Mental health charity Mind has recently announced Dr Liz Miller as Mind Champion of the Year 2008. The award honours those who have made a significant contribution to challenging discrimination against people with mental health problems. Liz is a practising GP in London and suffers from bipolar disorder. She has written and spoken about her own experience, and co-founded the Doctors’ Support Network, a self-help group for doctors experiencing mental health problems.

Liz is also a founding trustee of Stand to Reason, a UK organisation committed to fighting discrimination and changing attitudes to mental illness, led by people who have experienced mental illness and based on research.

Liz said: “I’m very touched to receive the award. It’s really important that we change attitudes about mental health, and a good starting point is changing attitudes within the medical profession”.

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According to research, every year over 13 million working days are lost in the UK due to stress and stress-related symptoms, and experts believe it affects everyone at least every two weeks. Frances Ive, founder of the website Healthy Soul, has written the book Stress - The Essential Guide (due out in September) to tackle this issue head on.

Frances said: “Everyone suffers with some form of stress at least once in his or her life; it’s a natural part of life. The important thing is knowing what to do about it when it happens. This essential guide gives you that knowledge in an easily digestible format so action can be taken and control regained”.

The book offers readers advice on what to do in extreme circumstances of stress, how to minimise the pressure and where to get further help and support. Available from Need2Know.

According to an article in The Independent, Doctors have called for graphic images of diseased livers to be displayed on wine and spirits bottles and beer cans to warn of the dangers of binge-drinking. They also called for soft drinks to be made significantly cheaper than alcohol, and for labels showing alcohol units to be a mandatory requirement on bar taps and bottles.

Dr Raj Nirula, a urologist at the Princess of Wales Hospital, said “alcohol consumption has doubled since 1960, leading to more hospital admissions and associated crime. It is becoming an epidemic. The images should be in pubs and on bottles, on every single drink.”

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