a speech and language therapist if required. What are Some Myths about Stuttering? Before we talk about the causes of stuttering, I want to focus on some myths and misconceptions about stuttering. This ensures that we’re all on the same page, we aren’t accidentally bringing in our biases or myths into our clinical work and it helps to ensure that we’re delivering the best possible care and support to our current or future clients. Firstly, it is a myth that nervousness or stress causes stuttering. Since a lot of people unfortunately believe that stuttering is caused by fear or anxiety, and research shows that this isn’t true because stuttering is rooted in brain function, not our emotions. Of course, it is true that emotions, like stress and anxiety, can make stuttering more severe, but it isn’t the underlying cause. As well as what I think is the most important fact here is that people, like me, tend to feel anxious because they stutter, not because their anxiety makes them stutter. This is one of the reasons why my stutter gets worse in job interviews is because I’m anxious that I’ll stutter, look less intelligent and I’ll miss out on the job because of my stutter. Secondly, it is a myth that people who stutter are less intelligent. This is a myth that drives me utterly insane because as I mentioned in the introduction to this psychology blog post. The other week in a job interview because I was stuttering, the interviewer actually asked me point-blank something along the lines of this role will involve talking to over 200 people in a hall, is that something you can do? I had to literally tell them whilst my interview performance wasn’t showing it, I was fine talking to massive groups of people and delivering large presentations when I was at university. I didn’t get the job and I strongly believe it was clearly because of my stutter and how they treated me as if I was stupid because of it. Therefore, the truth about stuttering is that stuttering reflects speech fluency, not a person’s cognitive ability. This means that people can be highly intelligent, successful and creative in any field and still stutter. Personally, if we look at myself, I have a BSc in Psychology and Clinical Psychology with a Placement Year, I have an MSc in Clinical Psychology, I write books, I podcast and I do a lot of other things. This means that I am intelligent, I am very creative and I am successful in my life. Yet because I stutter a lot of people think that I’m less intelligent than I am and that annoys me so much. Thirdly, it is a myth that stuttering is caused by a personality trait, like introversion. As we’ve already learnt stuttering is caused by neurological differences in the brain, it is not caused by personality factors. Since people who stutter can be confident, outspoken and assertive but past negative experiences can influence the person’s likelihood to hesitate. In my opinion, I am extremely outspoken on certain topics like mental health, politics and psychology, and I am confident, compassionate and I am very driven. And yet I stutter, so I am further evidence of this myth being false. Moreover, it is a myth that ignoring stuttering will make it go away. Unfortunately, some people believe that avoiding attention or discussion about stuttering will make it go away but this isn’t true. We’ll look at what improves stuttering later in the episode, but creating an open, honest and supportive space with good communication and evidence-based therapy are critical to improving stuttering. The final myth that we’ll learn about is that simple advice like “slow down” and “take a deep breath” will cure stuttering. This is something I hear constantly and a lot of people tell me to simply slow down. The reason why this advice is unhelpful for people who stutter is because this increases self-consciousness and can make stuttering worse. What actually happens a person with their stuttering is the people around them listening patiently, modelling clear speech and professional therapy that is tailored to the individual. On the whole, these myths about stuttering are important for psychologists to learn about because these facts provide us with clear insights into how to best support clients, it allows us to be a reflective practitioner and understand how our perceived notions about stuttering might impact our clinical work and most importantly, this knowledge means we can gently and compassionately challenge the client’s own beliefs about their stuttering. What Causes Stuttering? Whilst we are not 100% sure what causes stuttering, we do know that inherited and developmental factors play a large role in the development of stuttering, and small differences in how efficiently the speech areas of the brain operate. As well as we know that stuttering isn’t caused by anything that the parents have done. How Can Speech Development Cause Stuttering? Firstly, speech development can cause stuttering because speech development is a complex process (I’m sure any psychology student will tell you that) because speech development involves communication between the brain and muscles responsible for speaking and breathing and different areas of the brain. When these complex processes work, this means that the right words are spoken in the right order with the correct emphasis, pauses and rhythm. However, stuttering can happen if some parts of this developing system aren’t coordinated correctly and this can cause stoppages as well as repetitions. Especially, when a child has a lot they want to say, they’re excited and they feel under pressure. Personally, I strongly believe this is where the myths of “anxiety causes stuttering” and “slow down” will cure stuttering. Since when I’m under pressure in a job interview, my stuttering gets worse and slowing down isn’t really going to help me because it will not improve the coordination of my brain and speech system. The same goes for my stuttering getting worse when I’m excited and have a lot to say, slowing down will not help me much because it will not cure the neurological difficulties in my brain. And I’m proud of who I am, my difficulties and my neurological challenges, so I don’t want them to be fixed or cured. In addition, over the years, as the brain continues to develop, stuttering can be resolved or the brain might compensate for the neurological differences and this is why a lot of children stop stuttering as they get older. Or like me, it improves dramatically. How do Genes and Sex Differences Cause Stuttering? When it comes to how genes and sex differences cause stuttering, stuttering is more common in boys than girls but we don’t understand why this happens. As well as we understand that genes play in a role in the development of stuttering because around roughly 2 in 3 people who stutter have a family history of stuttering. This suggests the genes that a child inherits from their parents might make them more likely to develop a stutter. How is Stuttering Treated? The type of treatment offered to people who stutter depends on their age and their situation because typically a speech and language therapist will work with the parents, child and educational staff to make a suitable treatment plan for the child. Equally, a speech and language therapist can also work with adults to find ways to improve the fluency of their speech and reduce the impact that stuttering has on their life. Then psychology can be useful because people who stutter can be referred to psychological therapy if they have any emotional difficulties linked to their speech difficulties. Building upon this, when it comes to speech therapy for younger children, in the United Kingdom, the Lidcombe programme is a widely used direct behavioural therapy for the treatment of stuttering. The programme is based on the principle of providing consistent feedback to your child about their speech in a friendly, supportive and non-judgemental way. Furthermore, if a child’s stuttering has persisted into school-age then stuttering is significantly harder to treat as I know all too well. As we’ve spoken about already in this episode, if a child continues to stutter by the age they go to school then it can lead to anxiety about speaking, feelings of fear and embarrassment and it can cause other social and emotional difficulties. This is why direct therapy in older children who stutter focuses on improving their speaking behaviour as well as taking into account the social, psychological and emotional aspects of stuttering. This direct therapy for school-age children focuses on helping to improve fluency, share experiences with others who stutter, improve communication skills, develop positive attitudes and self-confidence, work on feelings associated with stuttering like anxiety and fear and help the child understand more about stuttering. What is Indirect Therapy in the Treatment of Stuttering? Indirect therapy is when parents make changes to the way they communicate in the home environment instead of focusing on their child’s talking. Since indirect approaches are based on the idea that children start to stutter when they cannot keep up with the demands on their language skills, and these so-called demands might come from the people around them or from the child’s own enthusiasm as well as determination to communicate. This is one reason why this is recommended for children who stutter under 5 to try first instead of direct therapy. Since the aim of indirect therapy is to create an environment where a child feels under less pressure when speaking. To achieve this, parents might speak calmly and slowly to their child, encourage taking turns and listening within the family, not criticising and interrupting their child, making the family environment as calm and relaxing as possible and doing more of what seems to help a child’s fluency. For instance, talking about what the parent and child are doing together, like looking at favourite books, walking to school and playing together. How to Help a Person who Stutters When Talking to Them? The reason why I saved this section until last is because this is a very important section for me as a person who stutters. If different people around me knew this information then maybe my stutter could decrease, I wouldn’t be subjected to the awful myth that I am less intelligent because I stutter and I wouldn’t have experienced so much bullying as a child. Therefore, when you’re talking to someone who stutters, it’s important that you don’t, or at least try to avoid, finishing their sentences and you give them enough time to finish what they’re saying without interrupting. Since if you do this, it will have a negative impact on their self-esteem, it will draw attention to their stuttering and it can make it worse. It just isn’t helpful. In addition, when talking to someone who stutters show interest in what they’re saying instead of how they’re saying it and maintain eye contact. This will help the person who stutters to feel at ease, like they don’t need to rush to maintain your interest and it’s more helpful. As well as avoid asking them to speak faster or more slowly. Personally, I never find it helpful when someone says this to me because it just makes me more self-conscious and it doesn’t help me in the slightest. Furthermore, this is important for psychologists to be aware of because we might have a client one day who stutters, and as part of the therapeutic alliance, we need to make sure that the client feels comfortable with us. We’re asking the client to reveal their deepest and darkest thoughts, feelings and emotions so it’s important that we help them to feel comfortable, at ease and they want to open up to us to maximise the likely success of the therapy. These tips about how to talk to someone who stutters can be very helpful in building that early rapport and maintaining it when the therapy gets difficult. Another reason why this information is useful for psychologists is because if you’re an educational psychologist, then you can share this information with schools, teaching staff and parents of children who stutter. This helps to create a more welcoming, inclusive and supportive educational environment for the child so they can enjoy school and contribute to the learning environment without feeling stressed, fearful or less intelligent because of their stutter. As well as if you’re a clinical psychologist working with the speech and language team because your client stutters, then you might want to share or reinforce this approach with the family system. This means that you and the speech and language team are on the same page, you’re giving consistent advice and this increases the likelihood of the family system taking it on board. Speaking of which, it’s helpful to speak calmly and slowly when talking to a young child who stutters and you should use short sentences and simple language to reduce the communication demands on the child. Of course, I am flat out not saying you should talk to your child as if they are less intelligent, but you’ll be supporting their language development and reducing their stuttering if you place less demands on their language abilities. Finally, it’s best if parents (and psychologists working with children) don’t overwhelm their child by talking too quickly, because you need to make sure that you give the child time to understand as well as process what you’ve just said, and work out their own response. Again, this applies to aspiring and qualified psychologists in a range of ways, but I want to focus on one situation. If you’re a psychologist who just transferred from an adult mental health service to a children and adolescent mental health service then you might be used to talking at your normal speed, using more complex words and you might not realise the extent to which you need to adapt your language for children. This self-awareness about the way you speak, communicate and the speed of your responses are even more important to reflect on when working with children who stutter. And a final point that I just thought about was if you’re an aspiring educational psychologist, if you have children who stutter in your educational setting then you might want to ask about creating some kind of Continued Professional Development session to educate other staff members about stuttering. You could use the session to combat myths, explain what stuttering is really about and how to best support children who stutter in the educational setting. The advantage of creating this CPD session is that it shows you can apply psychological theories to education, you have experience in delivering CPD content like qualified educational psychologists and you have experience of using psychology to improve schools. Just a little thought. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Personally, certain parts of this episode were difficult for me, because my stutter has had a major impact on my life. It led to a lot of painful bullying, a lot of people being nasty to me and even now, at the age of 25, I am missing out on career opportunities because employers think that I can’t speak, I’m less intelligent and I won’t be able to do the job. All because of my stutter that is nowhere near as severe as it used to be and most of the time, I don’t really stutter. Therefore, whilst we’ve covered a lot of great information like what is stuttering, how it impacts people, what the treatment options are, how this information applies to psychologists and so much more. I want to wrap up this episode with a little reminder. As a result, according to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, stuttering is when someone repeats sounds or syllables, like “mu-mu-mu-mummy”, a word gets stuck or doesn’t come out at all and/ or a person makes sounds longer “mmmmmmummmmy”. As well as the intensity and frequency of stuttering does vary from person to person and it depends on the situation, so someone might have periods of stuttering followed by times when they can speak relatively fluently. Finally, I would add that now we know this information, it’s our duty as aspiring and qualified psychologists to share this information, incorporate it into our clinical and educational work and use it to make the world a better place for everyone. Including people who stutter. So, I’ll leave you with a simple question: · What small act could you do today to improve the life of someone who stutters? I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Developmental Psychology: A Guide to Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Gembäck, C., McAllister, A., Femrell, L., & Lagerberg, T. E. (2025). Online indirect group treatment for preschool children who stutter—Effects on stuttering severity and the impact of stuttering on child and parents. International journal of language & communication disorders, 60(2), e70008. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stammering/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stammering/symptoms/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stammering/treatment/ https://www.stutteringhelp.org/five-myths-about-stuttering https://www.westutter.org/post/myths-about-stuttering Johnson, G., Onslow, M., Horton, S., & Kefalianos, E. (2023). Psychosocial features of stuttering for school‐age children: A systematic review. International journal of language & communication disorders, 58(5), 1829-1845. Kohmäscher, A., Primaßin, A., Heiler, S., Avelar, P. D. C., Franken, M. C., & Heim, S. (2023). Effectiveness of stuttering modification treatment in school-age children who stutter: A randomized clinical trial. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(11), 4191-4205. Nonis, D., Unicomb, R., & Hewat, S. (2022). Parental perceptions of stuttering in children: A systematic review of the literature. Speech, Language and Hearing, 25(4), 481-491. Rasoli Jokar, A. H., Salehi, S., & Yaruss, J. S. (2025). Variability of stuttering in young children: Caregivers' perceptions and experiences. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 34(4), 1992-2009. Walsh, B. M., Grobbel, H., Christ, S. L., Tichenor, S. E., & Gerwin, K. L. (2023). Exploring the relationship between resilience and the adverse impact of stuttering in children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(7), 2278-2295. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

Across all of society, artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots are becoming more common and they’ve seeped into all aspects of our daily lives. From internet searches to education to our workplace, artificial intelligence is everywhere. However, there is a debate currently going on about whether artificial intelligence should become a part of the clinical psychology doctorate training. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, I’ll reflect on my experience, my thoughts and I’ll propose what this debate means for our great profession. If you enjoy learning about cyberpsychology, psychology training and the future of psychology, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Beyond The Lecture Volume 7: 20 Reflections on Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Should AI Chatbots Be Used to Train Future Clinical Psychologists? Last week, I took part in a new psychology study that a lecturer who I’m friendly with was running and he wanted to conduct his study using clinical psychology master's students. Besides from his preferred research sample, I didn’t really know anything else about the research study. Artificial intelligence had been mentioned but besides from that, nothing else was said. His master's students emailed me a day later and we arranged a date and time to meet. I mention this because here’s a little tip, if you are contacting a research participant and you have no idea what they look like and if they have no idea what you look like. Please, do not ask them to meet you in a public space that will be very busy. Give them a specific room or location. Ideally the place where you’re going to be doing the experiment. Anyway, the study involved me having 12 minutes to ask questions to this chatbot that was pretending to have anxiety and depression. I needed to interact with it how I would with a client in the real-world during the psychological assessment. I needed to find out their presenting difficulties, their life situation, how long they have had their mental health difficulties amongst other factors. To do this, I needed to type in my questions to the chatbot and a second or two later, it would give me a response. That answered my question very well and similar to how a real client would answer it with the pauses, nervousness and accurate wording. When the 12 minutes were up, the researcher came back into the room and she asked me a few questions about my experience, would I recommend using this chatbot in clinical psychology training and how could it be improved amongst other questions. Personally, I want to reflect on this study because I strongly believe that this will be used in the future of clinical psychology. Artificial intelligence is already dominating and revolutionising our world. For example, there is artificial intelligence baked in all electronic devices these days allowing for smarter, easier and faster search. It might not always be accurate but it is there. A lot more tools and pieces of software are incorporating artificial intelligence, businesses are using AI more and more to make work easier and more effective. You cannot escape artificial intelligence. Even within clinical psychology, artificial intelligence is already being used to deliver psychological therapy as part of mobile mental health apps as I discuss in my book Could Apps Improve Our Mental Health? Therefore, it is truly impossible to escape the impact of artificial intelligence on our profession. Moreover, I do realise that my responses are slightly biased in a way because I am not part of the ideal research sample. The aim of the study I later found out was to see if clinical psychology masters students’ opinions on whether this chatbot should be used in professional training. Nonetheless, it’s important that this chatbot should be researched with actual trainee clinical psychologists because they have the training, they have the professional experience and they have the clinical expertise to “truly” judge if this chatbot is remotely effective at developing the psychological assessment skills that qualified clinical psychologists need. Just a reflective note. Should Artificial Intelligence Be Used In Clinical Psychology Training? I’ll start off with what I like about this training chatbot. I appreciated how it responded very realistically, similar to how a client would in the real-world. It paused, conveyed nervousness and sometimes the client didn’t know how to answer the question I was kindly asking them. Also, I remember that the majority of answers involved the client picking at the fabric of their sleeve to show that they were nervous. This is similar to what a lot of clients would do in a real therapy session, so I will admit that it’s realistic in that sense. In addition, it was good how the chatbot was a little difficult to get to open up. Similar to working with some clients who you need to find a certain angle or line of questioning before everything starts to flow out of them and you can really start to get to the core of their mental health difficulties. However, I did have a few issues with the chatbot and this is why I do not believe artificial intelligence and chatbots should be used in clinical psychology training. Firstly, my issue is that whenever you do psychological assessments, besides from getting certain information that you need from clients, you need to use a range of therapeutic skills. For example, you need to show active listening, you need to respond to what the client is saying so they feel listened to, and you need to phrase your questions in non-judgmental and compassionate ways. However, the issue with using an AI chatbot is that because I only had 12-minutes to try and get as much information as possible, and I was having to type out each question. After a while, I stopped trying to respond carefully and considerately to what the chatbot was telling me. I was just typing in my questions and asking them. The chatbot wasn’t able to tell this wasn’t how I was actually meant to ask questions, because the study wasn’t looking at my ability to conduct an effective assessment. As a result, I don’t believe that the chatbot would be useful in developing the interpersonal skills that psychological assessments require, because it doesn’t get me to practice how you need to ask them in the real world. A second issue with the chatbot being used in training is that it doesn’t reflect the real world. In a real psychology assessment, even one on video call, I would be able to see the client, read their body language and hear their voice. As well as I would need to think about my body language a lot more because the client would be interpreting my actions too. Yet a chatbot isn’t a real person and whilst the text responses did give me some details about the client’s body language, it is one thing to read it and quite another to see it and then reformulate my questions and approach based on that body language feedback. As well as using a chatbot fails to get me to think about my own body language and how I am presenting myself to the client. These factors could all harm or help the therapeutic alliance to form, and if the client is uncomfortable round me then that will have a large negative impact on the assessment. Finally, I have a minor issue with how chatbots might be used in the training programmes. As an aspiring clinical psychologist, I want to do the doctorate of clinical psychology because I want to help people, I want to help make the world a better place and I want to improve lives. I can only achieve these aims if I am able to talk and interact with real clients, interacting with a chatbot will not help me. Therefore, I think there could be a perception issue within clinical psychology. If clinical training providers want to use chatbots as part of training then I think they will need to work on selling this idea to trainee clinical psychologists. They will need to sell them on the idea that chatbots are useful, that chatbots will not take away from their real-world experiences and that the trainees are still going to be getting their money’s or time’s worth out of the training programme. Since I believe in the future because of how advanced artificial intelligence is getting, I imagine anyone will be able to get or create a chatbot that can pretend to be a client with depression or anxiety. In this future, this chatbot might be nothing new so in an extreme case, why should people join a doctoral programme to become fully qualified when they can simply use the same artificial intelligence chatbot in the comfort of their own home? On the whole, I think there is a place for artificial intelligence in clinical psychology training, but I want us as a profession to be extremely careful. We work with humans so trainees must always get experience with other people before some AI chatbot that will never be as good or useful in the development of the key therapeutic skills that clinical psychologists need. What do you think? Should chatbots be used in training or not? I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Beyond The Lecture Volume 7: 20 Reflections on Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy.. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2026) Beyond The Lecture Volume 7: 20 Reflections on Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. CGD Publishing. England. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

If you’ve been a long-time listener of The Psychology World Podcast then you might be well aware that I flat out love anime and manga. Especially, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Go For It, Nakamura and Stranger on the Shore. Those are some amazing animes from Japan. For a while, and more to support my obsession or autistic special interest in them, I’ve been wondering about the clinical psychology or possible mental health implications, because in my experience autistic individuals and other nerdy people tend to be drawn to these niche interests. Of course, there is barely any research on the topic but I managed to find a fascinating study from Hajek and Konig (2024) that explores the relationship between interest in anime and manga and mental health, social connectedness and more. Therefore, by the end of this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll understand more about anime and manga, how interest in these forms of Japanese entertainment relate to mental health and other wellbeing outcomes and I’ll discuss possible implications for aspiring and qualified clinical and educational psychologists too. If you enjoy learning about social psychology, popular culture and mental health, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What are Anime and Manga for Psychologists? As I mentioned in the introduction to the blog post, the main source for this episode comes from Hajek and Konig (2024) and the study made use of over 5,000 people between the ages of 18 and 74 from Germany. As well as because I flat out love animes, like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Go For It, Nakamura and Stranger on the Shore. Therefore, to ensure that everyone is on the same page about anime and manga we first need to define them. As a result, animes are animated films and series that come from Japan and mangas are Japanese comics, and whilst they come from Japan, they are increasingly becoming popular across the world. For example, Demonslayer, Dragon Ball, Pokémon and Sailor Moon are extremely popular animes and mangas across the world. As well as across the world, mangas and animes are giving rise to pop culture phenomena where people are becoming really interested and almost obsessed with different series. What are Some Reasons Why Mangas and Animes are Popular? Whilst I could go into the depths of how different animes and series gave rise to subgenres in different countries, I am not because this is a psychology podcast. Therefore, I want to briefly mention my take on mangas and animes from a more psychological point of view. Firstly, I think animes are brilliant for neurodivergent people because the issue I have with Western media is that if you want a genuinely good programme with great characters, gripping plot and great emotion, you need to commit to a 45-minute programme. I do not know a single piece of Western media that’s a 20-minute episode and can deliver the great characters, plot and emotion that I want. I cannot commit to a 45-minute episode. I am busy, 45-minutes is a long time to me and I have signs of ADHD so sitting still for 45-minutes to watch an episode isn’t my idea of fun. However, animes are brilliant because in a 20-minute episode, you get amazing characters, amazing plots and you get such in-depth emotion that I don’t see the point of watching a 45-minute programme. Of course, there are some anime episodes that stretch on for 45-minute or 50-minutes, like the season opening and ending of some of the later seasons of Demonslayer. Yet I don’t mind because I know they’re going to be brilliant. Therefore, one take on anime is that they are great for people with neurodivergence and busy people because they are so impactful and quick. For example, the boy love anime film “Stranger on the Shore” was only 53-minutes but because it had such a deep, emotional and profound impact on me that it was better than any 2-hour Western film. Another reason why I believe animes and mangas are very popular is because they deal with a lot of themes incredibly well. For example, Demonslayer deals with trauma, loss, grief and so many more relatable themes for a lot of young people. Such as, the reason why I flat out love Tokito from Demonslayer is because he was so traumatised as a kid, he lost everything and his larger story is so relatable and I can see parts of myself in Tokito and that’s what anime does very well compared to Western media. Another quick point I want to make is that animes and mangas allow individuals to explore topics, like sexuality, a lot better than Western media. Since if we look at the major LGBT+ programmes in the western world, you have Heated Rivalry and Red, White and Royal Blue, these are okay programmes but they focus on sex. I stopped watching both of those because I felt that these western programmes focused more on sex than actually building strong characters. As well as I flat out loved season 1 of Heartstopper because it was really sweet, it focused on the relationship and it focused on the characters. I wasn’t sure about the later seasons. Anyway, when you look at boy love animes and mangas, yes there are the sexual ones, but most of them are very much focused on characters, acceptance and figuring out who you are. They’re very relatable and it’s why I love Go For It Nakamura. It's so sweet watching these two boys fall in love. Nakamura is still clueless but he really cares about Hirose, he respects him and all his little quirks are so true to what teenage love is like. Like in episode 5 when Hirose and his friend are pretending to be a couple, I don't blame Nakamura for being jealous. If any of my teenage crushes were holding hands, flirting and showing interest in a guy that wasn't me, I would also be jealous. And it is that quirkiness of real teenage love that I love about this anime. My point is that these are some of the reasons why animes and mangas are very popular. Cultural Shifts in Anime and Manga Perception In addition, there are a lot of events around the world where anime and manga fans can come together, like in certain cinema events, comic conventions and people can cosplay so they dress up as some of their favourite anime characters. Back in September 2025 when the new Demonslayer Infinity Castle came out, I went to see the film in my Tokito t-shirt but there were some people who went in cosplay. It was fun to see. Interestingly, there has been a cultural shift in perceptions towards people who enjoy anime and manga in recent years, because in the past, someone who had a strong passion, or even an obsession, for Japanese things like anime and manga were seen as weird, nerdy and completely uncool. Yet in more recent years, anime and manga have gone mainstream and you can have more open conversations about it. For instance, last month, I was at a job interview and I ended up talking about Demonslayer is one of the interviewers and it led to a useful conversation about interests, being able to bond with young people and so on. I didn’t get the job but it wasn’t because of my niche interest in anime and manga. A few years ago, you would never ever dream of talking about such a nerdy topic in an interview. This cultural shift is one of the reasons why there’s been an increase in research interest into how people who enjoy anime and manga perceive themselves and their state of their health as well as their subjective wellbeing. Since some of the discriminatory or more judgemental Japanese terms used to describe someone who has a strong passion for manga and anime tends to refer to someone as socially isolated. A previous study found that non-fans of anime and manga typically saw someone who enjoyed anime and manga as creative, socially awkward, introverted and these people often find solace and refuge in their enjoyment of anime and manga as shown in Ryesen et al. (2016). Why Should Psychologists Care about Interest In Anime and Manga? Before we continue, there are two reasons why this is already of interest to aspiring and qualified psychologists. Firstly, if it’s true that people who are interested in anime and manga are at risk of becoming socially isolated and detached from reality because they find solace and refuge in their anime and manga. Then this raises a few questions for us. Why does the client feel the need to find a refuge, and if these are children, then we can question what is it about the school or home environment that makes the child feel the need to have a refuge. Also, whilst we should never deter someone from enjoying manga and anime because it is innocent and harmless, is there a need to create some form of social intervention to make the student feel more connected to their peers to make them less socially awkward? Those are just some thoughts. Secondly, if it is true again that interest in anime and manga is associated with social isolation, then seeing or hearing a child being interested in this topic might be a way to subtly refer them to some kind of support. Yet honestly, I am not sold on this idea because I’ve worked with SEN kids before who are passionate and obsessed with anime, some of them are socially awkward and socially isolated, others seriously are not. Then I have spoken with a lot of adults who are interested in anime and manga and again, they are not socially isolated and they are able to function fine in their everyday life. Therefore, I am not sure this relationship is cut and dry at the moment. Let’s continue. How Do People Treat Others Who Enjoy Manga and Anime? Another reason why this is interesting for psychologists is because there’s a range of factors, like the perceived introversion of people who enjoy anime and manga, that actually makes people want to distance themselves from individuals who enjoy anime and manga. Another factor is because non-fans perceive anime and manga as detached from reality, socially awkward and these factors influence prejudice towards people who enjoy anime and manga. This is important for psychologists to understand because it can lead to people making fun of others who enjoy anime and manga, and it can lead to maladaptive coping mechanisms to handle the stigma like concealing parts of their identity (Reysen et al. 2021). This was actually shown rather well in episode 2 of Go For it Nakamura, because in a part of this episode he was fighting hard to keep it a secret that he read boy love mangas because he didn’t want his classmates to know he was gay. Yet you could tell that in a lighhearted way this was taking a toll on him and it meant everything to him when his love interest Hirose (who he assumes is straight) tells him that he doesn’t need to hide it because different strokes for different people. Furthermore, research from Reysen et al. (2021) found that anime fans have some experience with bullying in the past and as they age, the bullying increased. Yet research also shows that increased interactions with other fans increases subjective wellbeing. So this highlights how someone might be being bullied because of their membership to a certain social group, but the membership of the social group can be a protective factor for their mental health. On the whole, researchers generally agree that whilst it’s understandable that there would be negative associations with enjoying anime and manga, there are also a lot of positive benefits of liking these forms of Japanese entertainment. Since as the anime and manga niches continue to grow around the world and their communities get larger, this will have a lot of social benefits. Even though, these larger communities do not automatically lead to the development and maintenance of relationships because cultural preferences in anime and manga foster connections with like-minded individuals according to the principle of homophily (McPherson et al. 2001). As a small side note, the idea of cultural preferences is very interesting because whilst I love the anime Go For It Nakamura, there are 2 questionable scenes in the original manga that left Western anime and manga fans to bully the author so badly that she had to quit social media. It’s been argued online that in Japanese cultures these scenes were fine because it’s culturally okay and there’s an understanding that these animes and mangas are just fiction and not real life, and online critics of the digital pile-on have argued that Western anime and manga fans just need to understand the difference between fiction and reality. Therefore, this is a useful reminder how just because one scene is okay in one culture, it doesn’t make it okay in another culture. What’s The Relationship Between Anime, Manga and Mental Health? The main aim of Hajek and Konig (2024)’s study was to investigate the relationship between someone’s interest in anime and manga and the association it had with their mental health, their subjective wellbeing, their joy and their social disconnectedness. The study found that having higher interest in anime and manga was associated with negative mental health as well as social disconnectedness. Although, a higher interest in manga and anime was also associated with increased joy and there are interesting differences between these findings depending on the independent variable that the study used. In addition, the association between having an increased interest in anime and manga and negative mental health outcomes, like increased loneliness as well as perceived social isolation, isn’t casual and it can be explained by a range of factors. For example, a person’s excessive immersion in anime or manga culture could contribute to social withdrawal or social isolation, and this is even more true if a person focuses on virtual relationships compared to real-life social connections (Williams et al. 2011). Therefore, it could be argued that because a person has prolonged engagement with fictional narratives then this might decrease their development of meaningful interpersonal relationships with others that do not like anime or manga, and this might contribute to feelings of isolation or loneliness. Another possible explanation for the negative mental health outcomes associated with manga and anime interest is the potential stigma for liking such a niche interest. This stigma might contribute to further marginalisation and increase the person’s feelings of not belonging to society (Reysen et al. 2016). As well as I will note that anime communities are very well known for being extremely toxic places and there can be immense elitism in fan groups (Plante et al. 2020) so this can be a problem for mental health as this elitism can contribute to feelings of exclusion even within the anime community. Moreover, there are certain themes in anime and manga that can represent or nihilistic content (Olivier 2007), like my former best friend was telling me about the manga “Suicide Boy” a few years ago and this entire manga is dedicated to a teenage boy determined to end his own life. Therefore, this content might exacerbate depressive symptoms or trigger anxiety symptoms (Forsythe and Mongrain 2023) in vulnerable people. I do want to take a moment here to mention that so far in this section, we are not exactly learning many good things about anime and manga. Yet later on in the episode, we will talk about the positives of manga and anime, and personally, I think this really comes back to you need to live your life with balance, purpose and variety. For example, as I talk about in my books, especially Social Psychology and Your Unshakable Self, if you want a resilient sense of self that will help you to protect your mental health then it’s a good idea to get your self-esteem and positive self-image from a range of internal and external sources. Internal sources are always going to be best but still. My point is that if your entire identity is wrapped up in anime and manga then it will end up decreasing your mental health for reasons that I talk about in my other books. This is why whilst I flat out love anime, especially Demonslayer and the boy love genre, I make sure that I get my sense of achievement, happiness and self-esteem from writing, running a business, podcasting, being with my friends and my family, doing good in my local community and so on. There is so much more to my identity than anime and manga. Anyway, moving on to the more positive aspects of the study’s results were that a greater interest in anime and manga was associated with a lower preference for solitude and this is interesting because people interested in anime and manga tend to be introverted. The explanation for these findings are that the anime and manga community provide people with opportunities for social interactions and socialise through online forums and conventions. As well as anime fans who cosplay have higher levels of extraversion than non-cosplayers (Reysen et al. 2018c). These social opportunities give people interested in anime and manga a chance to share their experiences and to develop long-lasting and meaningful relationships with others (Reysen et al., 2024). Hence, this means people can find fulfilment and satisfaction in the anime and manga communities so they don’t desire solitude and the benefits of these communities can be used to explain why interest in manga was associated with lower objective social isolation. Building upon this, having a strong interest in anime and manga and having increased subjective wellbeing and joy outcomes can also be explained by a range of factors. For instance, if you engage in the fictional narratives of mangas and animes then it can provide individuals with some escapism and this can help them cope with the stressors of daily life, and over time, this could improve subjective well-being. As well as similar to what I mentioned earlier, a lot of the stories in anime and manga stress the important themes of resilience, friendship and personal growth (Born 2010; Cooper-Chen 2011). As a result, these themes can inspire viewers and readers, especially if they strongly identify with their favourite character which anime and manga fans typically do (Reysen et al. 2022b), to tackle their own challenges with improved determination and optimism (Ramasubramanian and Kornfield 2012). For example, I really strongly identified with the side character Tokito in Demonslayer and at the time when I was watching Season 4 (the season that he is a main feature in) I was dealing with my anorexia and my insecure attachment and his story, his feelings and his own trauma really did inspire me in ways that I never thought were possible. Tokito led me to research new ideas, write new books and it was brilliant how the character inspired me to deal with my difficulties in new ways. In fact, my book Your Unshakable Self only happened because of a quote that Tokito says in the English subtitles of the anime. In addition, one of the most powerful benefits of anime and manga is that the community gives people with a higher interest in this form of entertainment a sense of belonging as well as acceptance (Reysen et al., 2024). Since anime and manga communities are vast and there are entire online forums, websites and pockets of social media that are dedicated to fans sharing their experiences and interests without fearing judgment from others (Krishnamurti et al., 2023). This can lead to higher interest in anime and manga improving mental health and joy scores because it is the mutual understanding as well as camaraderie that makes people feel good and less alone. Personally, because I love Tokito as a character so much, I follow a few Tokito-focused twitter accounts and sometimes I’m flicking through the posts and I go “oh, you would never ever be able to get away with saying that in person”, but these anime and manga communities provide a safe, accepting and non-judgemental space. A final positive outcome associated with higher interest in anime and manga was how a higher interest in anime was associated with higher levels of subjective wellbeing but there was no such significant association for higher level in manga. As someone who is starting to watch a lot of anime, I find this really interesting because I love anime and manga. When I read the last five volumes of the Demonslayer manga, I was really hooked, interested and it was flat out amazing and I got the same feelings when I watched the Demonslayer Infinity Castle film, so these are interesting results. The researchers proposed that one possible reason for these findings could be that an interest in reading manga might reflect a more solitary activity compared to watching anime. Since watching anime can be done with friends or in social communities, like some cinemas host anime events. Another explanation might be that streaming services have made it easier for individuals to consume anime alone, but we also know that streaming services could also be used to share anime for friends. I definitely agree with that idea because to be honest, it’s only been in the last two weeks that I’ve really been watching anime alone. When I used to live in Canterbury, I watched anime with my friends and my ex-partner, and me and my ex-boyfriend watched anime together when I was back here living in Medway. Watching anime really can be done as a social activity. These results are further reinforced by the findings of Reysen et al. (2018b) because the researchers found that cosplayers reported higher levels of wellbeing compared to non-cosplayers. This might suggest that for anime and manga to have a benefit for mental health that it’s important that the person is fully immersed within their hobby, but we also know from earlier results that that is unlikely to be true. Reysen et al. (2024) is another study that supports these results because their study highlights how fandom, the social component of fan identity, predicts psychological wellbeing. In other words, the study found that fan friendships mediate the association between psychological wellbeing and fandom identification. As a result, Hajek and Konig (2024) assumed that the social aspect of real life interactions that are associated with high interest in anime and the media consumption associated with it might lead to higher levels of subjective well-being. For me, where my mind goes in terms of applying this information for aspiring and qualified psychologists is two-fold. Firstly, as an aspiring or qualified educational psychologist, it’s important that we encourage schools to allow students to follow their passions and give them spaces to really connect. We know from research that especially after the COVID lockdowns that children are struggling with communication and social skills in general, and even more so in schools and colleges. This means that we need to come up with interventions, new ideas and new ways to provide students with rewarding social interactions where they can connect and form communities with their peers. If you’re working in a school and you learn that some students have an interest in anime and manga, then suggest that the school, the librarian or someone provides the students with a space to come together, connect and form those social relationships to improve their mental health. Secondly, if you’re an aspiring or qualified clinical psychologist then it might be an idea to suggest that your client joins an anime or manga community. If you learn that your client has an interest in this form of entertainment, then you could share with them ways to connect with others online. Of course, the main aim of therapy or counselling will always be to address the developmental and maintaining factors of the condition and help them develop in-person, real-life relationships, but online connections might be a good bridging idea for a little while. It allows the client to develop their social skills, talk to like-minded individuals and it can improve their mental health whilst you work on other things. Just a thought. What are the Strengths and Limitations of Hajek and Konig (2024)? Additionally, just as a little critical thinking section, it was good that the study used established and validated tools to quantify the outcome measures, so this increased the credibility of the study. Also, I really like how the study used a large sample size to give them a lot of data points to support their conclusions with and their quota-based online sample was representative in terms of age, sex and federal state in Germany. Yet there are some issues with the study. For instance, the study might not have been completely representative because the study was only available in the German language and because the study used a cross-sectional design, they cannot establish directionality. Such as, they cannot tell if it is a change in loneliness and social disconnection that causes an increased interest in anime and manga, or if an increased interest in manga causes social disconnection. There were some other issues with the study mentioned in the research paper, but I want to mention another issue that the researchers did not. In the anime community, Germany is a bit of a strange case because when it comes to German voiceovers according to an ex of mine, there are basically only four voice actors who do the anime dubs in German. This means that the same four people basically appear in every single anime in Germany, and we also have to bear in mind that the German language, which is very similar to a lot of languages, is still different to languages like English. Therefore, I suppose the point that I am trying to make here is that because this study was only done in one language, in one country on one continent, I would be very interested to see how these results replicate or change in other cultures. As well as I understand that anime and manga are very big in the United States because after its original cinema run, Demonslayer Infinity Castle did a second cinema run in the USA and this was hailed as a massive success. Overall, I just think it would be interesting to see how these results be replicated if done in other cultures that have stronger or weaker national interest in anime and manga. Clinical Psychology Conclusion As someone with a high level of interest in anime and manga, especially Demonslayer, Deathnote and Go For It Nakamura, this episode was so much fun to put together. Since I have heard a lot of prejudice and dislike aimed towards people and students who like anime and manga, so it was fun to look at the truth behind how high levels of interest in these forms of Japanese media can impact mental health. As a result, in this episode, we looked at the relationship between having an interest in anime and manga and how it impacted social disconnectedness, mental health, joy and subjective wellbeing scores. We learnt that having a higher interest in anime and manga was associated with negative outcomes, like decreased mental health and increased social disconnection, but there were positive outcomes too. For example, higher interest in anime and manga was associated with improved wellbeing and feelings of joy. I feel like this entire episode highlights the importance of looking at behaviour and mental health in a very nuanced way, because it’s clear that anime and manga does harm mental health in some people but in others, it improves it. Why? This reminds me of my book, Social Media Psychology, because social media isn’t good or bad for mental health. It’s all about how you use it because people who engage in active social media use like commenting, sharing and engaging with posts, these people tend to report better mental health outcomes. Yet people who engage in passive social media use so they aren’t liking, they aren’t commenting and they’re only scrolling on social media, they report negative mental health outcomes. I have a feeling that interest in anime and manga might be something similar. Nonetheless, now that we have this research, we can expand on it. The main problem that the relationship between mental health and anime and manga have at the moment is there is just next to no research on it. This means that further studies, that must include cross-cultural comparisons, must be done. Also, future research can look at different constructs within the anime and manga communities, like how the construct of fandom “I love the manga community” differs from fanship “I love manga” in relation to impact on mental health, and the researchers Hajek and Konig floated other ideas for future studies too. Now if you excuse me, I have some anime to watch myself. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Hajek, A., & König, H. H. (2024). Interest in anime and manga: relationship with (mental) health, social disconnectedness, social joy and subjective well-being. Journal of Public Health, 1-11. Ramasubramanian, S., & Kornfield, S. (2012). Japanese anime heroines as role models for US youth: Wishful identification, parasocial interaction, and intercultural entertainment effects. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 5(3), 189-207. Reysen, S., Baring, R., Plante, C., Sarmiento, P. J., Samia, C., Bonus, B., & Lumanlan, P. (2022). A brief report on sex differences in identification and engagement with anime. Phoenix Papers, 5, 36-46. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2021). Transported to another world: The psychology of anime fans. Stephen Reysen. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2022). Intragroup helping as a mediator of the association between fandom identification and self-esteem and well-being. Leisure/loisir, 46(3), 321-345. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2021). Transported to another world: The psychology of anime fans. Stephen Reysen. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Chadborn, D., Roberts, S. E., Gerbasi, K. C., Miller, J. I., & Ray, A. (2018). A brief report on the prevalence of self-reported mood disorders, anxiety disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and autism spectrum disorder in anime, brony, and furry fandoms. Phoenix Papers, 3, 64-75. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2018). A brief report on differences in big five personality dimensions between anime fan cosplayers and non-cosplayers. Phoenix Papers, 3, 46-53. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2024). Social activities mediate the relation between fandom identification and psychological well-being. Leisure Sciences, 46(5), 681-701. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2024). Social activities mediate the relation between fandom identification and psychological well-being. Leisure Sciences, 46(5), 681-701. Reysen, S., Plante, C. N., Roberts, S. E., Gerbasi, K. C., Mohebpour, I., & Gamboa, A. (2016). Pale and geeky: Prevailing stereotypes of anime fans. The Phoenix Papers, 2(1), 78-103. Reysen, S., Plante, C., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2022). Empirically testing the veracity of otaku stereotypes. Phoenix Papers, 5(1), 210-233. Reysen, S., Plante, C., Roberts, S., & Gerbasi, K. (2018). " Coming Out" as an Anime Fan: cosplayers in the anime fandom, fan disclosure, and well-being. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

This week I have an online job interview for the role of an education mental health practitioner, and as part of my interview preparation I want to make sure that I have a good understanding of what the job is, what an education mental health practitioner is expected to do and more. Also, it helps that because of my neurodivergence, creating a podcast episode on the topic is a very helpful way to make me focus. Therefore, by the end of this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll understand what is an education mental health practitioner, what skills and experiences the role requires and so much more, including how to phrase this information in a job interview. Since I’m sure that I’ll be tested on my understanding of the role in my interview. This is somewhere that I normally fail on so I want to change that. If you enjoy learning about careers in psychology, working in education and applying psychology to improve lives, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What are Education Mental Health Practitioners? Education mental health practitioners are mental health professionals who provide mental health support to children and young people in colleges and schools. This means that they are trained to help children and young people to manage common mental health difficulties, especially mild to moderate symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as behavioural problems. In addition, becoming an education mental health practitioner is a great idea for people who want to make a difference, work flexible and part-time hours and I think it can be a great stepping stone towards becoming an educational or clinical psychologist. Since this position will help you to develop your clinical experience working with children and young people with mental health difficulties, and you’ll have experience offering psychological treatments and interventions. Something that a lot of people, myself included, find incredibly difficult to gain experience in despite my qualifications. Moreover, education mental health practitioners use cognitive therapy-based interventions to address emerging mental health difficulties, and if you become an education mental health practitioner then you would be trained to support schools and colleges with whole-organisation approaches to wellbeing and mental health. This means that you might advise people on the importance and how to have good sleep hygiene, how to problem solve and advise on panic attacks. You might educate young people how to manage depression as well as anxiety, and promote approaches that improve student emotional wellbeing and health. Also, you would advise education staff and signpost them towards services so they can get further information to help staff give the right support to students. Something that I particularly enjoy about the idea of becoming an education mental health practitioner is that if you work in a primary school or an educational setting for students with special educational needs then you might also need to work with parents and carers. I really enjoy the idea of this because I’m familiar with this from when I was a SEN teaching assistant in charge of the medical care of a type 1 diabetic student. This required me to coordinate care with teachers, other support staff, the school’s medical team and the child’s parents. As well as this means that I can apply my favourite psychological theory, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, into practice. This theory proposes that the different social systems that a child directly and indirectly interacts with has an impact on their education. This includes macro-systems like local government and school management that the child never directly interacts with. Something that I will mention is there are points that I can already see that I would need to highlight in a job interview. I would recommend that I talk about my knowledge and experience of whole-school approaches to mental health and wellbeing, I would list some of the expectations of what an education mental health practitioner is expected to do to show I’m familiar with the role and I would talk about my experience of liaising as well. When it comes to being familiar with whole-school approaches, I would probably draw on my understanding of restorative cultures in schools. Restorative approaches offer schools a flexible and innovative alternative to the punitive systems and sanctions that are typically used in schools, like detentions, exclusions and isolations, to manage behaviour in schools. These approaches aren’t a soft solution but they’re an additional tool that schools can use to create positive outcomes from negative behaviour and actively reinforce the view that inappropriate behaviour isn’t acceptable and it needs to be addressed. As well as restorative approaches are used in schools to help deal with bullying, truancy, classroom disruptions, friendship disputes, anti-social behaviour, relationship breakdown between staff and pupil as well as building a stronger sense of community and belonging. I do talk more about restorative approaches in schools and how to develop them in another podcast episode called How to Develop a Restorative Culture in Schools. As a result, if I was asked in an interview “what’s your understanding of the role of an education mental health practitioner” I would probably answer something along the lines of: “An education mental health practitioner is a trained professional who works in schools and colleges to support children and young people with mental health difficulties, including mild to moderate depression, anxiety and behavioural problems. In their work, they draw on cognitive therapy-based interventions and they might be expected to advise students on how to manage their mental health difficulties, how to improve their emotional health and wellbeing and advise on sleep hygiene. Also, education mental health practitioners are expected to liaise with parents and carers if they work in a primary school or SEN setting, I have experience in coordinating care and liaising with other professionals and parents from when I was a SEN teaching assistant managing the care of a type 1 diabetic child. Every day I liaised with parents, teachers and support staff. Finally, an educational mental health practitioner supports whole-school approaches to improving emotional and mental health. I have knowledge of whole-school approaches from my education around restorative approaches and using shared language, peer support programmes and restorative everyday classroom practices, like restorative conversations.” I am going to try and commit that mock interview answer to memory for my interview to show I understand the range of roles and duties of an education mental health practitioner. How Do You Become an Education Mental Health Practitioner? To become an education mental health practitioner you need to complete a year-long training course to qualify with around 60 days at university spread throughout the year. The rest of your time will be spent on work-based placements and you’ll need to do some self-study too. Also, this can be a postgraduate or graduate diploma depending on whether you already have a degree or not. Also, whilst you don’t need a degree to apply for this training programme, you will need to demonstrate your ability to work at degree level and have experience working with children and young people to support their mental health. In addition, the course is paid for by the National Health Service and you’re guaranteed a job as part of a mental health support team in a school or college once you’ve qualified. And something that I am very happy about is educational mental health practitioners can now register with the British Psychological Society or the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies. I won’t lie. I have no idea why that makes me happy but I think it just adds another layer of professionalism to the role, and yes, I understand I’m weird at times and I’m proud of it. Furthermore, as part of your training as an education mental health practitioner, you would be employed by a healthcare organisation but you would only work in or around education settings, like SEN schools, colleges, mainstream schools or pupil referral units as part of a mental health support team. These teams are designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people between the ages of 5 and 18 years old. What Skills Do You Need as an Education Mental Health Practitioner? Our final section will look at the skills you need to become an educational mental health practitioner, and this is an important section to focus on because this can help you to prepare your interview answers. Since it might be a good idea to tailor your interview answers to highlight these skills. As a result, to be an education mental health practitioner you need to have excellent interpersonal skills, a good understanding of the education system and the ability to build close, trusting and productive relationships with children and young people. This is a reason why in my interview I need to remember to talk about a time in my former SEN school when I was able to have a very productive working relationship with a SEN student who was in isolation, because the wider example will demonstrate my ability to effectively form good, close and productive working relationships with children. For you, you might want to think about what examples from your working life could be used to demonstrate your ability to form professional relationships with children and young people. Some other skills include the ability to work well within a multidisciplinary team, a good understanding of mental health issues and the ability to work independently and use your initiative to think quickly on the spot in often challenging situations. For me, like I normally do, I would either draw on my experience of working in a multidisciplinary team in the Gender Identity Clinic or my learning disability placement, or discuss how I worked with other professionals to manage the healthcare of a type 1 diabetic child and I often had to make quick clinical judgements to manage his care throughout the day. This example would tap into another useful skill for this role and that is to have creativity to solve problems and tackle obstacles. A final set of must-have skills for education mental health practitioners are strong written and verbal communication tailored to a range of audiences and effective time management for tight deadlines and managing competing demands. The example that I would draw on in an interview is again probably the diabetic care one because it shows how I had to manage my time to manage the healthcare whilst still being a teaching assistant to the rest of the education setting. Yet I would also comment on my experience of my mental health campaign to create psychology licensing degrees as I’ve had to have strong verbal and written communication skills where I’ve had to write for my podcast audience, other psychology students, heads of schools of psychology at universities as well as Members of Parliament. For yourself, you might want to think about examples of documents, statements of any kind when you’ve had to adapt the way you’ve communicated information for different audiences. If you’ve ever worked in a mental health service then this might be explaining the same mental health information but in different ways to a client, their partner or parents or another mental health professional. Finally, it can be useful for educational mental health practitioners to have good presentation skills and additional languages. These other languages are useful because if you work in an area with a high number of individuals and children with English as their second language then it might be useful for you to communicate with them in their native or first language. I’ve spoken before on The Psychology World Podcast during on psychology news section about how when you speak in a second or third language, it decreases your creativity. And come to think of it, it is critical that you can increase your creative problem-solving skills when considering how best to manage your own mental health and how to draw on your internal resources. This is why speaking a second language can be useful for mental health practitioners. As this isn’t an essential criteria, I am not going to mention it during my interview because my French reading ability is really good, but I cannot speak French to save my life. Also, good presentation skills are useful as an educational mental health practitioner because you’ll be presenting information to children and young people about sleep hygiene, managing panic attacks and their mental health and you’ll likely deliver Continued Professional Development sessions to staff. Therefore, in my interview, I’ll try to remember to mention my past experience of designing and delivering a wide range of presentations for the University of Kent’s Outreach and Widening Participation Department. For yourself, you might want to draw on your presentation experience at university to show you have these additional skills. Clinical Psychology Conclusion This version of interview preparation reminds me of one of the many reasons why I flat out love this podcast, because this podcast gives me the excuse and motivation to really focus on a topic, apply knowledge and consider how to use this information to benefit me. I’ve had past podcast episodes as part of my interview preparation but I prefer how I’ve done this episode in terms of applying the information. Since you can know information like the back of your hands but if you don’t know how to either present the information in an interview or apply the information to your own life, then it’s next to useless. I’m excited for my job interview to become a trainee educational mental health practitioner because this job sounds great, fun and really interesting. And if you like the sound of this role then set up job alerts, apply for these roles and try. You never know if you’ll be able to become an education mental health practitioner unless you try. To wrap up today’s episode, an education mental health practitioner is a trained professional who works in schools and colleges to support children and young people with mental health difficulties, including mild to moderate depression, anxiety and behavioural problems. In their work, they draw on cognitive therapy-based interventions and they might be expected to advise students on how to manage their mental health difficulties, how to improve their emotional health and wellbeing and advise on sleep hygiene. Also, education mental health practitioners are expected to liaise with parents and carers if they work in a primary school or SEN setting. Finally, an educational mental health practitioner supports whole-school approaches to improving emotional and mental health. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/psychological-therapies/roles-psychological-therapies/education-mental-health-practitioner I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

There are some nights when I’m lying on my soft, warm bedsheets and my bedroom is perfectly dark and silent, but I cannot sleep. I worry how a lack of sleep will impact me the next day, and there are always other things weighing on my mind. I’m hardly the only person who experiences these challenges. We often get ourselves in anxious cycles of being stressed and worried about things outside of our sleep that negatively impact it, then because we’re worrying and anxious and can’t sleep, we start to worry about our sleep. This becomes a vicious cycle that causes further problems to our sleep patterns. This is even truer for students who tend to be stressed and anxious about assignments, readings and other university work. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn why does anxiety and rumination disrupt sleep, what is the cognitive model of insomnia and more great information on the psychology of insomnia. If you enjoy learning about anxiety, sleeping problems and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why is Sleep Important for Our Mental Health? To kick off this episode, I want to share some extracts from my podcast episode “How Does A Consistent Sleep Schedule Improve Mental Health?” to help us have a good foundational understanding of how sleep impacts our mental health before we move onto the rest of the episode. “Ultimately, by having a consistent sleep schedule you can stabilise your mood in the short term as well as in the long term protect yourself against mood disorders, like anxiety and depression.” As well as “having a consistent sleep schedule helps our bodies to effectively regulate our circadian rhythms, so our biological processes that impact the neurochemicals and hormones related to our stress responses and mood can occur in a healthy way. Yet when we disrupt our circadian rhythms by getting inconsistent sleep then we mess up these circadian rhythms and this has negative impacts on our mental health.” The last extract is “I want to focus on some research that shows a person’s inconsistent sleep schedule can increase their risk of developing depression. Our first study comes from Fang et al. (2021) who looked at the impact of sleep routines on over 1,000 medical students’ day-to-day mood. Their results showed that irregular sleep routines were a big risk factor for developing depressive symptoms. Interestingly, this is even worse for medical students because they often experience an inconsistent work schedule so they can’t have a consistent sleep pattern, so the effects were easier to see in this population.” Building upon these extracts, and I want to stress here that there are a lot of references available at the bottom of the blog post over on my website, stress and sleep disturbances are some of the most common mental health difficulties around the world. If we look at a range of mental health conditions, a large number of them include sleep disturbances. For example, if you have an anxiety disorder then you might be so anxious that you struggle to fall asleep. I know when I had my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after my rape, most nights I couldn’t sleep because I was so anxious, I was having too many flashbacks and I was too distressed. If we look at depression, you have disturbed sleep because people with depression tend to sleep too much or too little. As well as mental health conditions negatively impact your ability to have a consistent sleep schedule so this reinforces and plays a developmental role in a mental health condition. If we focus on the stress experienced by young people, because research shows that young people are very vulnerable to stress. This can be because of interpersonal factors like their relationships with peers, teachers, academic staff, family as well as academic pressures. This is even more important when we consider that the extra stress created by university and other forms of education can exacerbate pre-existing mental health difficulties. However, if we take a systemic approach and if we view the social and societal systems that the young person lives in, then we can understand that there’s a global and cultural context that increases their stress. In turn, this increased stress can contribute to poor sleep quality, and this has a negative knock-on effect for their mental health. For example, in Europe, it isn’t uncommon for young people to face financial insecurity, mental health difficulties more often and job loss, compared to older age groups. Personally, this is a massive problem in the UK at the moment. I’ve spoken before on the podcast about the unemployment crisis in the UK, and how the unemployment rate for young people is 10% higher than the national average. It is next to impossible to find a job as a young person and then there’s the pressure of the housing market, the increase in fuel cost because of America’s war with Iran and other factors that only makes life more expensive. All in all, between relationships, academic pressures and society-level stressors, this has a negative impact on the mental health of young people. What is Anxiety and Rumination in Mental Health and Sleep? As this entire podcast episode focuses on why and how anxiety and rumination disrupts sleep, we need to make sure that we’re all on the same page about these two terms before we dive into how this negatively impacts sleep. Therefore, rumination refers to prolonged, repetitive as well as negative thinking about our distressing experiences, feelings and worries without taking any action to positively change that state. As you can imagine, rumination is a very common symptom in a range of mental health conditions. For example, I know when I had depression, I was constantly ruminating on how pointless my life was, how I was never going to get better and my life was a failure because of my mental health. Equally, when I had my social anxiety after my rape, I constantly ruminated about how bad I didn’t want to get raped again, I was scared of everything and I thought that everyone could hurt me. And as a final example when I experienced the worst of my anorexia, I was ruminating on the distressing nature of food, how I didn’t want to gain weight and how I wanted to lose as much weight as possible. On the other hand, anxiety and worry are a sequence of negative images and thoughts that are hard to control and they’re often accompanied by ways to mentally resolve problems with uncertain outcomes. These outcomes can be negative. For instance, when I’m lying awake late at night before a job interview and I’m worried about the interview. Then this is worry because there are negative thoughts because I am worried about failing the job interview, I’m worried about my financial situation and I’m worried about the outcome. If I don’t get the job then I won’t have money coming in and so on. The best way to remember the difference is that rumination focuses on past failures and worries whereas worry refers to future events. As a result, whilst rumination and worry are different, they both involve repetitive thinking about negative emotional experiences and they shift our focus away from the present to the past or future. Building upon the differences, rumination focuses on issues related to a person’s self-worth, loss and meaning whereas worry focuses on anticipated potential threats. Also, the conscious motivation for rumination is to gain insight into a given situation whereas the motivation for worry is to predict and prepare ourselves for potential threats. The main reason why I’m spending a section on these definitions is because we have to understand the similarities and differences between worry and rumination because they both have a separate impact on our mental health and sleep (Clancy et al., 2020; Tousignant et al., 2019). Why is Stress Related to Sleep Quality? Research tells us that stress is associated with a range of mental health difficulties, like depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, insomnia and anxiety, and research focuses on the relationship between stress and sleep disturbances. For instance, amongst university students, perceived stress is associated with insomnia symptoms, shorter sleep duration as well as lower sleep quality. With between 47% and 60% of university students reporting poor sleep quality. It’s worth noting that in academia “sleep quality” is made up of the subjective aspects of sleep, like the feeling of being well-rested and the depth of the sleep, as well as the more objective aspects. Such as the latency and duration of sleep. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, disturbed sleep is common in a range of mental health conditions because sleep relates to the neurological and cognitive functions of the brain and internalised difficulties, like depression and anxiety. And what I find really interesting about this relationship is that it can reinforce mental health difficulties because this relationship is bidirectional in the first place. I mean if you struggle sleeping in the first place for a few nights then as my episode on the importance of a consistent sleep schedule shows, then this increases your risk of developing mental health difficulties. Therefore, you might have trouble sleeping for a few nights because of noisy neighbours, a constant party going on next door or your walls are painfully thin so you hear what your neighbours are doing in the bedroom next to you. Then because you’re sleep deprived and because of the cognitive and neurological functions that this impairs, it can lead to increased mental health difficulties. All the references for this podcast episode are at the bottom of the blog post. On the other hand, if you have a mental health difficulty or condition like depression, anxiety or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder then you might struggle to sleep in the first place. I definitely experienced this during the aftermath of my rape. As a result, your mental health condition makes it difficult to sleep so you become tired, sleep-deprived and this has a negative knock-on effect for your already distressed and biased cognitive and neurological processes. Hence, the creation of the vicious cycle where your mental health difficulties cause poor sleep quality then your sleep quality causes your mental health difficulties to get worse, this leads to even poorer sleep quality and so on. What is the Cognitive Model of Insomnia? Now that we understand the importance of sleep and why rumination and anxiety negatively impact sleep and our mental health, we need to start looking at the why. Why exactly does rumination and anxiety impact sleep quality. As a result, a lot of research studies have shown that certain cognitive mechanisms as well as high general arousal might affect the relationship between sleep difficulties and the stress we experience. These research findings have led to the creation of several theories, including the Cognitive Model of Insomnia. The Cognitive Model of Insomnia by Harvey (2020) proposes that individuals with insomnia are more likely to experience excessive worry about their sleep and the consequences of their disrupted sleep on their health. This is definitely something that I experience because there will be times when I’m lying in bed, I can’t sleep and then I start to get concerned about how this disrupted sleep will impact me the next day. For example, if I have a job interview, I’m out with friends or loved ones or I have something else important that I can’t be tired for. Then I get concerned about it because I don’t want to feel exhausted, tired or any other negative state of being. In addition, this negative cognitive process that arises from worry and our rumination activates autonomic arousal and this disrupts our sleep. The Model assumes that our insomnia happens because of a combination of stressors, genetic vulnerability, learned behaviours, cognitive activities, like worry and rumination, as well as dysfunctional behaviour patterns. Building upon this, cortical, cognitive and somatic activity results in excessive general arousal and this can lead to anxiety, worry, high levels of daytime distress, a real sleep deficit and physiological arousal. In turn, this creates a cycle where the connection between our stress and our sleep quality is bidirectional as I explained earlier. Personally, I want to jump in here and add that I definitely agree with the theory so far. Since if I truly think about what I was experiencing during the worst of my PTSD and other negative mental health outcomes after my rape. I experienced constant cortical activity because my brain was constantly filled with thoughts, dreams and perceptions of danger because of my hypervigilance. I constantly experienced heightened somatic activity because I was shaking a lot, I felt the physical sensations of my rapist raping me over and over as well as my body was constantly tense because I was always in fight-or-flight. As well as I was always anxious, hypervigilant and other cognitive processes were going on, so all these heightened processes explained why my sleep was so bad. On the other hand, another theory of hyperarousal by Morrin et al. (2003) suggests that it is the coping skills that we use to manage our arousal that mediates the sleep-stress relationship. For example, it is how we appraise our stressors as well as how we perceive the amount of control we have over these stressors that increases our vulnerability to sleep difficulties. Morrin et al.’s research found that both good and poor sleepers had the same number of minor life stressors, but the difference between a good sleeper and a poor sleep was that good sleepers reported less pre-sleep arousal and they perceived their lives as less stressful than the poor sleepers. I can see where this theory is coming from because as I went for my specialist rape counselling, I learnt more skills and I was able to increase my feelings of control over my symptoms, my life and my relationships. I was able to start sleeping better, so there is no way for me to know if it was the decrease in my mental health difficulties or the increased sense of control over my stressors that led to improved sleep quality. There might be something to this theory. Personally, I believe it probably was a mixture of the two factors with the decrease of my mental health symptoms causing the most positive impact on my sleep quality. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Whilst this psychology podcast episode was more information-dense than usual, I really did enjoy it because it was fun to develop a deeper understanding of how our thoughts, feelings and other mental health factors can disrupt our sleep. I know from personal experience just how important having good sleep habits are, and after all my mental health struggles in the past decade, I know how disrupted our sleep can become because of excessive arousal, worry and rumination. It was really interesting to finally understand why. Also, we’ll probably explore this in more depth in future podcast episodes but everything that we learnt today can be directly applied to clinical practice. Since these research findings and theories are applied to a wide range of psychological interventions that are used to treat insomnia. For example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia, better known as CBT-I. Therefore, to wrap up today’s episode, anxiety and rumination disrupt our sleep because they trigger physiological and cognitive hyperarousal. Since according to different psychological models, the repetitive negative thinking patterns associated with future-focused threats for worry and past-focused threats for rumination, they activate the sympathetic nervous system and heighten our cognitive, cortical and somatic arousal. This disrupts our sleep because it means we cannot turn our minds off and rumination disrupts sleep as it prolongs our emotional processing, increases pre-sleep arousal and it makes minor stressors feel more intense. Then as our arousal increases, we become more anxious because we aren’t sleeping and we’re concerned about how our disrupted sleep will impact us so this creates a vicious cycle. Ultimately, leading to decreased sleep quality and increased stress. Finally, to truly wrap up the episode, I would unofficially recommend that when we’re struggling to get to sleep because you’re worried and/ or you’re ruminating, you might want to try some breathwork to deactivate your sympathetic nervous system, you could practise Thought Stopping from cognitive behavioural therapy so you could just “shout” stop in your mind or out loud to get the thoughts to stop and this can disrupt them so you don’t constantly ruminate. As well as please consider practising self-compassion. If you’re struggling with sleep then this is okay, it’s normal and it’s understandable given your situation, so please be kind to yourself. Beating yourself up will not help you go to sleep any faster. Being kind to yourself is one of the best things you can do. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Clancy, F., Prestwich, A., Caperon, L., Tsipa, A., & O’connor, D. B. (2020). The association between worry and rumination with sleep in non-clinical populations: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Health Psychology Review, 14(4), 427-448. Davey, G. C., Meeten, F., & Field, A. P. (2022). What’s worrying our students? Increasing worry levels over two decades and a new measure of student worry frequency and domains. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 46(2), 406-419. Emran, M. G. I., Mahmud, S., Khan, A. H., Bristy, N. N., Das, A. K., Barma, R., ... & Roy, M. (2024). Factors influencing stress levels among students: A virtual exploration. European Journal of Medical and Health Sciences, 6(6), 67-75. Harvey, A. G. (2002). A cognitive model of insomnia. Behaviour research and therapy, 40(8), 869-893. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12294785/#sec1-ijerph-22-01001 Iqbal, N., & Dar, K. A. (2015). Negative affectivity, depression, and anxiety: Does rumination mediate the links?. Journal of affective disorders, 181, 18-23. Jansson-Fröjmark, M., Sunnhed, R., Carney, C. E., & Rosendahl, I. (2024). Conceptual overlap of negative thought processes in insomnia: A focus on catastrophizing, worry, and rumination in a student sample. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 22(6), 857-872. Joubert, A. E., Moulds, M. L., Werner‐Seidler, A., Sharrock, M., Popovic, B., & Newby, J. M. (2022). Understanding the experience of rumination and worry: A descriptive qualitative survey study. British journal of clinical psychology, 61(4), 929-946. Lancet, T. (2022). An age of uncertainty: mental health in young people. Lancet (London, England), 400(10352), 539. Liu, Z., Xie, Y., Sun, Z., Liu, D., Yin, H., & Shi, L. (2023). Factors associated with academic burnout and its prevalence among university students: a cross-sectional study. BMC medical education, 23(1), 317. Manzar, M. D., Salahuddin, M., Pandi-Perumal, S. R., & Bahammam, A. S. (2021). Insomnia may mediate the relationship between stress and anxiety: a cross-sectional study in university students. Nature and Science of Sleep, 31-38. Morin, C. M., Rodrigue, S., & Ivers, H. (2003). Role of stress, arousal, and coping skills in primary insomnia. Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine, 65(2), 259-267. Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Watkins, E. R. (2011). A heuristic for developing transdiagnostic models of psychopathology: Explaining multifinality and divergent trajectories. Perspectives on psychological science, 6(6), 589-609. Petak, A., & Maričić, J. (2025). The role of rumination and worry in the bidirectional relationship between stress and sleep quality in students. International journal of environmental research and public health, 22(7), 1001. Riemann, D., Spiegelhalder, K., Feige, B., Voderholzer, U., Berger, M., Perlis, M., & Nissen, C. (2010). The hyperarousal model of insomnia: a review of the concept and its evidence. Sleep medicine reviews, 14(1), 19-31. Schmickler, J. M., Blaschke, S., Robbins, R., & Mess, F. (2023). Determinants of sleep quality: a cross-sectional study in university students. International journal of environmental research and public health, 20(3), 2019. Segerstrom, S. C., Tsao, J. C., Alden, L. E., & Craske, M. G. (2000). Worry and rumination: Repetitive thought as a concomitant and predictor of negative mood. Cognitive therapy and Research, 24(6), 671-688. Thomsen, D. K., Mehlsen, M. Y., Christensen, S., & Zachariae, R. (2003). Rumination—relationship with negative mood and sleep quality. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(7), 1293-1301. Tousignant, O. H., Taylor, N. D., Suvak, M. K., & Fireman, G. D. (2019). Effects of rumination and worry on sleep. Behavior therapy, 50(3), 558-570. Watkins, E. R. (2008). Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological bulletin, 134(2), 163. Zhang, J., Li, X., Tang, Z., Xiang, S., Tang, Y., Hu, W., ... & Wang, X. (2024). Effects of stress on sleep quality: multiple mediating effects of rumination and social anxiety. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 37(1), 10. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. 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I simply cannot put this psychology podcast episode off anymore. On the day that this podcast episode goes out I will be returning from a wonderful long weekend away with my parents and my godmother to a little country escape in England. It will be a great weekend because the destination sounds good, we’ll be doing a lot of things and I enjoy spending time with my family. Yet this doesn’t hide the fact that I am nervous, anxious and in the days leading up to the holiday, I am a little dysregulated because of my autism and signs of ADHD. I am really nervous about the break away from my routines, if there will be enough stimulation for me in the evenings and even though the holiday is only for four days, it is still a massive change for me. Autistic people don’t always do well with change. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, we’re going to be exploring why travel is difficult for neurodivergent people, what some of the challenges are and most importantly, how can we support people with neurodivergence to thrive during traveling. I’ll also discuss implications for aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists. If you enjoy learning about ADHD, autism and real-world problems, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Gamification of Autism: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Mental Health. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why is Traveling Difficult as a Neurodivergent Person? To kick off this psychology podcast episode, I want to briefly remind us what exactly some neurodivergent conditions are, then I’ll explain how these conditions can negatively impact someone’s experience of travel. Yet first, I want to mention that just because someone has autism, ADHD or another condition, it doesn’t mean that they hate traveling. Traveling and going on holiday as well as seeing the world can be great fun, beautiful and it can be an eye-opening experience. However, neurodivergent people can experience difficulties that neurotypical people do not. As a result, autism is a developmental disorder that affects information processing so people with autism have difficulties with communication and social skills. As well as autistic people have restrictive interests, engage in repetitive behaviours and they experience sensitivity or distress from sensory stimulation. For instance, bright lights and sounds. Then there is the additional symptom that autistic people love structure, routine and they don’t like change. Therefore, autism can make traveling more challenging for someone because traveling involves a large break away from their regular routines that help to keep them regulated. Airports, train stations and other places involved in traveling are often noisy, loud and very busy with a lot of pushing and shuffling, this all increases the sensory overwhelm that autistic people experience. Personally, there have been numerous times in my young life when my autism was more severe when I had wanted to scream, self-harm or just cry because traveling was just too much for me. This was even worse in 2024, because I had the sensory overwhelm and the associated distress because of my autism, but then I also had the extreme distress of the PTSD because of my rape. Traveling was a lot for me and it really did harm my mental health. In addition, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a neurobehavioural disorder that’s characterised by hyperactivity, impulsivity, inattentiveness and distractibility. This means that people with ADHD can struggle to concentrate on tasks, they might daydream frequently and they might struggle to stay organised, manage their time as well as keep track of their belongings. Also, people with ADHD like to fidget. As a result, ADHD can make travel challenging because there is a lot to remember when you’re traveling. You need to manage your time effectively so you don’t miss trains, flights or layovers. You need to keep track of your passport, tickets, clothes and everything else that you need when you’re packing, when you’re at the hotel and so on. Sometimes this is difficult enough for neurotypical adults to manage so I hate to imagine how difficult it is for someone with ADHD. Furthermore, as I spoke about in a previous podcast episode, Why Does ADHD Make it Difficult to get Started, a regular routine is a very important and effective strategy to help a person with ADHD to get started, to regulate and manage their condition. When you’re traveling this goes out the window so it can be harder for a person with ADHD to manage their symptoms. Personally, something that I worry about when it comes to traveling with some signs of ADHD is that I need stimulation so badly. I really don’t want to get dysregulated and bored and fidgety, like I was on Christmas Day. Even though my family are amazing and supportive, I don’t want them to kindly suggest that I go upstairs and do things on my laptop so I’m busy, I have my stimulation and I’m not pacing. Of course, this is a lot harder to do on holiday, especially in the evenings. Normally, in the evenings, I go on my laptop, I do writing, business or anything else that needs doing. At the moment in my evenings, I’m promoting my UK Government petition to improve the lives and employment prospects of psychology students. Yet I cannot do that on holiday and that concerns me. I don’t want to spoil the holiday for my family if I get dysregulated and… I just get anxious about it. Finally for this section, I’ve covered dyspraxia before on the podcast in-depth, but this impacts coordination, understanding sense of direction and a few other aspects that directly impacts travel. Truth be told, there is a joke in my family at the moment that because we’re going to Swanage that I shouldn’t drive because we should end up in Swansea in Wales (another country). This was because of my dyslexia and dyspraxia I thought Swansea and Swanage were the same exact place for the longest time. Therefore, whilst this isn’t a concern on this holiday, having a diagnosis of dyspraxia and/ or dyslexia can be concerning and stressful for neurodivergent people. Since it can raise concerns about if they’ve understood the holiday information right, what if they misread the destination name, the booking information or they’ve made another massive mistake that might mess up the holiday. Then you get into concerns about what are the other people you’re going on holiday with going to think about you and so on. It just adds to the immense stress of going on holiday. Some other challenges of traveling as a neurodivergent person can include communication difficulties so neurodivergent travellers might struggle with social cues as well as communication. This can make interactions more difficult in new environments and more stressful. As well as navigating brand-new public transport systems can be immensely stressful because public transport systems often lack features designed to accommodate neurodivergent needs. This decreases the amount of accessible options available to neurodivergent travellers whilst increasing the stress they experience. As well as there are personal safety concerns because neurodivergent people can be fearful of harassment and other safety issues so they can become less confident and less willing to go traveling. Why Does the Difficulty of Traveling as a Neurodivergent Person Matter to Clinical Psychologists? The difficulty of traveling as a neurodivergent person matters to aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists, because as you can imagine, we will never know who’s going to come into our therapy room, our mental health service and we will never know what our work will entail. You might be asked by a local authority, national government or another public service to consult on making the transport system or another aspect of daily life more neurodivergent-friendly. This knowledge will be immensely useful to you, and you’ll be able to apply the information from this podcast episode directly to your clinical work. Another benefit of knowing about this topic is you might have an autistic client who is making good progress in therapy, then they come to you and express their anxiety and distress about a holiday that their partner, family or loved one has booked for them in between now and your last session. They want your advice and guidance on how to cope with it because they know this trip is important to the loved one and they don’t want to disappoint. As a result, the content of this episode will help give you more awareness, understanding and empathy for the client in this normal-to-you situation. Lastly for this section, an aspiring or qualified clinical psychologist might be supporting a neurotypical partner or parent in therapy and they explain that going on holiday would mean so much for them, but they don’t know how to make it less stressful for themselves, the family system and their autistic or ADHD partner or child. The knowledge in this episode might help you suggest a few ideas, explore different options and it will give you a starting point to help your client. How to Make Traveling Easier as a Neurodivergent Person? Thankfully, there are a range of tips and tricks that neurodivergent people can use to improve their travel experience, self-regulate and make the trip easier on themselves and others. Ensure Neurodivergent Needs are Baked into the Planning of Travel Firstly, ensure that your neurodivergent needs are met and involved in the planning phase of the travel. This ensures that the destination aligns with your sensory needs, your needs for stimulation and rest as well as your accessibility requirements. For instance, I don’t need any rest planned into my trip but I have had neurodivergent friends in the past who needed frequent rest breaks, so this should always be factored in. In terms of destination, you might want to think about how the climate might impact you and your sensory needs, what the hotel and country is known for and more. For example, if you find hot weather, getting sweaty and humidity to be distressing because of your sensory needs, then a hot country might not be the best destination for you. Equally, if you have a sensitivity to bright lights, loud noises and more, then a hotel known for its clubbing isn’t a good idea. Another useful tip when it comes to holiday planning is allow flexibility in timings and schedules. When I first read that tip I panicked a little because I flat out hate the idea of plans being changed, things not happening and people not sticking to the schedule. My autism hates that with an utter passion. Yet it’s important that you incorporate buffer time between your activities and these can be scheduled breaks that allow for decompression and self-regulation. As well as it can be a good idea to not overload your schedule so you don’t get overwhelmed, fatigued and you don’t experience autistic burnout. This allows you to enjoy the wonderfully relaxing comfort of a structured routine but it still allows you to have some spontaneity. A final tip for this first section is as part of your neurodivergent needs, it is perfectly okay for you to think about, bring and use items that soothe or stimulate you as required. Such as, a fidget toy, noise-cancelling headphones, preferred snacks and so on. As well as it can be a good idea to travel during off-peak hours or out of season to decrease some of the sensory overwhelm during travel. Ultimately, I would always stress that your needs have to come first. You are the most important person to you so your needs always need to be respected, appreciated and accommodated for within reason. As a result, there is nothing wrong with saying to your friends, your family or your partner about your sensory needs and what you need to make it enjoyable for you. It is not right that everyone else gets to enjoy the holiday or traveling except you. You matter. Therefore, as aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, I firmly believe that this is something that we can support a client with during therapy or counselling. We can help the neurodivergent client to improve their self-advocacy skills, their self-confidence and their ability to manage resistance to their needs and boundaries. All of these are important life skills, but they are even more important when it comes to a distressing experience like travel. Neurodivergent People can Create a Self-Regulation Toolkit for Traveling This is a tip for neurodivergent people whilst traveling that I am starting to turn my own mind towards. I understand that my routines will be disrupted, I will not be able to do a lot of the normal activities that I use to keep me regulated and this is a cause for concern. Therefore, whilst by its very nature travel does disrupt our routines so this can be very destabilising for autistic people, there are ways around this. Something I learnt during my rape counselling and I talk more about this in my book Healing As a Survivor, you can create a list of all the activities that help you to self-regulate and self-soothe. You can also divide them into different categories like self-soothing activities when I’m out, at home, with friends or I only have a few minutes before I need to do something else. Creating this list helps you to see all your self-regulation activities and you can pick a handful of them that you can take on holiday with you. For example, because it has been ages since I last went on holiday, and I haven’t been on holiday since my rape, I have no idea what self-regulation activities I can and cannot easily do whilst on holiday. Yet I have a rough idea. I will still be in the UK and I never use my mobile data so even if the caravan doesn’t have free Wi-Fi, I will have internet access. This means I can still be incredibly sad and autistic and maintain some of my routines. For instance, on the Friday evening, I can go on the UK Government’s petition website and sign all the petitions published that day that I support and agree with. That’s one way of maintaining my daily routine. Also, I can listen to my music that self-soothes me from the anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. As well as I can do a little bit of writing on my phone. Finally, I can do some reading because I always have a bunch of books to read on my Google Books and Kobo account. When I combine reading with using my mobile data so I can use my free likes on my dating apps, then this helps me to bring a little more of my bedtime routine and structure on holiday with me. As well as I am seriously debating getting a Crunchyroll subscription in the next few days so I can watch anime when I’m on holiday. Thankfully, Crunchyroll allows for offline viewing. On the whole, when you really think about it, there are a lot of self-soothing activities that you can bring on holiday with you. Whether these activities help you to self-regulate or just create a small sense of your structured routine from home, these activities can be immensely powerful and useful in helping to make travel easier for you. As aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, this is something that you might want to do with neurodivergent clients in a therapy or counselling session. Me and my rape counsellor spent a good chunk of time coming up with different ideas for different categories and it was really helpful, useful and even nowadays (18 months later), I still come back to that useful session to help self-regulate. What are Some ADHD-Specific Travel Tips? As I mentioned earlier, people with ADHD can have additional struggles when it comes to travel because they can experience time-blindness, decision paralysis, impulsivity amongst other psychological or behavioural symptoms that can derail or negatively impact their travel plans. This is why it can be useful to use digital tools to organise your travel plans and set reminders. Some people with ADHD recommend Triplt or PackPoint. I have not used these online tools personally so these are not recommendations. Other tips for people with ADHD can be to set reminders as well as alarms so you can remind yourself when you need to get going or start transitioning towards the next activity. Additionally, people with ADHD might benefit from allowing extra time whilst traveling to pack and they could ask their travel companion, their loved one or friend to help keep them accountable. A final specific tip for people with ADHD is to put essential items like chargers, comfort items and medication in a dedicated pouch that you always carry with you. In terms of aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, it can be useful to remember to work to a client’s specific condition and challenges. Since whilst the vast, vast majority of this episode will apply to all neurodivergent conditions, some individual clients will benefit or not from different tips. For example, all the bits mentioned in this ADHD section wouldn’t be useful to me personally, but that’s because I have autism, not a diagnosable level of ADHD. Therefore, the practical application of this section is a helpful reminder that we always need to focus on the specific needs, strengths and challenges of the client instead of assuming just because they’re neurodivergent they “must” struggle with x, y and z. Consider Checking Out Online Creators for Neurodivergent Travel Tips Personally, there was a lot of toing and throwing about whether I added this section into this episode, because I am incredibly wary of suggesting content creators, so I will not recommend any. I have this sense of wariness because I am always concerned of bad actors in the online creator space where people claim to put out science-based insights that are heavily researched, supported by clinical practitioners and more. When in reality, they are just making stuff up, pushing their own beliefs or they’re pushing pseudo-science. This is why I always mention that I’m a clinical psychology graduate in the introduction of my podcast episodes so you know I have university-level qualifications in psychology and I always include a heavy reference section at the end of the blog posts. This helps you to know that the information I put out into the world is coming from a good source. Other online creators aren’t so good when it comes to this verification. Anyway, jumping off my little soapbox, content creators do play an important role in building a sense of shared life experience as well as community. Also, it is really good when someone shares their life experience with other people (and they label it as their own experience and not fact or a universal truth). Therefore, you could go online, social media or YouTube and research neurodivergent travel tips so you can get hacks, tips and tricks for navigating airports, emotional support strategies and more as a neurodivergent person. This is helpful because it helps to normalise the difficulties that neurodivergent people experience when traveling. Whilst there isn’t anything too applicable in this section for aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, I think there are some applications in self-efficacy. Since one of the reasons why I am able to manage my own mental health and actually recover from my trauma in the first place is because I was able to research, understand concepts and I was able to adapt my own life to improve it. I did it for my rape, my anorexia and my insecure attachment styles. Yet I have observed that a lot of people don’t know how to research, improve their life on their own and this can create difficulties for clients, especially after formal therapy ends. Therefore, I don’t know how this would work in a practical sense, but it might be an idea to explore with a client and walk through with them how they could research a problem for themselves that they might encounter in the future. This might be something that you do towards the end of therapy, because whilst you would have given the client a lot of techniques, tips and tricks to manage their mental health into the future. They might still be concerned about what if the techniques don’t work in a specific situation. This could be a good opportunity to increase their self-efficacy and explore how to research, find tips, resources and creators online to support them. It’s just a thought. Find Neurodivergent-Friendly Attractions and Travel Agencies A final set of tips and tricks that can make travel easier for neurodivergent people is to look out for neurodivergent-friendly attractions and travel agencies. Since different attractions might actively work to support neurodivergent people, so a museum might have sensory-friendly hours, there might be hotels with low-stimulation environments as well as there might be nature trails with quiet zones. These neurodivergent-friendly attractions are becoming more popular. On the other hand, there are travel agencies that specialise in travel for neurodivergent people by offering support staff, pre-trip consultations and tailored itineraries. These can all be immensely useful for neurodivergent people and families because it can help to alleviate any concerns, it can help provide that sense of structure and routine that neurodivergent people crave and it can get rid of a lot of the stress. In terms of aspiring and clinical psychologists, whilst this particular tip doesn’t apply to our clinical work. This is the sort of work that we could be actively promoting, encouraging and getting involved with. For instance, it isn’t rare for clinical psychologists to be getting involved in advocacy or consultation work, so a clinical psychologist gets to support a company or travel agency to create more neurodivergent-friendly products. As well as a clinical psychologist could consult on a business project to make a hotel or a new resort neurodivergent-friendly. This would actually be a lot of fun and it just goes to show you the power of psychology. Clinical Psychology Conclusion This psychology podcast episode firmly reminds me why I flat out love The Psychology World Podcast. I have been nervous, anxious and a little unsure of this week because I go on holiday for four days on Friday. I know I will enjoy it because I’ll be with my family, I get to experience new things and I get to explore and get new story ideas. Yet I am anxious about the disruptions to my routines, the questionable lack of stimulation in the evenings and so on. However, this podcast episode has given us a lot of different tips and ideas about how to make travel easier for neurodivergent individuals. For example, as I’m still in the UK and I have a lot of mobile data (because I never use it) I can do my nightly Duolingo, signing online petitions, reading, writing and using my dating apps to bring some of that routine and structure from home on holiday with me. Therefore, whether you’re a parent, a loved one, a clinical psychologist or a neurodivergent person yourself, I hope you’ve learnt just as much as I have. As a little reminder, here are some tips to help a neurodivergent person whilst traveling: · Advocate for your neurodivergent needs in the planning stage · Create a self-regulation toolkit that you can take on holiday · For people with ADHD, set alarms for transitions and schedule extra time for packing · Check out online creators sharing neurodivergent travel tips (check they know what they’re talking about though) · Find neurodivergent-friendly attractions and travel agencies I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Gamification of Autism: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Mental Health. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Barclay, D. M. (2022). Traveling different: Vacation strategies for parents of the anxious, the inflexible, and the neurodiverse. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. Castro, R. T. D., Batista, M. M., & Andrada, M. E. S. (2025). Airport accessibility for neurodivergent passengers: a global survey of initiatives and its implications. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Turismo, 19, e-3077. Edwards, D., Csontos, J., Gillen, E., Wharf, T., Purcell, C., Ingram, B. J., ... & Lewis, R. (2026). The impact of changes in active travel infrastructure on disabled people: A rapid review. https://blog.oncallinternational.com/supporting-neurodivergent-travelers-challenges-strategies-and-support/ https://satgurutravel.com/neurodivergent-travel-guide/ https://www.motabilityfoundation.org.uk/media/t5yowvej/autistica-transport-report-2025-final.pdf https://www.travel-owl.com/post/neurodivergent-travel-planning https://www.walkwheelcycletrust.org.uk/our-blog/research/neurodivergence-and-active-travel-addressing-the-barriers/ Jepson, A., Stadler, R., & Garrod, B. (2024). Tourism and neurodiversity: A problematisation and research agenda. Current Issues in Tourism, 27(4), 546-566. Leger, S. (2025). Mindful Streets: Examining the politics and practices of everyday mobility negotiated by those who are neurodivergent and the potential for more inclusive (and just) street design for ‘all’. Sebastian, R., Kottekkadan, N. N., Thomas, T. K., & KK, M. N. (2026). Travelling for the ‘gifted’: neuro-inclusive family holidays. In Handbook on Children and Family Tourism (pp. 239-252). Edward Elgar Publishing. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

As I spoke about in a previous podcast episode, the United Kingdom has a massivequalification problem when it comes to psychology degrees. Therefore, on the 23rd April 2026, the UK Government’s Petitions Committee approved my petition for publication on their website. My petition calls on the UK Government to review how psychology students can gain the practical experience and clinical skills needed to become qualified mental health practitioners as part of an undergraduate degree. This could help to solve the mental health, NHS recruitment and graduate employment crisis. In this clinical psychology podcast episode, I’ll take you through my policy, the benefits and the challenges and solutions to make this policy work in the real-world. If you’re a UK resident then please sign this petition. If you aren’t a UK resident, then please share the petition online. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Policy Briefing Create Psychology Licensing Degrees. UK residents- sign the petition now! Non-UK residents, please share the petition online. Summary · Psychology students want to improve lives, decrease psychological distress and make the world a better place. · The Mental Health Foundation and London School of Economics and Political Science found mental health conditions cost the UK Economy at least £118 billion per year. This is because of lost productivity from people with mental health conditions and unpaid informal carers having to withdraw from employment to look after these individuals. This represents approximately 5% of UK’s Gross Domestic Product. · To fix the mental health crisis, the UK Government argued the NHS need to recruit an extra 8,500 mental health practitioners. Yet no one knows where to recruit these practitioners from. · Licensing degrees are commonplace throughout the United Kingdom. A 3-year social work undergraduate degree allows graduates to become qualified social workers. A 3-year nursing undergraduate degree allows graduates to become a registered nurse, including a mental health nurse. · In 2023, 42,770 psychology students graduated across the United Kingdom. These students are specialists in understanding human behaviour, mental health conditions and applying psychology in the real world. Under current UK legislation, psychology degrees do not allow psychology graduates to become qualified professionals. · Current UK legislation is preventing the Government from solving the mental health crisis by inhibiting the creation of psychology licensing degrees. These would allow psychology students to become qualified mental health professionals upon graduation. Recommendations for Policy Create Licensing Degrees. The Government should work with the British Psychological Society, Health and Care Professions Council and Universities to create licensing psychology degrees as soon as possible. This will allow psychology students to learn the clinical skills and gain the practical experience needed to become qualified mental health professionals upon graduation. A delay on psychology licensing degrees will be incredibly damaging to the NHS, the psychology job market and individuals with mental health difficulties. Create Jobs. The Government will create jobs by creating psychology licensing degrees. They will allow psychology graduates to become mental health practitioners. This will allow graduates to earn higher income, pay more tax and grow the UK’s tax revenue. This can be reinvested in public services. This benefits the Labour Party by demonstrating the Government is serious about creating highly skilled jobs that will improve our nation. Create Economic Growth. The mental health practitioners created by psychology licensing degrees will allow individuals with mental health conditions to get back into work, boost economic productivity and it will allow unpaid informal carers to get back into the workforce. This means these individuals will work more, pay more tax and boost the UK’s economy. Potentially by as much as £118 billion per year. Policy Challenges and Solutions Psychology Trainees Could Harm Individuals with Mental Health Difficulties. Critics might argue psychology trainees might harm clients with mental health conditions whilst on trainee placement. However, psychology licensing degrees should operate like any other licensing degree. Psychology trainees would receive high quality teaching and supervision, similar to nursing, podiatry and other roles. Trainee nurses are just as likely to harm a patient as a psychology trainee, but trainee nurses do not cause harm. Trainees are allowed to gain practical experience in hospitals with real patients. Psychology trainees should be given the same opportunity. Universities Need Partnerships with Mental Health Services. Some critics would argue it costs money, time and resources for universities to develop the partnerships needed with mental health services to give psychology trainees the practical experience required of a licensing degree. This is already commonplace in psychology postgraduate courses. Universities providing the Doctorate of Clinical or Educational Psychology have partnerships with NHS services and local authorities. This demonstrates universities already have the skills, connections and relationships to show the effectiveness of trainees in mental health. In a licensing degree, these partnerships would have to be expanded, but with government support and intervention, this is doable. Especially, with the potential Return on Investment being £118 billion a year to the UK Economy. Not All Psychology Students Want to Be Practitioners. It is true not all psychology students would want to become mental health practitioners, but if only 20% of psychology graduates from 2023 became practitioners, then this would solve the NHS’s mental health recruitment crisis. Psychology students should be given the option to take a non-licensing or licensing psychology degree. This will allow universities, students and Government the flexibility it needs to address the mental health crisis in the UK. Call to Action It is critical that psychology students sign the petition to encourage the Government to take this important action so psychology graduates can become mental health practitioners. This will help graduates become more employable, solve the mental health crisis and improve lives. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/764524 I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

To kick off this mini-series on attachment styles in developmental psychology, you’re going to learn about what is secure attachment today. Since we constantly hear about the insecure attachment styles, like avoidant, anxious and disorganised attachment and for good reason. Insecure attachments can have damaging impacts on a person’s relationships, mental health and emotional regulation. However, I don’t think there is enough focus on secure attachment because not a lot of people know what secure attachment is and what it looks like. Therefore, in this developmental psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what secure attachment is, what the signs of secure attachment are in adults and children and so much more. If you enjoy learning about social psychology, attachment theory and child psychology then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What Is Secure Attachment? Secure attachment is the bond where a person feels supported, safe as well as connected so they can express emotions freely, confidently explore their environment and seek comfort from their partner knowing that they have a reliable base to return to. In attachment theory, this is known as having a secure base and children use this to explore the environment knowing that their attachment figure is close by and will protect and comfort them if anything bad happens. In addition, having a secure attachment style means they can communicate effectively with others, they can regulate their feelings and emotions, the person is comfortable with intimacy as well as they have good problem-solving and coping skills. Moreover, people with a secure attachment style are comfortable being alone and being close to other people. As well as they are empathetic, compassionate and trusting. I know some readers or listeners might be confused as to why this is a special form of attachment because this might be so normal for you that you believe this is the only way to be. In an ideal world, I completely agree that it would be lovely if everyone was securely attached. It certainly would have made my life so much easier, but unfortunately because of abuse, childhood neglect and other environmental factors some children develop insecure attachment styles. Mainly because their caregiver was either a source of fear, they were inconsistent with their love and affection or they punished or shamed the child for showing emotions. All of these go against secure attachment because if a parent shamed you for showing emotions then you are not going to feel safe communicating your feelings and you aren’t going to be comfortable with intimacy because you don’t want to be punished or shamed again for showing your feelings. What Are The Benefits of Secure Attachment In Children? The benefits of children having secure attachment include the child having high self-esteem. Since secure attachment helps a child to develop a positive self-image and a healthier sense of identity. Leading to greater feelings of confidence in their abilities as well as decision-making skills so this helps to improve their overall psychological wellbeing. Another benefit is secure attachment helps to improve a child’s ability to form and maintain relationships with others, so they show higher levels of social competence and empathy compared to others. A smaller benefit of social skills is that secure attachment means children are better at conflict resolution so they have more positive interactions with adults and peers. Thirdly, children with secure attachment have a better ability to express and manage their emotions, so they tend to have more stable mood patterns and healthier responses to stress. Lastly for this section, secure attachment allows a child to get a healthy balance between showing self-reliance and seeking support. This means the child shows greater confidence in exploring new situations and improved problem-solving skills when facing challenges without others. This point about independence is something I often struggle with because my anxious part of my disorganised attachment means I like seeking comfort some of the time. Yet the avoidant part of my attachment means I am extremely self-reliant and I hate depending on other people at times, so I will avoid expressing my own needs and seeking comfort at all costs. What Are The Signs of Secure Attachment In Children? Now that we know the benefits of secure attachment in children, let’s see what are the signs. Personally, I’ll hopefully always remember this really sweet moment when my brother, his girlfriend and her son were round my parents’ once. I think the child was about two years old and he was exploring my parents’ house because it was a new environment and he always loved it round ours. And he would crawl away, look back to see if his mum and my brother were still there and he would crawl forward some more and check again. It was so cute and lovely to see how a child reacts to having a secure base. Of course, I was the only one who understood this was because of his secure attachment but everyone found it sweet. Anyway, for a child to develop a secure attachment style, they need to grow up in an environment where they feel seen and protected by their caregivers. Since if a caregiver doesn’t respond to a child’s needs then the child might not develop a secure attachment style because there is a lack of a secure and stable bond. Additionally, children with a secure attachment have a worldview of the world being friendly and reliable. In other words, they learn to trust that the people around them are dependable and kind. As well as these securely attached children use their caregivers as a secure base to explore the social world and they see their caregivers as a safe haven to return to for comfort whenever they’re distressed. In turn, the caregiver helps the securely attached child to develop self-regulation skills so the child knows how to regulate their emotional, cognitive and social behaviours. These skills are taught to the child whenever the caregiver comforts them when they’re distressed. In my opinion, I do tend to find there are always moments when I research certain topics in psychology, like attachment, when I’m like “no, that isn’t how the world works,”. When I wrote about people with a secure attachment style seeing the world as a reliable and friendly place, I really couldn’t understand how someone could see the world like that. And it just reminds me that I need to catch myself with my own biased cognitive processes because generally the world is a great and friendly place. I just need to keep reminding myself that yes, I have a disorganised attachment style, but I need to keep reminding myself that not everyone is unreliable and unkind. Anyway, some other signs of secure attachment in children can include a child wanting to seek comfort from their caregivers, preferring their caregiver over strangers, comfortable interactions with others, a child comfortably exploring new areas and a positive response to the return of their parents. This reminds me of a conversation I was having recently with a mature student studying social work during one of the reading support sessions I run as a student ambassador. She was telling me how she couldn’t imagine not responding to her child’s needs even though she admitted she might be overresponding and giving them too much attention at times. And it made me smile because I know this ambassador very well and of course, you are not going to tell a work friend the bad parts of your parenting or your life because everyone has them. We are simply human after all. Yet I know this woman is very authentic, she loves her kids and she would never imagine not responding to their needs. It was a weird feeling for me to see that, but I guess that’s why I’m working on my attachment style. I don’t want these perfectly normal things to be weird for me anymore. On the whole, securely attached children show balanced behavioural strategies where they’re able to express their need for autonomy and intimacy. With autonomy being important because it facilitates a person’s interaction with the environment. This is even more important when we remember that the attachment style we develop in early childhood, whilst it can thankfully be changed, it does have a lifelong influence on our ability to communicate our needs and emotions, how we form expectations about our relationships and how we respond to conflict. What Are The Benefits of Secure Attachment In Adults? Shifting away from children for the majority of this remaining episode, secure attachment doesn’t only matter in children. Adults need to have secure attachment too because it helps them with their parenting skills because they are more likely to create secure attachments with their own children so they can continue this positive relationship pattern across the generations. As well as adults having secure attachment means they can have healthy relationships because they find it easier to trust others and maintain healthy boundaries in relationships. Therefore, like children, they show higher levels of social competence and empathy as well as they can develop better conflict resolution skills. This all helps adults have more stable and satisfying professional and personal relationships. Finally for this section, secure attachment helps adults to have improved emotional well-being. Due to secure attachment increases a person’s stress management skills and emotional resilience because they are better able to handle life’s challenges and they can bounce back from setbacks more easily. As well as they have improved emotion regulation skills so adults with secure attachment have healthier responses to stress and more stable moods. What Are Some Signs of Secure Attachment In Adults? As I briefly mentioned earlier, the attachment style we develop in early childhood is critical to the attachment style we have as adults. This continues to impact our relationship expectations, our worldview and how we interact with others as adults. Therefore, there are five main signs of an adult having secure attachment and you’ll learn about these signs now. Firstly, adults with secure attachment are able to open up about their emotions and how they feel, so they don’t hide their emotions or bottle things up. As well as they are comfortable asking for help when they need it, and opening up about their feelings so they don’t worry about being rejected or being let down. Another sign is that adults with secure attachment are resilient so whilst they might experience negative attachment-related events, they can still objectively assess events and people and assign a positive value to the relationship in general. In other words, a person, like a caregiver, can still let them down and not respond to their needs as an adult but the adult is still able to see that this isn’t a pattern and they don’t need to develop the anxious or avoidant behavioural patterns. Penultimately, secure attachments mean adults are comfortable with intimacy and closeness with others. Therefore, adults are okay with being close to other people and letting others be close to them so they feel good about themselves and they trust others. Also, people with secure attachment are comfortable sharing intimate moments with others and having their own space. I’ll have to admit that what is interesting about learning more about secure attachment is that I can really see and understand how disorganised my attachment style is. For example, I love sharing intimate moments with other people but equally, I seriously love having my own space away from other people, so it’s interesting seeing how I have two extreme behavioural strategies activated a good chunk of the time. Finally, secure attachment allows adults to show healthy interdependence, now this is a fascinating topic for me personally because I understand it from a psychology viewpoint. I do not understand it as a human being. As a result, healthy interdependence involves securely attached people being able to maintain a healthy balance of relying on their partner and meeting their own needs. This balance helps them to create deeper intimacy through being vulnerable whilst maintaining their own individuality. Developmental Psychology Conclusion I’ve really enjoyed learning about secure attachment because in clinical psychology and in psychology lectures, we spend a lot of time looking at insecure attachment styles. This is a good thing most of the time because it means we can understand what causes children and adults to have difficulties with social relationships and this has a massive impact on their mental health in turn. Yet if we don’t understand what secure attachment is then, how are we meant to know what attachment and relationship point of view, we’re helping them towards? I’m sure that question mainly comes from my own abuse, trauma and disorganised attachment background, but it has been a lot of fun focusing on secure attachment today. In future podcast episodes, you’ll learn about anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment styles and they are even more fun. Here are some questions to get you thinking at the end of this developmental psychology podcast episode: · What moments from your life do you remember seeing signs of secure attachment? It can be from seeing other children or yourself. · Are you securely attached? · Think about your friends and yourself as adults, what signs of secure attachment can you recognise in them? · If you don’t fit into the secure attachment style, what signs don’t you have? · Why do you think attachment is important to learn about? I hope you enjoyed today’s developmental psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Child Psychology References and Further Reading Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Lawrence Erlbaum. Baldwin, M.W., & Fehr, B. (1995). On the instability of attachment style ratings. Personal Relationships, 2, 247-261. Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L.M. (1991). Attachment Styles Among Young Adults: A Test of a Four-Category Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61 (2), 226–244. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Volume I. Attachment . London: Hogarth Press. Brazelton, T. B., Tronick, E., Adamson, L., Als, H., & Wise, S. (1975). Early mother-infant reciprocity. Parent-infant interaction, 33(137-154), 122. Brennan, K. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1995). Dimensions of adult attachment, affect regulation, and romantic relationship functioning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21 (3), 267–283. Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (p. 46–76). The Guilford Press. Budniok, S., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., & Bosmans, G. (2024). The moderating role of oxytocin in the association between parental support and change in secure attachment development. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 02724316241296180. Bylsma, W. H., Cozzarelli, C., & Sumer, N. (1997). Relation between adult attachment styles and global self-esteem. Basic and applied social psychology, 19 (1), 1-16. Caron, A., Lafontaine, M., Bureau, J., Levesque, C., and Johnson, S.M. (2012). Comparisons of Close Relationships: An Evaluation of Relationship Quality and Patterns of Attachment to Parents, Friends, and Romantic Partners in Young Adults. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 44 (4), 245-256. Cassidy, J., & Berlin, L. J. (1994). The insecure/ambivalent pattern of attachment: Theory and research. Child development, 65 (4), 971-991. Collins, N. L., & Read, S. J. (1994). Cognitive representations of adult attachment: The structure and function of working models. In K. Bartholomew & D. Perlman (Eds.) Advances in personal relationships, Vol. 5: Attachment processes in adulthood(pp. 53-90). London: Jessica Kingsley. Comte, A., Szymanska, M., Monnin, J., Moulin, T., Nezelof, S., Magnin, E., ... & Vulliez- Coady, L. (2024). Neural correlates of distress and comfort in individuals with avoidant, anxious and secure attachment style: an fMRI study. Attachment & Human Development, 26(5), 423-445. Conrad, R., Forstner, A. J., Chung, M. L., Mücke, M., Geiser, F., Schumacher, J., & Carnehl, F. (2021). Significance of anger suppression and preoccupied attachment in social anxiety disorder: a cross-sectional study. BMC psychiatry, 21 (1), 1-9. Ensink, K., Fonagy, P., Normandin, L., Rozenberg, A., Marquez, C., Godbout, N., & Borelli, J. L. (2021). Post-traumatic stress disorder in sexually abused children: secure attachment as a protective factor. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 646680. Favez, N., & Tissot, H. (2019). Fearful-avoidant attachment: a specific impact on sexuality?. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 45(6), 510-523. Field, T. (1985). Attachment as psychobiological attunement: Being on the same wavelength. The psychobiology of attachment and separation, 4152, 454. Finzi, R., Cohen, O., Sapir, Y., & Weizman, A. (2000). Attachment styles in maltreated children: A comparative study. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 31 (2), 113-128. Fraley, R. C., & Roisman, G. I. (2019). The development of adult attachment styles: Four lessons. Current opinion in psychology, 25, 26-30. Haft, W. L., & Slade, A. (1989). Affect attunement and maternal attachment: A pilot study. Infant mental health journal, 10(3), 157-172. Hartup, W. W. (1993). Adolescents and their friends. New directions for child and adolescent development, 1993 (60), 3-22. Hashworth, T., Reis, S., & Grenyer, B. F. (2021). Personal agency in borderline personality disorder: The impact of adult attachment style. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 2224. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52 (3), 511–524. Hoghughi, M., & Speight, A. N. P. (1998). Good enough parenting for all children—a strategy for a healthier society. Archives of disease in childhood, 78(4), 293-296. Justo‐Núñez, M., Morris, L., & Berry, K. (2022). Self‐report measures of secure attachment in adulthood: A systematic review. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 29(6), 1812-1842. Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1986). Discovery of an insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. In T. B. Brazelton & M. W. Yogman (Eds.), Affective development in infancy . Ablex Publishing. Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. In I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds.), Growing points of attachment theory and research. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50 (1-2), 66-104. Meins, E. (2013). Sensitive attunement to infants’ internal states: Operationalizing the construct of mind-mindedness. Attachment & Human Development, 15(5-6), 524-544. Moghadam, M., Rezaei, F., Ghaderi, E., & Rostamian, N. (2016). Relationship between attachment styles and happiness in medical students. Journal of family medicine and primary care, 5 (3), 593–599. Murray, L. (1985). Emotional regulations of interactions between two-month-oldsand their mothers. Social perception in infants, 177-197. Powell, B., Cooper, G., Hoffman, K., & Marvin, B. (2013). The circle of security intervention: Enhancing attachment in early parent-child relationships. Guilford publications. Putri, D. E., Rahardjo, W., Qomariyah, N., Rini, Q. K., & Pranandari, K. (2021). Social problem-solving in freshmen: The role of emotional stability, secure attachment, communication skill, and self-esteem. Humaniora, 12(2), 141-149. Schore, A. N. (2001). Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant mental health journal: official publication of the world association for infant mental health, 22(1‐2), 7-66. Schore, J. R., & Schore, A. N. (2008). Modern attachment theory: The central role of affect regulation in development and treatment. Clinical social work journal, 36(1), 9-20. Sechi, C., Vismara, L., Brennstuhl, M. J., Tarquinio, C., & Lucarelli, L. (2020). Adult attachment styles, self-esteem, and quality of life in women with fibromyalgia. Health Psychology Open, 7 (2), 2055102920947921. Simpson, J. A. (1990). Influence of attachment styles on romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 59 (5), 971. Stern, D. N. (2018). The interpersonal world of the infant: A view from psychoanalysis and developmental Psychology. Routledge. Tabachnick, A. R., He, Y., Zajac, L., Carlson, E. A., & Dozier, M. (2022). Secure attachment in infancy predicts context-dependent emotion expression in middle childhood. Emotion, 22(2), 258. Waters, E., Merrick, S., Treboux, D., Crowell, J., & Albersheim, L. (2000). Attachment security in infancy and early adulthood: A twenty-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 71 (3), 684-689. Weinberg, M. K., Beeghly, M., Olson, K. L., & Tronick, E. (2008). A still-face paradigm for young children: 2½ year-olds’ reactions to maternal unavailability during the still-face. The journal of developmental processes, 3(1), 4. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

The majority of people think that local councils only collect their bins and they don't do anything else for them. However, local elections are a lot more important than people realize. From funding and policy on education, healthcare, mental health services and so much more, your local council directly impacts your life in endless ways. Especially for psychologists. Whenever a local council makes a decision to change mental health, education and adult social care funding, this single decision creates a ripple effect across a local community that can harm or benefit mental health. Therefore, in this political psychology podcast episode, you'll learn why do local elections matter for psychologists, why is voter turnout so low for local elections and most importantly, how do we improve voter turnout. If you enjoy learning about voter behaviour, systemic factors behind mental health and more, then this will be a brilliant episode for you.  Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Applied Psychology: Applying Social Psychology, Business Psychology and More to Real World Problems. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why Are Local Elections Important to Psychologists? Before we dive into the main topic of the podcast episode, I want to help set the scene a little bit more and explicitly explain why local elections matter to psychologists. The examples I'll use will be mental health services, housing and education.  Firstly, local elections are important for psychologists because if a political party gets a majority in a council and they cut mental health spending to the bone, then this will impact our work. Before an election, we might have been planning a brilliant new local mental health campaign that was really tailored to the individual needs of the council ward, it was a great project and the local community was fully behind it. Then the new party comes in and slashes our funding or they scrap the project because it doesn't align with their vision. This is all possible. Therefore, as you can see, psychologists have a vested interest in voting in local elections because we need to make sure Councillors who care about mental health get into power.  In addition, as psychologists, we should be interested in the mental health ideas and campaigns that candidates are putting forward. We have brilliant research, critical thinking and analysis skills. Therefore, if a candidate says that they have a brilliant idea to solve the mental health crisis in a council area, but as psychologists, we know it won't work without a lot more detail, then we need to think twice about voting for that person.  On the whole, when it comes to mental health services, psychologists should be interested and we should vote in local elections to help improve, sustain and protect our mental health services.  Building upon this, if we take a more systemic approach to mental health and we look at the more societal-level factors, if a political party campaigns to end housing benefits or to tighten up the rules without a good alternative, then this could have a very negative impact on a community and lead to more mental health difficulties. If you're a single mother with two children and you can only pay rent each month because of your housing benefit, then after an election, you lose it because of new criteria. Then that is going to be very stressful for you, you might have to get a second or third job, you might have to skip meals to feed your kids or you might have to turn to crime just to survive. As you can see, a single council decision can change a person's life for the worse.  If I apply this example more directly to psychology, this is important because this single mother is more likely to be overwhelmed, distressed and experience negative mental health outcomes. All because of the stress created by this council decision. Therefore, this is why local elections should matter to psychologists, because we need to use our vote to do what's best for the local community, and hopefully decrease harmful decisions that will lead to increased negative mental health outcomes, more strain on our public services and increase suffering for innocent people.  My final example in this introductory section is education. Councils make decisions on education all the time. Whether this is to do with student placement, special educational needs access or teaching, councils have a lot of influence over education. As an aspiring educational psychologist, I'm always interested in learning more about education in local areas. As well as if we apply Ecological Systems Theory to this example, one of the Ecological Systems that a child exists in is the relationship between the school and the local council. Since a local council might decide to reduce special educational needs funding by 5%, so this means the school needs to reduce teaching supply staff to save money so this negatively impacts a child and their education because there aren't as many support staff members to support them anymore. Therefore, this example shows how even though a child never directly interacts with the council Ecological System, they are still indirectly impacted by the council's decision.  Ultimately, this is why psychologists should be interested in local elections, reading through candidate manifestos and voting. We understand that council decisions change lives and they have the power to harm or enhance a child's education. Why Are Local Councils Important? After setting the scene and explaining why local elections are important for psychologists to understand and get involved with, let’s take a closer look at why councils are important. Therefore, local councils have an immense role in local life and they are a lot more important than individuals think, because unitary authorities in particular deliver over 800 local services to the community. For example, unitary authorities provide local people with social housing, transport, education, road maintenance, waste management, financial services and so much more. Local councils are flat out critical to everyday life. As a result this does raise a very important question for all of us, given how important and how much local councils directly impact our lives. Why do so few people vote in local elections compared to national elections? In addition for a bit of context, because I’ve been getting into local politics a lot lately, the national average of local election turnout is about 37% and for my council ward, at the last council election in 2023, the voter turnout was 26%. That meant just under 75% of voters did not vote for their local councillors. To me, that is heartbreaking because local councils are so important, they directly impact the local community and they directly impact individuals. This is why it’s important to understand why higher voter apathy, low levels of political efficacy and a lack of knowledge on the local government’s importance and electoral cycle is critical in understanding why voter turnout is so low for local elections. How Does Voter Apathy and Political Efficacy Lead to Low Voter Turnout? The first reason why election turnout is low for local elections is because of voter apathy. This refers to a person’s lack of interest in the political process, and this definitely includes local elections. Whereas political efficacy refers to a person’s belief about their ability to change political processes. These two beliefs are critical to understand because when you have higher voter apathy and reduced political efficacy, so when people don’t believe they can change the outcome of the election, then this leads to low voter turnout. The best way to reduce voter apathy and political efficacy is by communication and positive experiences with the local council. Personally as someone who is very interested in politics and as an aspiring psychologist, this is a little heartbreaking. Since I spent my life studying and wanting to help people using psychology. I want to improve lives, empower others and I truly want to make the world a better place. Yet it’s unfortunate that we live in a world where people aren’t engaged, they don’t think they can make changes and they don’t feel empowered enough to improve their local communities through political action. This is something I would love to change in the future. How Does Poor Communication Lead to Voter Apathy? The idea of poor communication leading to voter apathy is fascinating and really interesting, because this isn’t about the Council having a poor communication strategy with the general public. Well, at least in part. In fact, it’s about all the social media dialogues, news articles, the negative way how other councillors and political parties talk about the council as unpopular, pointless and very inefficient. All this negativity actually creates a sense of hopelessness, fatigue and like the local council is so pointless that there is no point engaging in it. This isn’t just limited to local news and local issues, this is actually a national problem because both local and national news stories about the inefficacy of local government is overly simplistic and negative. Personally, I think this is one of the reasons why in England, over the next few years we’re going to have a massive local government restructure that is not a good idea. It’s going to scrap a lot of councils, get rid of a good chunk of councillors and it means that local government will be more distant from local communities. Anyway, that is an issue that is way beyond the scope of this podcast episode. Anyway, I think because the general public is so apathetic towards local government despite how important it is to everyone, this is why the local government reorganisation can happen without much protest. All these issues can be traced back to these constant negative stories about the inefficacy, unresponsiveness and the unpopular nature of local councils. Of course, I am not saying that local government should not be held to account. It needs to be. For a democracy to function, elected officials need to be held to account more than ever before. Yet we can be more positive, more hopeful and more mindful of our communications about the council. In addition, when we compare the limited media attention of local government compared to national government and other international stories, the impact of negative media attention on voter apathy is a lot greater for local government when compared to national government. Finally for this section, another reason why there’s poor communication around local councils and this increases voter apathy, is because of the poor communication between the Cabinet and Councillors themselves. Since it isn’t uncommon for councillors to become informed of a new council policy by their electorate instead of the Cabinet themselves. This is a major problem for a range of reasons. For example, it creates unneeded conflict between the Cabinet and councillors, because councillors are being blindsided by angry voters, and it makes policy implementation more difficult. Another reason why this is problematic is because this can increase tensions between political parties within the council. This leads to different parties decrying the political system, shaming the council and this only increases feelings of voter apathy and political inefficacy. This means nothing changes and this isn’t healthy or good for local democracy. Especially when it comes to our mental health services, the collective mental health of a local community and all the other interests of psychologists. On the whole, poor communication is a reason for low turnout at local elections because the prejudiced dialogue between Councillors, the poor public relations strategy between the council and voters and the communication strategy are critical reasons behind low turnout. This is why it’s important not to berate other councillors, because this doesn’t help anyone, it doesn’t help the public image of the council and it increases voter apathy. This is not a good thing. How Do Poor Experiences with the Local Council Contribute to Low Election Turnout? If you ask anyone what they think about the local council, they will all say something along the lines of the council doesn’t listen, there’s no point asking for anything because nothing happens or the opposite happens and the problems get worse and so on. This is important to take note of because it is these negative experiences with the local council that increase voter apathy and makes people believe that it’s impossible to change the political process and get a good council in power. This is further supported by Facebook Community Groups who reveal a similar opinion towards the council and their experience of interacting with councillors and council-run services. As well as if we draw on policy feedback theory (a political theory that proposes that policies actively influence the social and political environment over time), negative experiences with a local council leads to higher voter apathy, reduced political efficacy and lower voter turnout in local elections. In other words, these negative experiences just continue the same cycle of low turnout, minimal interest in politics and nothing changes. Why Is The Perception of Importance of Local Elections so Important? Another important aspect that explains why local election turnout is so low is because a lot of people don’t see local elections as important. Since whenever it comes to an election, voters do a “cost-benefit” analysis to see whether it is effective to vote and there are a range of internal and external factors that influence their decision. For example, research shows that strength of civic duty, education, income, age, length of residence and how much knowledge you have about the election increases your likelihood to vote. In other words, the older you are, the richer, more educated and the longer you’ve lived in an area, the more likely you are to vote in elections. Those are all internal factors. Also, before we talk about external factors, I want to comment on this from a psychology point of view. Psychologists are already very well placed to think about external and internal factors, because we constantly do this when it comes to supporting our clients in clinical psychology, or thinking about internal or external motivation in children in educational psychology, and even what external and internal organisational factors would help a human resources department thrive. We are already very well trained in thinking about these factors. Therefore, psychologists are in a great position to advise councils about how to improve election turnout, we can advise political parties what factors and challenges might impact the council’s likelihood to support or oppose a mental health policy and so on. Psychologists have the skills, expertise and knowledge to implement a lot of positive change. However, there are external factors that can impact someone’s likelihood to vote in a local election. For example, the logistical ease and accessibility of voting, the difference between the candidates and the seat’s safety. This refers to the extent to which a seat or council ward is considered a secure win for a political party or individual candidate. Personally, I would always like to challenge the idea of secure seats because as UK politics is increasingly showing there is no such thing as a safe seat. Any seat can be taken by another political party regardless of how many thousands or tens of thousands of a majority a candidate had at the last election. These external factors are important because research shows that the more contested a seat is, the more varied and numerous the possible winners are, the more likely someone is to vote. Personally, whilst this shouldn’t reveal my personal politics here, but this is why I am glad the UK is facing the end of a two-party system. It means the next general election might be evidence of a multi-party system where any of the four or five major political parties could win. This means that the two oldest political parties in the UK are going to have to fight, work hard and prove to the UK population why they should be in government if they want to remain in power. On the whole, all these internal and external factors lead voters to do a cost-benefit analysis because people will vote when the benefit of voting outweighs the cost of participating. As well as research shows that whilst all the different factors tend to remain constant between national and local elections, knowledge is the one factor that changes dramatically between each type of election. For instance, you might know what your governing or opposition party stand for nationally, but you might have no idea what they stand for locally and how they would improve your local area. This is important to think about because research shows the less people know about the council, council candidates and how the election works, the less likely they are to vote. As well as the majority of people sadly believe that local elections aren’t as important as national elections. To some extent, I would argue the opposite. Given how local councils impact your everyday life every single day through education, roads, mental health, social housing and other services, they have a much more direct impact on your everyday life. Conclusion: How Do We Improve Voter Turnout I have to admit that this psychology podcast episode has been a lot of fun to explore, because we’ve seen how the actions of councillors, the local authority and other societal-level factors can come together to decrease voter turnout. And it’s important to remember that this is a problem because if people don’t vote then this means that nothing changes, it means innovative mental health solutions cannot be proposed and implemented and it harms a community as a whole. Therefore, this means we have to question how we can improve voter turnout for local elections, and what does this mean for aspiring and qualified psychologists. We can improve voter turn out by improving civic knowledge about the importance of the local council and the over 800 services that they typically provide the local community with. As well as we can improve public image of the local council by investing and improving the interactions and experiences that individuals have with the council. Furthermore, if these problems remain unaddressed then local councils run the risk of implementing unrepresentative policies and initiatives because so few people in the grand scheme of things actually voted for them. As well as these so-called democratic policies are not being held to account by most residents, because most residents are not voting or interested in them. Moreover, we can improve and strengthen local democracy by improving civic knowledge, improving public relations and communication with the Council. We can do this by getting greater media distribution of the Council’s importance, their successes and their dialogue between Councillors. As well as whilst disagreements are flat out critical to a functioning democracy, we need to call out bad, toxic behaviours that only increase voter apathy. Ultimately, as aspiring and qualified psychologists, if we want to see improvements in education, mental health care and our mental health services, then we need to vote ourselves and realise that our vote has the power to change our local community for the better. As well as we need to help local councils and authorities to tackle these factors that led to voter apathy and a perception of political inefficacy. If we tackle these factors then it helps to protect our democracy and mental health services at all levels of society. To wrap up this episode, I want to share that personally (and I have no problem with someone stealing this idea as long as they aren’t in Medway) that I would flat out love to create a short assembly designed for 16, 17 and 18 year old students that explains the importance of local government, how it directly impacts these students, how they can inspire change as well as I want to give them detailed information on how council elections work, and how to register to vote. Since I strongly believe if students understand how easy it is to register to vote then it would increase voter registration as well as if they understood how council elections work, as we’ve seen in this episode, it would increase turnout to. This is even more important considering that in the United Kingdom at the moment, the Representation of the People Bill (2026) is currently going through Parliament and this legalises 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local and national elections. Given how I used to give assemblies, educational workshops and other in-depth talks to a wide range of students for years through my Outreach work, this is something I would love to return to at some point in the future. Anyway, please vote in your local elections. You can make a much stronger impact on your community than you ever thought possible.   I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Applied Psychology: Applying Social Psychology, Business Psychology and More to Real World Problems. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Political Psychology References and Further Reading Frank, M., Stadelmann, D., & Torgler, B. (2023). Higher turnout increases incumbency advantages: Evidence from mayoral elections. Economics & Politics, 35(2), 529-555.Morales, M., & Belmar, F. (2022). Clientelism, turnout and incumbents’ performance in Chilean local government elections. Social Sciences, 11(8), 361. https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/news/2024/results-general-election-4-july-2024 https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/low-turnout-at-local-elections-in-england-why-it-matters-and-how-to-improve-it/ Kostelka, F., Krejcova, E., Sauger, N., & Wuttke, A. (2023). Election frequency and voter turnout. Comparative Political Studies, 56(14), 2231-2268. Maškarinec, P. (2024). Geography of voter turnout in Slovak local elections (1994–2018): The effects of size and contagion on local electoral participation. Transactions in GIS, 28(7), 2113-2133. Orford, S., Rallings, C., Thrasher, M., & Borisyuk, G. (2008). Investigating differences in electoral turnout: the influence of ward-level context on participation in local and parliamentary elections in Britain. Environment and Planning A, 40(5), 1250-1268. Rallings, C., & Thrasher, M. (2007). The turnout ‘gap’and the costs of voting–a comparison of participation at the 2001 general and 2002 local elections in England. Public Choice, 131(3), 333-344. Wu, L., Rogers, B., & Wang, G. (2023). Explaining voting participation gaps in local government elections in rural China. Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 8(1), 307-330. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

To celebrate the release of my brand-new book, How Does Ageing Affect Us , I want to share with you some fascinating facts about the psychology of ageing in this insightful clinical and cognitive psychology podcast episode. By the end of this episode, you’ll understand what is the neuropsychology of ageing, does bilingualism protect against dementia, what are superagers and so much more. If you enjoy learning about ageing, mental health in older age and how the brain changes as we age then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by How Does Ageing Affect Us? A Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology Guide to the Ageing Process, The Ageing Brain and More.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Extracts from How Does Ageing Affect Us? (COPYRIGHT 2026 CONNOR WHITELEY) Introduction To The Neuropsychology Of Ageing Personally, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I’ve always been rather interested in how the ageing process impacts us. Also, a few years ago, my Great-Uncle died from dementia and even though other family members looked after him a lot more than me because I was too young at the time. I did get to hear and occasionally see how the dementia was impacting his cognitive abilities and his behaviour. In addition, in the United Kingdom to become a qualified clinical psychologist, let alone get onto the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology (DClinPsych), you need to have clinical experience working with older adults. Hence, why I’ve always been interested in the neuropsychology of ageing because I knew one day I would have to focus on it as part of my clinical psychology journey. And I wanted to learn more about dementia as the condition had a massive impact on my family. As a result, to kick this book off, before we can start exploring how ageing impacts our memory, our brain amongst lots of other areas. We need to understand what actually the neuropsychology of ageing is and what topics we’re going to be investigating. Therefore, in this book, we mainly want to answer the following questions because by answering these questions, we’ll be able to get a deep understanding of how ageing impacts us from a healthy ageing perspective and a pathological ageing perspective: ·      How does the brain change as we naturally age? ·      How does this affect cognition? ·      How are our brain and cognition further affected in pathological conditions of ageing? ·      What are the clinical considerations when working with older adults? ·      Can we prevent cognitive decline and the incidence of pathological ageing conditions? Furthermore, the ageing process is important to study because there are a wide range of economic and social implications of ageing societies. For example, around 40% of government spending is spent on health care and pensions and when we consider the stark health outcomes and needs of an ageing population, this works out as a lot of money. As well as the proportion of the population that is of an advanced age is increasing decade upon decade. In addition, with people living longer, there is an associated increase in the frequency of dementia cases and cognitive decline. For example, in 2000, around 50% of people aged 85 years old and older had Alzheimer’s Disease with the greatest risk factor of Alzheimer’s Disease being age itself. As a result, according to Harper (2014), if you want to become an applied psychologist in the future, like a clinical or neuropsychologist then you need to be aware of age-related cognitive changes. Whereas if you want to become a more research-focused psychologist, like an academic, then you still need to be aware of ageing because researchers need to provide empirical evidence both to understand age-related cognitive change, and to inform us, clinical psychologists. Since without researchers, we wouldn’t know the cognitive baselines that differentiate “normal” or “healthy” cognitive changes from “pathological” age-related changes. It is by combining the work of researchers and clinical psychologists and other professionals that we can reduce the risk of pathological ageing. Is Ageing All About Decline? One aspect of ageing I do want to stress in this introduction to the book is that I’m not going to downplay and hate on ageing. That is not the point of the book, and I don’t want you to think that ageing is all bad and that ageing is a death sentence or a cliff edge that all of us are marching towards. There are a lot of beautiful things about ageing. For example, in older age, people are more prosocial, they’re wiser and they have more life experiences because they have more free time. Such as when my Grandma was still alive, her and my Grandad would go on holidays, cruises and exploring a good few times a year. As well as they had the time to do their different social groups and Church activities. Also, I’m constantly hearing from older adults how they don’t know how they ever had time to work because they’re so busy enjoying their life after retirement. There are good things about ageing, and older adults have increased vocabulary as well. Is Ageing A Disease? Finally for this chapter, I want to mention that there is a weird argument going on in the literature and wider world about whether ageing is a disease. Personally, I do not believe ageing is a disease because that’s a very negative and hopeless way of looking at it, because ageing is a perfectly natural thing that we cannot escape. However, there are people and organizations that argue ageing is a disease. For example, the ICD-11 (Jan 1, 2022) defines “ageing-related” disease as “caused by pathological processes which persistently lead to the loss of organism's adaptation and progress in older ages”. Which is weird because older adults experience a hardening of the arteries which is problematic, but it’s natural. As well as older adults experience wrinkles. Are both wrinkles and a hardening of the arteries a disease? I’m not sure. Here are some questions for you at the end of this chapter: ·      What are your attitudes towards ageing? Positive or negative? ·      How are you feeling about getting older? Nervous? Excited? Sad? ·      Do you think ageing is a disease?   DOES BILINGUALISM PROTECT AGAINST DEMENTIA AND ARE SUPERAGERS REAL? For the final chapter in this introductory section, I wanted to show how pop-psychology isn’t always correct or clean-cut. That’s why in this chapter, I’m going to show you two studies about bilingualism and superagers, because in the mainstream media, there are a lot of articles saying how learning another language is going to stop you ever developing dementia. A lot of people believe those pop articles and this is where my personal rules about if an idea from psychology has entered the mainstream media and everyone from news channels to celebrities to social media influencers are promoting it. Then chances are it is not the best finding ever. This chapter might support my personal rule. Let’s find out. Does Bilingualism Protect Against Dementia? Anderson et al. (2020) conducted a meta-analysis to see if bilingualism does protect someone against developing dementia. The background to this study was that as you can imagine, ageing is associated with a loss of cognitive function and we’ll look more at this loss in later chapters. As well as this loss of cognitive function is likely because in the brain, there’s a decrease in white matter, grey matter and neural connectivity as we age. In addition, age is the strongest risk factor for dementia with dementia affecting more than 50 million people worldwide and this number is doubling every 20 years. Therefore, you can see why it’s important to identify protective factors that can delay or prevent the onset of dementia.  Moreover, in past studies, there has been some evidence that bilingualism can contribute to cognitive reserve (more on that in the next section) and neuroplasticity (how the brain changes in response to environmental demands) in the brain. This allows people to resist the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. Although, within the literature, this “evidence” is controversial and instead of bilingualism eliminating the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease, it might instead only delay the onset. Still, delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease is a lot better than not having an impact at all. Whereas another meta-analysis by Mukadam et al. (2017) found that bilingualism wasn’t a protective factor against Alzheimer’s Disease. And the analysis suggested that other studies that had found a significant effect for bilingualism being a protective factor had failed to control for education or cultural differences. Nonetheless, this previous meta-analysis had only considered the incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease and not the age-at-onset. In other words, this meta-analysis was only considering if bilingualism stopped Alzheimer’s Disease developing in the first place, not if it delayed the development of the condition, and this analysis only considered prospective studies too. That’s where Anderson et al. (2020) comes in because they wanted to see did bilingualism protective against incidence rates and/or age of onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms? As well as does the evidence differ when only considering prospective studies? To test these research questions, Anderson et al. (2020) conducted a meta-analysis of studies into the bilingualism, age-at-onset and incidence rates of Alzheimer’s Disease with a total of 21 studies being included in the final analysis. The results showed that bilingual people might show a greater cognitive reserve than people who could only speak one language, so their brain was better able to adapt to the decline of certain brain areas. For example, bilingual people showed alternate functional circuits compared to other people, so there was a shift in their brains from frontal areas to more posterior and subcortical neural circuits. In other words, the brains of bilingual people were able to use other brain areas to compensate for the deterioration of neurons in the frontal parts of the brain. Overall, this is believed to happen because learning another language might help to strengthen synaptic density and coupling. This increases cognitive reserve and protects people against the effects of pathological ageing, but it doesn’t stop the ageing process entirely. This will make more sense in the next section of the book where we focus more on brain ageing and the different theories academics have put forward to explain changes in our cognitive abilities as we age. What Are Superagers? The last paper I want to show you in this introductory section involves the idea of superagers from Harrison et al. (2012) with their paper on “Superior Memory and Higher Cortical Volumes in Unusually Successful Cognitive Ageing”. Now what’s interesting about this paper is that it was published before the replication crisis in the mid-2010s, but so modern research standards, this is a bad paper. I’ll explain why in a moment, yet it does have some interesting findings that help us to understand why as some people age they maintain their cognitive abilities whereas other people do not. We’ll learn more about “successful ageing” in the last section of the book, but until then please enjoy Harrison et al. (2012). The background to this study is that Superagers are people who despite their advanced age retain superior cognitive performance compared to other people of the same age. As well as this is important to researchers because these Superagers can be helpful to us in identifying protective factors against cognitive impairment. Also, it’s important to understand how the brains of Superagers might be different to the brains of non-Superagers. On the whole, the topic of Superagers can be very useful to society as a whole because if we “unlock” the protective factors that stop Superagers from experiencing cognitive decline and pathological ageing. Then we can create interventions and lifestyle tips that will do the same for others so the rates of dementia and other age-related diseases will hopefully decrease. And the burden on health and social care can decrease too. This led Harrison et al. (2012) to want to research do Superagers even exist and how do their brains differ from non-superagers. As a result, to test their research questions, the researchers got 12 Superagers who were aged over 80 years old and they were defined as people who’s episodic memory performance was comparable to individuals aged between 50 and 65 years old. There was an elderly control group made up of 10 people aged over 80 years old, and there was a middle-aged control group made up of 14 people. To test their episodic memory, the Delayed Verbal recall score from the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), Boston Naming Task, Trail Making Test Part B and Category Fluency Test. To test their brain structure, each participant went through an Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan (MRI) and three-dimensional MP-RAGE sequences were used to map the structure of the brain with their cortical thickness calculated by measuring the distance between representations of grey and white matter and the CSF. The results showed that the Superagers had an anatomic structure that deviated from “normal” agers and was similar to the younger cohort so Superagers might have an unusually prominent anterior cingulate cortex. Nonetheless, there were a lot of issues with Harrison et al. (2012) because there was only one measure of brain structure and no inclusion of brain function, and in all honesty, modern researchers aren’t sure if the study even used the right statistical analyses when comparing grey-matter volume across the three groups. The conclusions might be completely wrong or the differences might not be as stark as previously believed. Personally, my massive issue with the study was the sample size. There were around ten people in each group and this study is meant to be making generalisations and conclusions about the brains of humans as a species. The entire point of this study was to help identify differences in the brains of Superagers and non-superagers. There are over 7 billion people on the planet and this study only used ten people per group. How are ten people per group representative of the entire species? It is not, so this sample size is extremely small and in my very harsh opinion, almost pointless. Finally, this study is cross-sectional rather than longitudinal analysis, which is the most common issue with the ageing literature. This is a problem because a cross-sectional design doesn’t allow us to monitor a person as they age so we cannot see the influences and other factors that impact their cognitive performance as they age. On the whole, I would really like to think that this type of research paper would not be published today. Here are some questions to get you thinking at the end of this chapter: ·      Are you surprised bilingualism might not protect against dementia? ·      What do you think about Harrison et al. (2012)? ·      What factors do you think can protect us against the onset of dementia? Now that you’ve been introduced to the fascinating topic of the neuropsychology of ageing, let’s start exploring how the brain changes as we age and how this impacts our cognitive abilities. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology  podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET How Does Ageing Affect Us? A Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology Guide to the Ageing Process, The Ageing Brain and More.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Whiteley, C. (2026) How Does Ageing Affect Us? CGD Publishing. England. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

We often hear that social isolation and social withdrawal hurts our mental health and increases our risk of depression, but why? Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn why does social isolation harm mental health by exploring the psychological and biological changes that happen during social isolation, what causes it and most importantly, how we can help people experiencing social isolation. Ultimately, social isolation harms our mental health and increases depression amongst other mental health conditions, but why? That’s the entire aim of the episode. If you enjoy learning about mental health, clinical psychology and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by How Does Ageing Effect Us? A Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology Guide to Ageing . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Social Isolation? Social isolation is when we’re cut off from contact with other people. We can cut off physically from others, but we can also be emotionally disconnected or cut off from other people during social interactions. This is a problem because as a species, humans are very social creatures and if any of us spend too much time alone then our next social interaction can feel exhausting or awkward, because we’re out of practice. Building upon this, people can become intentionally socially isolated or this can be done unintentionally, but the results are the same. Prolonged periods of social isolation, a period when we feel cut off from others, still harms our mental and physical health. As a result of, with our social brains being hardwired for social interactions, when we don’t get enough social connection, this negatively impacts our mental health as well as wellbeing. For example, social isolation leads to loneliness and increased feelings of anxiety, depression and our brains can change how they process emotions. Yet social isolation doesn’t only impact our mental health, it can impact our physical health too. For example, social isolation can cause increased risk in developing high blood pressure, weakened immunity, heart disease amongst other negative health outcomes. Personally, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, and as even an aspiring educational psychologist I look at this, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about social isolation, like many others have. Back in my Neuropsychology of Ageing module during my MSc, we had an entire lecture on the negative impact of loneliness and how social cognition decreases during older adulthood. As well as there is a lot of truth in the old saying that loneliness is just as deadly as smoking or loneliness is like smoking a hundred cigarettes a day. Loneliness and social isolation is that  harmful to our mental health. Furthermore, the reason why How Does Ageing Affect Us is the sponsor of today’s episode is because it deep dives into how and why loneliness occurs in older age. As well as how in clinical psychology, we need to adapt our therapeutic models to accommodate the unique challenges of older age to reduce loneliness, support the client and improve their mental health. For example, we need to factor in how the life transition, such as retiring, their children being grown and other changes that the client is going through will impact them. This is important for us to think about when talking about loneliness and social isolation because if you’re retiring and that was where you got most of your social interaction from, then retiring marks a massive loss of social connection. This might make you feel like they’re physically and emotionally cut off from others. Physically because you are no longer in the same place as your friends and other people. Emotionally because you might be struggling to adjust to retirement, this decreases your mental health and this ability to process emotions. Especially, because the social cognitive skills that social interactions require decrease anyway in older age. Just a thought. Of course I understand that social isolation is not exclusive to older adults, because when I was a young undiagnosed autistic kid, I always felt extremely alone in the world. This had an awful impact on my mental health. This is a reason why I mentioned that I think about social isolation as an aspiring educational psychologist. If a child is socially isolated in their life then this will negatively impact their ability to learn and thrive in education. Therefore, it can be useful to think about ways to reduce social isolation in a child or maybe a group of students and make the school system more inclusive for everyone to reduce the harmful effects of isolation on their mental health and education. However, my point is that social isolation has a massive impact on our mental health whatever your age and this is important for aspiring psychologists to recognise, be aware of and consider how this will inform their clinical work. Furthermore, social isolation causes people to experience a higher amount of work-related stress, have lower life satisfaction and they’re more likely to use drugs and alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism. This builds upon larger explanations of how social isolation harms our mental health because poor social support can make it more challenging to manage life’s stressors, deal with negative life events and any stress that they encounter. In my experience, this is one of the reasons why it is critical for mental health professionals to have a good, supportive team around them. Not only at work but at home too. Since as much as mental health professionals need an ability to compartmentalise and keep the stressors of work at work and never bring it home. There will be cases that cut a little too close to home and you might bring some of that case home. For example, when I used to be a teaching assistant and something happened at school, I would rarely bring those concerns home because they would impact me profoundly. This is why it was useful for me to be socially connected with the amazing team in my former classroom at work, so we could support each other. As well as I was socially connected to my family so they could understand why I needed to focus on self-care and social connectedness that particular night. This is just one example of how social connection can help us improve our mental health, and how social isolation can harm us. A final introductory note on this topic, whilst I will try not to use the terms of social isolation and loneliness interchangeably because they are slightly different, it’s important to note the differences. Therefore, social isolation refers to being separate from others as well as lacking social contact. Whereas loneliness is a more subjective experience because a person can feel lonely and socially isolated from others even though they might be regularly around and have contact with others. Both of these terms can have immensely negative impacts on someone’s mental and physical health. In the rest of the podcast episode, we’ll learn why these negative health outcomes happen amongst other topics. Why Does Social Isolation Affect Mental Health? The main reason why social isolation impacts our mental health is because social isolation causes changes in our mood, how our brain functions, our thought patterns and it changes our behaviour. All these behavioural, psychological and biological changes have a major impact on our mental health, and this is even more true if the social isolation lasts for a long time. As well as social isolation can change a person’s health habits so this can further decrease their physical and mental health. For instance, people who experience social isolation tend to have sleep problems, exercise less as well as consume more dietary fat. This can have a massive negative impact on a person’s mental and physical health because they aren’t eating the right food to feel nutritious and for their cognitive and physical processes to be working at their best. Their lack of sleep will impact their mental health and this will further harm their mental health. I talk about it in another podcast episode, called How Does A Consistent Sleep Schedule Improve Our Mental Health . During the worse of my Post-traumatic Stress Disorder caused by my rape in 2024, the more tired I was and the worst my sleep was, the worse my mental health was. It wasn’t until I managed to sort out my sleep that I was able to improve my mental health, decrease my depressive symptoms and start living again. As well as this connects to social isolation because honestly, during my PTSD, I felt so alone, both physically and emotionally from others. I didn’t believe that anyone could understand what I was experiencing, my pain and my suffering so I struggled to relate to others, and because I couldn’t go outside, meet up with friends and more, I felt physically isolated too. This was a major reason behind my negative mental health as I explain in my books, I Am A Survivor, Not A Victim   and Healing As A Survivor . Another example is the social isolation might cause an increase in depressive symptoms and this could lead to laden paralysis, so it might make the person with depressive symptoms feel like it’s impossible to get out of bed. This has a knock-on effect for their poor eating, poor personal hygiene as well as this makes them feel even worse about themselves so it further exacerbates the negative mental health symptoms. What Are the Signs of Social Isolation? Whenever we meet a client as an aspiring clinical psychologist, they might not realise they’re experiencing social isolation, so it’s important that we’re aware of the signs of social isolation. This will allow us to gently and compassionately help the client to realise they might be experiencing social isolation, the causes and what they could do about it. Therefore, some signs of social isolation include withdrawing from social activities or events that the client used to participate in, the client has no one to talk or turn to when they need advice or help, they feel sad, rejected or lethargic. Personally, during my PTSD, I experienced a lot of these symptoms, because I withdrew from a lot of activities that I used to enjoy. I stopped going to a lot of social groups because being outside would cause me to have panic attacks. I stopped wanting to see my family as much because my mind would twist it and everyone was a possible danger to me and I was scared of everything and every action and decision felt impossible to make. Everything just took so much energy, concentration and intent that it was so tiring. Staying alone and isolated was just the result whether it was intentional or not. My personal example above does highlight another sign of social isolation. A hypersensitivity to environmental stimuli. Another set of signs of social isolation include spending a long amount of time alone each day with little to no contact with other people, rarely communicating with others by phone, video call or text as well as lacking close, intimate connections with others. Here, I want to mention that the main difference between loneliness and solitude is choice and how happy you are to spend time alone. For example, there are some days when I am perfectly happy to not have much social contact with the outside world or even by text or phone calls, because I want to spend some time alone whilst I work or relax. This is normal. I know some people when they go on holiday, they simply contact their immediate family to say that they’ve got there and then that’s it for the next week. They simply want to relax on their holiday. You could argue that for those two weeks, the people on holiday have no immediate connections, they don’t communicate with others and they spend a lot of time alone with no real social contact each day. Yet that’s by choice, and in this fictional situation, they are not lonely. They are simply enjoying some solitude. As a result, whilst we’ll apply this more directly to clinical psychology in another section, I want to take a moment to reflect on this information from an educational psychology viewpoint. If an educational psychologist is working in a school because of concerns about a child disengaging with their education because they’re dropping out of social activities, they’re alone throughout the school day and they seem to have no real connections at school. My first thought after gathering more information from the teachers, support staff and management would be to understand if this is actually social isolation first at all. If it is a social isolation difficulty so the child doesn’t have social contact in or outside of school then this would require me to do other work. I would probably have to involve the parents a lot more, but if it was only social isolation in school. For starters, I wouldn’t use the term social isolation if the child has friends and regular social contact outside of school, but I would be curious to see how we could make school a more inclusive and friendly place for the student so they could forge some social relationships. Also, the student had once participated in a bunch of social activities and events at school and then they stopped, I would want to find out why and how we could possibly help or “fix” the situation. On the whole, I gave you that example to help you realise that if you know a little bit about social isolation or another psychological topic, you can apply it to your chosen area of psychology and start thinking about applying psychology in the real world to improve lives. What Causes Social Isolation? When we experience social isolation or when we’re supporting a client who is socially isolated from others, we have to look at the causes. Sometimes cases of social isolation will not have a clear cause or answer, but most of the time, it is clear why someone is socially isolated. For example, as I’ve mentioned before during the worst of my mental health after my rape, I was socially isolated because of my trauma responses and reactions, as well as social anxiety. Therefore, social anxiety can cause social isolation because social anxiety leads a person to experience intense fear regarding social situations. This means as a safety behaviour they will avoid social situations and in turn, this dramatically decreases their ability to form and maintain their social connections. On the other hand, trauma can cause social isolation because us, trauma survivors, tend to isolate ourselves to cope with the sheer trauma of what happened to us. As well as myself and the majority of other trauma survivors tend to be scared or even terrified of being hurt by others again, and the Post-Traumatic Stress we experience can cause us to avoid social activities that trigger memories of the traumatic event. For instance, for a long time after my rape, I didn’t like the idea of going outside in case I saw a white fat man because I was raped by a white fat man. Just seeing fat men would cause me to experience trauma reactions, panic attacks and I would get really distressed. Therefore, if I knew there would be fat men at a given social event, I would avoid it. Now that I’m writing it, I understand that this fear wasn’t plausible or realistic in the slightest but through the lens of trauma and my rape, it makes perfect sense and it’s understandable. Another cause of social isolation is depression, because as we’ve spoken about before at length on the podcast, people with depression typically experience low mood, fatigue, hopelessness, loss of interest and pleasure and loss of motivation. This makes it next to impossible to get out of the house, contact others, go out to social events and so on. Over time this all leads to social isolation and this reinforces the negative mental health outcome through a vicious cycle. Penultimately, physical illness can cause social isolation because if someone has a chronic health condition that impacts their mobility then this can make social activities very difficult, painful and extremely exhausting. As well as the associated stigma and shame that often accompanies chronic illness can make people with the conditions want to avoid social situations even more. If you want to learn more about chronic illness and how it impacts mental health, please check out my podcast episode, What is Chronic Illness for Psychologists? Finally, stress can cause social isolation because when a person goes through a major life stressor, like a divorce or death of a loved one, they tend to withdraw from the world and social activities. As well as life situations like the loss of a job, retirement, financial problems and even positive stressors like getting married, going to university or having a child, can have massive impacts on a person’s sociability. This can lead to social isolation by mistake because a person just doesn’t have the time, energy or ability to maintain or form social relationships during these life events. Clinical Psychology Conclusion: How To Cope with Social Isolation As a result of me explaining and talking about the benefits of talking to a mental health professional as well as me explaining how aspiring and qualified psychologists can improve lives, break the cycle of social isolation and help people to resolve the emotional and mental health difficulties that cause social isolation a lot on the podcast previously, I am just going to briefly summarise or comment on it. One podcast episode you might want to check out to further explain how psychologists can work with people experiencing social isolation to improve their mental health is What is Behavioural Activation . Another way to cope with social isolation is to look for ways to become more social, and this is one of the main principles of social prescribing as explained in my episode, What is Social Prescribing . Since if you check out your local community for events, social or volunteering opportunities then these can be great ways to help you connect and meet new people. As well as even if you only take one small step each day to reconnect or maintain a social connection then that’s’ better than nothing, and over time, these small steps really add up. Penultimately, as I explain in my episode, What is Animal-Assisted Therapy, you could consider getting a pet because getting a pet can help to combat feelings of isolation as well as having an animal provides a lot of mental health benefits. For instance, improving your mood, lowering your stress and if you get a dog, then you might meet new people when you take it out for a walk. Lastly, practising self-care can help you to cope with social isolation because if you create a routine that ensures you’re getting enough rest, eating the right food and doing a balance of social, pleasurable and necessary activities, as explained in behavioural activation. Then this can improve your mental health dramatically. On the whole, coming out of social isolation does take time. It can take the support of a trained mental health professional, your friends, family and it can take a lot of effort from you to change. This is why it’s important to be kind to yourself, have self-compassion and it’s okay that you struggle to make and maintain friendships as an adult. Lots of people have the same difficulties as you, but please, don’t be scared to reach out for support, go to new events and be kind to yourself. As a final tip, I just wanted to briefly recap what social isolation is and why does social isolation harm our mental health. Therefore, social isolation is when we’re cut off from contact with other people. We can cut off physically from others, but we can also be emotionally disconnected or cut off from other people during social interactions. Also, social isolation harms our mental health because social isolation causes changes in our mood, how our brain functions, our thought patterns and it changes our behaviour. All these behavioural, psychological and biological changes have a major impact on our mental health, and this is even more true if the social isolation lasts for a long time.   I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET How Does Ageing Effect Us? A Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology Guide to Ageing . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Eres, R., Lim, M. H., & Bates, G. (2023). Loneliness and social anxiety in young adults: The moderating and mediating roles of emotion dysregulation, depression and social isolation risk. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 96, 793–810. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12469 Gorenko, J. A., Moran, C., Flynn, M., Dobson, K., & Konnert, C. (2021). Social Isolation and Psychological Distress Among Older Adults Related to COVID-19: A Narrative Review of Remotely-Delivered Interventions and Recommendations. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 40(1), 3-13. Guarnera, J., Yuen, E., & Macpherson, H. (2023). The impact of loneliness and social isolation on cognitive aging: a narrative review. Journal of Alzheimer's disease reports, 7(1), 699-714. Hämmig O (2019) Correction: Health risks associated with social isolation in general and in young, middle and old age. PLOS ONE 14(8): e0222124. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222124 https://www.verywellmind.com/the-impact-of-social-isolation-on-mental-health-7185458 Iovino, P., Vellone, E., Cedrone, N., & Riegel, B. (2023). A middle-range theory of social isolation in chronic illness. International journal of environmental research and public health, 20(6), 4940. Kumar, A., & Salinas, J. (2021). The long-term public health impact of social distancing on brain health: topical review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(14), 7307. Luigi M, Dellazizzo L, Giguère C-É, Goulet M-H and Dumais A (2020) Shedding Light on “the Hole”: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on Adverse Psychological Effects and Mortality Following Solitary Confinement in Correctional Settings. Front. Psychiatry 11:840. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00840 Schrempft, S., Jackowska, M., Hamer, M. et al. Associations between social isolation, loneliness, and objective physical activity in older men and women. BMC Public Health 19, 74 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6424-y Shen, C., Rolls, E. T., Cheng, W., Kang, J., Dong, G., Xie, C., ... & Feng, J. (2022). Associations of social isolation and loneliness with later dementia. Neurology, 99(2), e164-e175. Umberson, D., Lin, Z., & Cha, H. (2022). Gender and social isolation across the life course. Journal of health and social behavior, 63(3), 319-335. Vlachos, I. I., Papageorgiou, C., & Margariti, M. (2020). Neurobiological trajectories involving social isolation in PTSD: a systematic review. Brain sciences, 10(3), 173. Wang, F., Gao, Y., Han, Z., Yu, Y., Long, Z., Jiang, X., ... & Zhao, Y. (2023). A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality. Nature human behaviour, 7(8), 1307-1319. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

Ever since I received my Spotify wrap for The Psychology World Podcast in December 2025 and noted that there's a large audience overlap between myself and a motorcycling podcast, I've been interested in learning more about the flow state. Then after watching the curling at the winter Olympics amongst other sports, I kept hearing the sports commentators mentioning the flow state time after time, as well as during the psychology news section of The Psychology World Podcast, I covered the psychology of the autistic flow state. Therefore, as you can see the flow state is important in so many different areas of our life. As a result, by the end of this cognitive psychology podcast episode, you'll understand what is the flow state, how to achieve a flow state and so much more. If you're interested in boosting your productivity, cognitive psychology and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide to Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Flow State? A flow state is a cognitive state where you’re completely immersed in an activity. It can be writing, playing sports, driving or any other activity that you’re doing. As well as a flow state involves creative engagement, intense focus and losing your awareness of self and the time. For example, when I was watching the Winter Olympics and Grant Hardie and Bruce Mouat were playing Curling for Team GB, you could see that Bruce (who’s the Skip or Team Captain) was so intensely focused, his eyes were only on the curling stone and the house and he wasn’t paying attention to anything else that was going on around him. In addition, the flow state was discovered and the term was created by a Hungarian-American psychologist called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1960s when he was studying the creative process. He found that when an artist was in the course of flow, they would persist at their creative task relentlessly, even if they were fatigued or hungry. As well as he found that the artist would lose interest after the project was complete so this highlighted the importance of the process and not the end result. Personally, as a writer, podcaster and all the other creative projects that I do, I understand this point. Since I often joke to myself and my family that after I do a podcast episode and all the different steps that it takes, I rarely remember everything that I mentioned in the episode. This is because myself and a lot of other creators enjoy the creative flow and project, and when it’s done, we move on to the next creative project so we can get into a flow state and get that almost intoxicating sense of enjoyment again. I sort of imagine that it’s similar for Bruce Mouat when he’s curling, because curling can be a rather long game. Therefore, you would have to enjoy the process and this is probably why athletes keep going to different competitions, keep playing over and over and they don’t give up. They want to return to the flow state, immerse themselves in the game and they want that sense of enjoyment that can only come from playing the sport they love. Furthermore, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noted, flow is the joy of doing something for the sake of doing it. He largely based his research on lots of interviews with dancers, chess players, poets and other creatives and he argued that flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter” as he wrote in his book Flow.  As well as in my writing, I certainly understand this point because it is so annoying when something or someone jerks you out of your flow. I can happily be writing along, learning and just enjoy my creative project when someone knocks on my door, phones me or something else and it jerks me out of the flow. Honestly, sometimes I get really angry inside myself and it is just so frustrating because I was happy, enjoying myself and I was in the flow. Then someone just has to interrupt me. I am not impressed when that happens. On the other hand, this isn’t because I’m not a negative person, I’m easy to annoy or anything like that. It is because the flow state brings myself and others a sense of unique joy and we like being in it, and we don’t like that joy being removed from us by being jerked out of the flow state. Furthermore, the reason why the flow state is so enjoyable is because it creates a sense of pride, success and accomplishment so this encourages you to learn more as well as develop your skills. Also, throughout this podcast episode, I’ll be using the term “joy” to describe the feeling of being in a flow state, and whilst this isn’t correct, some argue that is. Since the feeling of joy isn’t forefront during the task since the person is enjoying the feeling of being immersed in the task and the experience. Personally, when I was writing the paragraph above, I was really interested in the idea of applying this to education. Since as an aspiring educational psychologist, I’m training myself to apply psychological theories, concepts and research to help learning and education more often. My mind goes to if we allow students to enter a flow state and if we set up our classrooms or learning experiences to encourage a flow state to occur, then we can help students associate learning with pride, success and accomplishment. This will make the student feel good and it will encourage them to keep on learning as well as developing their skills. Later in the episode, we’ll explore this in a little more depth. Moreover, because being in a flow state is a dynamic cognitive state, you always have to adjust the skill level, the complexity and the challenge of the activity. Since as you practice any given skill, you develop a level of mastery and this will change how the feeling of the flow state is. As a result of if your skill level has exceeded the activity then boredom sets in and this disrupts the state of flow. This is likely to be a reason why professional sportspeople want to progress up the leagues, take on harder, more challenging opponents and continue to improve. For the last two Winter Olympics Bruce Mouat and his team have been silver medallists so they’re second in the world. They’re really good, amazing and they are always in such a flow state. Yet I cannot imagine Team GB being able to reach a flow state in a curling match in a junior league. It wouldn’t be challenging enough and their skill level would be vastly superior to the challenge of the game in that lower league. How Do You Achieve A Flow State? According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, anyone can find a flow state simply by thinking of activities that would apply to the list of conditions that I’m going to give you in a moment. Since achieving a flow state isn’t about doing something creative because you can enter a flow state during work or chopping wood, but flow is about a balance between the tedium of boredom as well as the tension of anxiety. Ultimately, if you want to achieve a flow state then you become immersed and enjoy the experience of doing the activity itself. As well as the following factors help you achieve a flow state: ·       Find the process of the activity enjoyable instead of the end result ·       Don’t agonise over failure ·       Have a sense of timelessness or distorted time ·       Immediately seek the benefits of your actions ·       The activity is a balance between your skills and the challenge of the activity ·       Lose your awareness and distractions Building upon these factors, I want to focus on the second point, don’t agonise over failures , because my immediate reaction was I have no idea how Bruce Mouat could possibly enter a flow state during the gold medal match at the Winter Olympics. Yet then I remembered a lecture during the final year of my psychology undergraduate degree on sports psychology that was memorable for a host of reasons, but that’s beyond the scope of this episode. The sports psychologist told us about how professional athletes do a lot of mental preparation, training and they focus a lot on the experience of the games itself. For example, once the sports psychologist had the players shoot penalties in front of the immense crowds at the end of the match so the players could experience the pressure of shooting penalties with a massive audience. This would allow the players to get used to it in a real game and it would be less distracting for them. My point is that the reason why Bruce Mouat and other professional athletes can enter a flow state during such a high stakes game is probably because they’re used to this, they don’t worry about the stakes and they just focus on playing the game that they love. As well as they use whatever mental preparation tricks their coach or other professionals have taught them. On a final side note for this section, you can try too hard to search for a flow state, because if you push yourself to enter flow then you can lose the tension and skill level, so this stops your immersion and your flow state. How Does Your Comfort Zone Impact Flow? Your comfort zone can impact your flow because for you to be able to reach a flow state, the activity needs to push you outside of your comfort zone. This is one of the reasons why flow can be applied to sports, the workplace and educational settings. For instance, in the workplace, a project can leave an employee feeling that they’re in “the zone” of flow as well as in education, students can see a challenging assignment that has led to learning. Later in this episode, you’ll learn more about how skill and challenge can lead or cannot lead to the flow state in certain situations. Can The Flow State Impact Anxiety? Interestingly, flow can be used as a tool for better emotional regulation because if a person enters a flow state then the uncertainties that person has just melts away. This helps the person to reduce these feelings of anxiety because they’re so immersed in their activity that they don’t think about their anxieties or doubts. As well as being in a flow state during an activity that they enjoy helps a person to have a sense of autonomy over their time, mind and body. Personally, this is another really useful tool for educational psychologists because when I covered flow on a news section of The Psychology World Podcast, I focused on autistic flow states. This is very helpful for self-regulation for autistic people because it allows them to process their emotions, calm their anxieties and so on. This is another benefit of allowing students to enter a flow state and not interrupting them because it allows them to self-regulate, which is an important life skill. How Could Flow be Applied to Daily Life? You can apply flow to your daily life by doing daily activities and dip into the flow state. Since everyone is different, it is hard to say what activities will make you go into flow and what activities will not. For example, reading and writing help me go into a flow state, but cooking and gardening doesn’t. You might be the complete opposite. Therefore, a lot of us do have flow experiences throughout the day depending on our activities and daily tasks. Although, gaming and watching TV prevent us from entering a flow state because this doesn’t involve the loss of awareness of time and self, and our enjoyment typically comes from the TV or game itself, not the process or task of watching TV or gaming. How is Mindfulness and the Flow State Similar? It’s important to note that whilst both the flow state as well as mindfulness require the mind to be clear and free from distractions, they are different. For example, the flow state requires the mind to be lost in the process of doing something so the mind isn’t focused on anything in particular. Whereas in mindfulness, the attention is kept on what you’re doing, so a mindfulness meditation requires you to focus on your breathing. What is an Autotelic Experience? An autotelic experience is when an individual isn’t invested in glory, status, materialism or fame and instead, the person is content and comfortable with the flow of their life. For example, the person is content with their personal hobbies, their family and their work life. As well as the autotelic person doesn’t look for external praise or benefits to reaching a flow state. Personally, I think this is a really interesting idea because at first, we really wouldn’t assume that people in a flow state would be autotelic in the slightest. This is because normally when we think about the flow state, we think about professional athletes, writers, poets and other creatives who want to become famous, renowned and they want the glory of winning or producing something great. Yet if I really think about it, and a lot of other writers have said the same over the years, we write because we enjoy it. We write because we like the feeling, the flow state and even if we never ever made any money off it, we would keep writing because we love it. I imagine it’s the same for professional athletes, so I think it is very easy to say that entering a flow state doesn’t have to be tied to glory, materialism, fame or anything. You really can just be in a flow state because you enjoy the activity so much. How Is Flow Related to Peak Performance? A flow state can be seen as a precursor to peak performance because a lot of professional athletes, like Bruce Mouat and Grant Hardie, dive into a flow state when they’re performing. This is because their skill level matches the challenge of the curling match so as the athletes improve their skill and their mastery improves, this allows them to reach their peak performance in their chosen sport. Cognitive Psychology Conclusion On the whole, this has been a really fun episode to investigate, put together and produce because whether you’re doing a creative task, riding a motorbike or you’re doing something else that you enjoy, you can potentially reach a flow state. When that happens, you honestly feel great, joyous and it is a wonderfully unique feeling that is hard to get any other way. As a reminder, a flow state is a cognitive state where you’re completely immersed in an activity. It can be writing, playing sports, driving or any other activity that you’re doing. As well as a flow state involves creative engagement, intense focus and losing your awareness of self and the time. Additionally, these are the following factors that help you achieve a flow state: ·       Find the process of the activity enjoyable instead of the end result ·       Don’t agonise over failure ·       Have a sense of timelessness or distorted time ·       Immediately seek the benefits of your actions ·       The activity is a balance between your skills and the challenge of the activity ·       Lose your awareness and distractions Finally, I want to wrap up this psychology podcast episode by giving you some questions to think about to help you achieve a flow state: ·       What activities do I enjoy? ·       How could I minimize distractions whilst doing this activity? ·       How could I reduce my concerns about failure? ·       How could I strike a balance between my skills and the challenge of the activity?   I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Cognitive Psychology: A Guide to Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Cognitive Psychology References and Further Reading Beard, K. S. (2015). Theoretically speaking: An interview with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow theory development and its usefulness in addressing contemporary challenges in education. Educational Psychology Review, 27(2), 353-364. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Flow and education. In Applications of flow in human development and education: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 129-151). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Applications of flow in human development and education (pp. 153-172). Dordrecht: Springer. Csikszentmihalyi, M., Abuhamdeh, S., & Nakamura, J. (2014). Flow. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 227-238). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Groys, B. (2018). In the flow. Verso Books. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/flow Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). The concept of flow. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 239-263). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.