Health & the Body · Foundation

Mental Fitness

Everybody is told how to manage stress, and most of what they are told comes without a grade on it. This course is about the difference between ordinary stress and a clinical problem, what controlled studies have found about the self-help methods people are offered, what the clinical guidelines recommend when it is more than ordinary, and how to read a claim about resilience. It is the last course of the term on running yourself, and it is a health course, so it says throughout what it is and is not entitled to claim, and where a reader should go instead of reading on.

What you'll learn

• Distinguish ordinary stress and worry from an anxiety disorder or depression as the clinical guidelines define them, and say what this course can and cannot help with
• State what the evidence shows for a named self-help method, with its design, its sample and the strength a guideline attaches to it
• Compare what named clinical guidelines recommend first for anxiety and depression, and read the grade each attaches
• Trace a popular claim about stress or resilience back to its source and say what changed on the way
• Decide what, if anything, to change, and say what the decision rests on and when it stops being a self-help question