Recent studies in America have just “discovered” what all of us who have been active in psycho-neuro-immunology over the years have always known… if we suppress our immune system by sustaining high stress related steroid levels, we suppress our immune system. Given that Anxiety and Depression see the pumping of the stress and other hormones in counter-productive ways, its logical that untreated anxiety and depression lower immune resilience and so make the flu more lethal.  Let’s keep thinking about these things and deal with all untreated mental health issues as the threat to life they actually are.

Psychiatric Times of 13 May reported some interesting stats on the numbers of private practise psychologists-counsellors active in the USA. It appears that well over a quarter of a million practitioners are active in the USA delivering over 113 million counselling sessions annually.

I found it interesting that the majority of these were sole practitioners, in boutique private centres with very targeted expertise to assist specific populations. That is good news as the old model of “general counselling” is well and truly over – we need specialist focus backed by specialist knowledge and expertise.  Let’s all crank up our “professional development”.

On-line consultations are now running at nearly 63% of client consultations in the USA, and the majority of clinicians are either sceptical (38%) or cautious (45%) of AI involvement in clinical work. Two factors are important in “On-Line” consults, firstly not wasting time or increasing stress on travel to sessions.  Secondly, I suspect privacy is also a big factor, and increasing, so clients are thinking about what media to use for consultation to lower hacking risks. Given the carelessness of many medical management companies and government agencies there is growing and understandable resistance to “approved and paid sessions” provided under EAP where the privacy of data isn’t guaranteed and too much detail is requested for “approval” processes.

Let us continue to be ruthless in the Privacy of data area and let’s be more insulting and direct with the “careless” people running groups who don’t think about hacking…