It is said that we make on average 35,000 decisions every single day. Of course not all of them are conscious decisions. It’s no wonder that by the end of the day we can experience what’s called decision fatigue. Decision fatigue not only kills motivation, but it can lead to avoiding decision making altogether, or an increase in impulsive behaviour. So what do we do about it? Before we launch into that, let’s explore a little more about how it comes about and how it impacts our behaviours.

Last week when the cases started to rise in Melbourne, the very first thing I noticed was that conversationally people around me seemed to be emotionally preparing themselves for another lockdown. Over the course of that one day, speculation about lockdown was the major topic of conversation in all conversations I had. I noticed that many were starting to think about how they were going to manage should a lockdown be announced and given our experiences last year and the circuit breaker lockdown in February this year, this is unsurprising. This is what we humans do as a way of emotionally protecting ourselves from hard news; we imagine difficult situations and how we’ll handle it so that we feel prepared should that imagined scenario come true.

At Melbourne Wellbeing Group we work with a lot of people with obsessive compulsive disorder, and predominantly the treatment that people are looking for is individual exposure response prevention (ERP), therapy that specifically targets their OCD. This is fantastic because as most people know ERP is considered the gold standard treatment for OCD. However, OCD doesn’t just impact the person with OCD. Often loved ones and family members have been pulled into the rituals and compulsions, accommodating OCD, and when this is occurring it is much harder for the individual engaging in treatment to effectively treat their OCD. Research into family accommodation and OCD effectiveness has clearly demonstrated that the presence of family accommodation is correlated with more severe OCD symptoms and a greater impact of these symptoms. As such, family accommodation is an important aspect of OCD that needs attending to.

Two weeks ago, we explored the evidence for the effectiveness of mental health apps to support people with their mental health and overall wellbeing. Last week we explored six apps designed for users struggling with anxiety. Today we’re going to explore apps for people struggling with low mood or major depression. As we have previously written about, apps when used in isolation are most effective if users are experiencing only subclinical or mild difficulties. For users with symptoms in this range apps can be useful in many ways such as for learning about mood, designing a behavioural activation plan, supporting sleep difficulties and building coping mechanisms. For people with more significant mood disturbance, apps can be helpful too; they are just most effective when used in conjunction with treatment with a mental health specialist. When used as a therapeutic support, they can help users practice the skills they’re learning in therapy, track their progress and manage symptoms such as deliberate self-harm and suicidal ideation. The apps below are a sample of some of the apps available to download and we hope you might find something new, interesting and/or helpful amongst them.

You might remember that two weeks ago we explored the evidence for the effectiveness of mental health apps to support people with the mental health and overall wellbeing. What we discovered was that there have been many studies conducted on app effectiveness and that the general consensus is that for subclinical or mild difficulties they are an affordable, accessible and fun way to improve your health. For people with moderate to severe difficulties or for people with more than one diagnosis, the evidence suggested that apps alone are unlikely to generate much change but, are a great way to support your treatment with a mental health specialist. Today we’re going to explore six mental health apps that have been marketed as apps for people with anxiety.

There’s a lot of research out there on the benefits of music on our mood and overall wellbeing. This may come as a surprise to some people but for those who have been listening to music for awhile to help regulate their mood can attest to it being beneficial. It’s by no means a cure but is certainly something to consider having in your tool box of ways to help you manage difficult emotions when they arise. Here are 5 ways music can help you to manage your wellbeing.