Resources

Why do I need to know about whether a young person is using drugs or alcohol? Many young people smoke, drink alcohol and may try drugs. It is important you are aware of this and do not ignore it as a time when they are just having fun or experimenting.  It doesn’t take much for the young people

What is bipolar disorder? It used to be called ‘manic depressive illness’. As this phrase suggests, you have severe mood swings.These usually last several weeks or months and are far beyond the emotional ups and downs that most of us experience. They can be:1 Low or ‘depressive’ You feel intensely low, depressed and even despairing. High or

What is CBT? It is a way of talking about: how you think about yourself, the world and other people how what you do affects your thoughts and feelings. CBT can help you to change how you think (‘Cognitive’) and what you do (‘Behaviour’). These changes can help you to feel better. Unlike some of the other

What’s the difference between feeling miserable and being depressed? Everyone has times in their lives when they feel fed up or miserable. It is usually for a particular reason, does not interfere too much with daily life and does not usually last longer than a week or two. However, if these feelings go on for

We hope that this information will be helpful if: you are constantly thinking with your weight and body image you feel that your eating or dieting may be a problem you find yourself obsessively using other ways to lose weight, such as over-exercising or making yourself sick you think you might have anorexia or bulimia other

Many of us become more forgetful as we get older. It’s easy to worry that this might be an early sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. But there are many other reasons for this – only some of us will develop the more serious problems of dementia. This webpage looks at some of the causes

“He’s an obsessive football fan.”“She’s obsessive about shoes.”“He’s a compulsive liar.” We use these phrases to describe people who think about something a lot or do something repeatedly, even when others can’t see any reason for it. It isn’t usually a problem and, in some lines of work, can even be helpful. However, some people

What is personality disorder? For some of us, this doesn’t happen. For whatever reason, parts of your personality can develop in ways that make it difficult for you to live with yourself and/or with other people. You don’t seem to be able to learn from the things that happen to you. You find that you can’t

What is schizophrenia? ‘Schizophrenia’ is a word that makes many people uneasy. The media regularly uses it – inaccurately and unfairly – to describe violence and disturbance. It is one of several disorders called ‘psychoses’ – and this word is also used to describe violence and disturbance. So, it’s hardly surprising that many people with this