First prize: Help those less fortunate   An extraordinary Catholic priest in Australia, Father Bob Maguire, is running a competition with a top prize that ‘guarantees happiness.’  See: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/24/father-bob-offers-people-chance-to-win-happiness-guaranteed He is is offering a third-placed prize of five nights in a chain of high-end hotels, with the second-placed prize being five flat-screen TVs. However, it’s […]

Spring is hopefully just around the corner and so is a great prompt to introduce Horticultural Therapy to Hay Farm. We have such a beautiful setting here, with 12 acres of farm land, so it is perfect for those who feel that this therapy might help them. Horticultural Therapy is an active process which engages […]

Not so long ago Alcoholics Anonymous was regarded with condescension by many professionals working in the addiction field. A common view was that science-based techniques, like Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) had made the Anonymous Fellowships seem like a quaint and outmoded quasi-religious cult. At the same time, there were encouraging signs of scientific method being […]

‘Natural recovery’ is a term used to describe recovery from addiction without the help of professionals. It’s a term that rather implies there’s something unnatural about the professional or even AA route. However, other terms that have been used are also problematic, given that they all embody an explanation of the phenomenon that is open to question. For example, Tuchfield (1981) was one of the first to describe what he called “spontaneous recovery”, although the recovery his alcohol dependent respondents described were generally the product of a sense of shame that had grown over a long period of time, even if the ultimate decision was sudden.

Can something so seemingly harmless and widely available really be so bad for us? The answer is yes. Sugar is not just bad for us; in reality eating too many refined sugars too often is one of the root causes of many of the chronic health conditions hitting new heights in western cultures including type […]