BRUCE ARROLL: Okay, so my big idea.
I was really intrigued with the New Zealand Earth Hour,
you know, where you turn your lights off for Earth Hour.
Well, I think we could probably do it for gratitude.
Maybe a minute, you know, like November the 11th, the war one,
or an hour, or turning our lights off, I think would be...
would be something that's worth doing.
And I think, but that's not to ignore the disparities
and those sort of things that go on in our community,
but I think it's one thing that would make us flourish better,
is actually appreciate what we've got.
Because actually, living in New Zealand is pretty damn good.
So.
So that's... this is the Sonja Lyubomirsky's book,
The How of Happiness. It's got a whole lot of techniques in it.
It's a Penguin book, and it's very well-read,
it's sort of structured, it's got a whole lot of things,
and the gratitude diary comes up as sort of number one.
And I suspect all those things do very similar things,
they sort of, they give you a different perspective on life,
they disassociate you from the negative
and allow you to get the positive ones.
So that's all my talk, I would be very flattered
if somebody would ask me some questions.
Thank you. [applause]
CIARAN FOX: Thank you, Bruce.
Questions?
Oh, yes.
Wish I had a centre aisle, that would've been handy.
If you could pass it along.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thanks very much for that, I really enjoyed it.
My work is most... is with socially isolated older people,
and one of the things that is just overwhelming
is the epidemic of depression and anxiety amongst older people,
which goes largely untreated, as if it's expected.
And I'm really interested in what you said about the gratitude diary,
because part of the challenge is about waking people
to purposeful life again-- BRUCE ARROLL: Yes.
--when they're expecting to just slide into death.
You must work with people like this, too.
Have you got any extra pearls?
BRUCE ARROLL: Well, I think loneliness is a big issue,
and some way of getting people a bit more connected--
I presume the people you're talking about, they are isolated,
and some way of trying to break down that isolation:
exercise groups, all that sort of stuff, or--
perhaps talking to the general practice
and seeing what resources they have.
I guess you probably have resources in the area.
Church groups can be quite good for those sort of things.
There are amazing number of resources around, if you can motivate the person.
Are these people depressed?
Yeah. Exercise is probably--I think exercising, I find,
that I say to patients who are depressed,
"You won't feel like exercising.
"If you don't, you probably won't get better."
I really put it to people. Now, I've got a relationship with these people,
you might say that's taking a bit of a risk,
because if they fail, it might be worse,
but I take those risks, because I think it's so important.
And people are usually better if they start exercising.
If you can get those old people doing anything.
There's a social component to it,
and I think there's a physiological component to it as well.
Getting out in the midday sun is probably another thing,
getting a few lux into your brain, I think helps.
BORIS SOKRATOV: Hey Bruce, it's Boris Sokratov.
Really insightful presentation.
I'm very interested in the gratitude diaries as a tool.
Do you know whether GPs are aware of it?
BRUCE ARROLL: I don't think so. I've just started talking about it.
I'm talking at a GP conference in July.
That would probably be the first. I'm doing a randomised trial
out of my office at the moment on gratitude diaries and primary care.
Actually, just with our patients, because we've got enough
to do it over two years, interestingly.
These are people with mild to severe depression.
No, I don't think they do. When I have...
I did talk about it a couple of years ago at the college conference.
And I had about fifty people, and I thought they'd think I'd gone off
the deep end, you know, but actually, there was
a lot of interest, so I suspect my colleagues
are ripe for the picking.
BORIS SOKRATOV: Yeah, and I'd suggest to you--
I don't know, would you know how much... I'm involved with the Nutter's Club,
but I'm certainly gonna push it big-time,
because it's such a simple idea
that will resonate very, very easily
using very simple language and you know,
I think that's a great way forward, so thank you for bringing it to us.
BRUCE ARROLL: And I think it's like Lyubomirsky says,
it is to make a strategy, it does seem to do... I've used it with...
I had a 19-year-old boy who was very depressed the other day,
and I got him a gratitude diary. Actually, he got
randomised to the gratitude arm, thank God,
and I phoned him up and I said, "What do you think of the gratitude...?"
He said, "That was fantastic."
You know, he was just looking at what he didn't have,
fighting with his parents and all sorts of stuff,
and bam, he was... his PHQ went from 20 to 6,
which was massive, made serious depression to normal
in the space of a week. I mean, he may not have had the depression,
obviously, but just a massive, that's very reinforcing
to have that sort of experience. Keeps me going.
Yeah, talk about it as much as you can.
And there's lots of evidence; if you want the slides,
I'll be happy to send them to you, Boris.
BRIAN: Yes, thank you, Brian here again from Christchurch,
and I do have a lot to say when I come to these things, so [laughter]
there's over 150 GPs in Christchurch
and we know of about 14 that are depression-friendly.
BRUCE ARROLL: Yep.
BRIAN: What's the strategy to get GPs,
because they're our first port of call for people with depression. To educate GPs.
BRUCE CARROLL: Well, Pegasus is a very strong PHO there,
talk to people like--Dee Mangin would be, Dee Mangin's
doing some fantastic research on depression,
she's very... she's an international researcher,
so I would talk to her about how to best get that...
I suspect there would be more than 14 GPs interested, but
you'll find the interest will be building up.
In ProCare in Auckland, we're getting rooms
with this many people in it, coming to evenings
about depression, you know, which, you wouldn't have seen that twenty years ago.
You would've seen three people.
You know, so there's a real, real change out there, I think.
As I said, I think New Zealand's become psychologically mature
in the last 25 years. There's been a lot happening.
KAY JONES: Kia ora, my name's Kay Jones,
I'm with Council of Trade Unions - Te Kauae Kaimahi.
Another of the circles I mix with is the Interfaith Council,
and you know, thank you for presenting that,
and I was reflecting that, how much this sounds like
people giving daily prayers. BRUCE ARROLL: Yes.
KAY JONES: And that, you mentioned churches being
one of the ways of sort of supporting some of the older folk
and I think that may be something that-- BRUCE ARROLL: Yes.
KAY JONES: You know, in New Zealand, we've got...
you know, we're a sectarian society, and people feel almost
embarrassed about raising the spirituality part of it
and with the wairua and the whole sort of cultural thing,
I think it is worth, you know, reemphasising that.
BRUCE ARROLL: I mean, if you're Catholic, you'll understand the three blessings.
Interesting on the meditation thing, I had a woman who was a very staunch Catholic
and she said, "Well, I'm Catholic, I'm not sure I can do something
"from the Buddhist tradition."
So I had to say, "Well actually, this has come from the Buddhist tradition,
"but actually is now a psychological technique."
So sometimes we have to demythologise it,
you know, it's not a religious technique,
it's a psychological technique, and funnily enough,
she had the best reaction, she went off and had the thirty minutes,
and she came back--she's a woman who has recurrent depression,
postnatal depression, all that sort of stuff--
she came back just glowing.
So of all... it's funny, her resistance, actually, when she,
when she got over it, was actually very powerful.
SARAH: Hi, my name's Sarah. I'm a mental health promoter on the West Coast.
I have a query about the sort of,
the happiness thing. It always strikes me that
we're kind of sold this idea that we have to be happy all the time,
so where's the bit about living healthily within our whole range of emotions,
that this sort of, always trying to be constantly happy
is actually making us more unhappy,
cause we always feel like we're always failing.
BRUCE ARROLL: Expectations are too high, yeah.
Well, it's that thing, if our brain... I heard a thing about,
we could have perfect memory if our brains were like computers,
I mean, computers don't make mistakes in terms of
names and addresses if they're put in correctly.
The price we would pay would, we'd have no love of poetry.
So I guess we have to be a bit careful, not to have love and poetry.
And I think it is a balance in that sort of sense,
I agree with you then... I think your perspective is good.
CIARAN FOX: Ingrid Bergman said that happiness is nothing more than
good health and a bad memory.
[laughter]
BRUCE ARROLL: This man's full of quotes, isn't he? [laughter]
CIARAN FOX: There's no more burning questions. If there are,
please write them down on your Post-Its
and post them on the... in the frame over here.
Thank you very much, Bruce. I would like us
to show our appreciation for Bruce coming this morning.
[applause]