Dan Roberts

Banker or binman, care worker or chief executive, we are all fundamentally the same. We all want to be happy. Each of us wants to feel proud of our achievements and to be respected for them. We all seek a partner and family who love us. Everyone strives for a...

Picture this: your boss calls you into his office and, the second you sit down, launches into a long critique of the pitch you just made to important clients. How do you feel? Do you crumble, accepting his criticism with head bowed and heart sunk? Or listen calmly, thank him...

As the Dalai Lama says: "Everyone wants happiness; nobody wants to suffer." If this is true (and I firmly believe it is), why do we feel 'negative' emotions like fear, anger, sadness or hatred? Take fear, for example, which manifests as anxiety in problems such as agoraphobia, panic disorder or...

Let's be honest, January is a gloomy old month. Christmas and new year frivolity are in the distant past, but everyone's broke because we're still paying for them. The days are short and grey, it's cold and gloomy and spring seems an age away. And if you're prone to seasonal...

What we in the West are only now beginning to grasp, Buddhists have known for 2,500 years. Psychological research is increasingly focusing on the role of compassion - a key virtue in Mahayana Buddhism - in treating a whole range of mental health problems, but especially depression, social anxiety, eating...

It's natural for your mood to fluctuate - everyone feels a little down sometimes. But when that low mood persists for days or weeks, you may be suffering from depression. Telltale signs include persistent negative thoughts; a loss of appetite or libido; feeling exhausted and sleeping more (or less) than...

The media seems to take great delight in scaring the hell out of us at the moment. Every time I glance at a newspaper headline it tells me the 'markets' are jittery, or panicking, or in some other intangible way not entirely happy. Even for those, like me, who struggle...

We all must face adversities in life: being human means facing illness, bereavement, heartbreak and hard times. If we're lucky - and make good choices - life might go easy on us. But for many people, life can seem like one disaster after another. We weather one storm only to...

It struck me the other day, while travelling on the tube, that virtually every passenger was jabbing away at some kind of smartphone. Blackberries, Androids, iPhones... from a sexy, expensive, high-end gadget they have become ubiquitous. And, thanks to a multi-billion-pound marketing campaign and their inherent hi-tech addictiveness, we now...

Why would anyone choose to be unhappy? It's a tough question to answer, but one all therapists must wrestle with on a daily basis. Let's say someone comes to see me suffering from depression, which can be extremely unpleasant. Life may seem joyless and devoid of pleasure. They will probably...

Mindfulness is one of those zeitgeisty health terms you may have seen bandied about in the media recently. But what exactly is it? How does it work? And why should you care? In answer to the first question, mindfulness is one of those things that is, at the same time,...

I must confess, I am baffled by social media. I'm a Twitter user, true, but mostly retweeting good causes or promoting workshops and the like. Do my followers need to know I'm about to make coffee, or go to the loo? No. Or that I had bagels for breakfast, or...

As a therapist, I have worked with dozens of people suffering from depression. Many of these people have been - wrongly, in my view - prescribed antidepressants by their GP. And not just for depression: anxiety, paranoia, eating disorders, OCD, even insomnia are now routinely tackled with this powerful medication.