¶ Running's Mental Health Benefits Explored
So you're thinking about running but not sure how to take the first step . My name is Brian Patterson and I'm here to help . Welcome to Brian's Rompod . Well , hey there folks , welcome back to another episode of Brian's Rompod , the go-to podcast for all things running , and I'm your host , brian Patterson , and I've got an fantastic guest lined up for you today .
Now , in the last 10 years or more , this subject has become very much part of our everyday lives , and that is mental health . Well , today , after months of planning , we have a special guest to discuss this very subject . Today we're chatting to Hussnara , a writer , analyst and passionate advocate for the therapeutic power of running .
She is currently working on her debut book titled the Power of Running Rewire Negative Thinking Process , trauma and the Woken , the Therapist Within . Now . That's a title that grabs your attention .
She's a great believer in turning the negative into positive , and I quote Imagine if I told you that the key to conquering life's greatest challenges could be found in the simple act of running . The power of running explores how running has a profound and scientifically proven ability to reshape and the way we deal with trauma and negative thoughts .
But that's not all . Hussnara brings a wealth of experience to the table . With a career spanning over 15 years in prestigious academic institutions of various departments in the UK government , she's not just a runner she's an accomplished professional in the world of mental health .
Originally from North London , hussnara now resides in Bali with her husband and two children , living a balanced life that combines an intellectual pursuit , athletic interests and family life . I'm excited to dig into her story and explore the incredible connections between running , mental health and personal growth .
So grab your running shoes and kick back and join me in welcoming the amazing Hussnara to Brian's Rampard . Welcome , welcome , welcome . So how are you today ?
Yes , I'm very good , Thank you , really excited to be speaking to you today .
It's my first podcast as well , so yeah , even more excited , brilliant , and it's my first international interview , which is great . And I'm very jealous that you live in Bali , because I noticed . I think I reached out . Maybe it was last year that you live near Ubud , is that right ?
That's right , yes , Somewhere .
it was a place that I went to when I was doing the round the world trip with a friend back in the late 80s , which is about a million miles , a million years ago . But I remember it really fondly and it was fantastic all the rice , paddy fields and the kind of thing .
I remember that it was great so like I do with most of my guests , I just wanted to find out as to what we do , or experience of exercise and running at school .
Yeah , Okay , great Thanks , brian . Yes , so I guess , to be honest , I mean , exercise at school wasn't something I was particularly interested in I was particularly fond of , if I'm really really , really , really really . I didn't really like PE , but yeah , so what I mean ?
I used to love climbing though climbing was fun and being on the trampoline and things like that but genuinely didn't love sports back then . But when I turned 16 , I don't know what it was about turning 16 . That's when I started running .
I don't know if it was just like the buzz of finishing like the GCSEs , and then , you know , feeling like you're on the brink of being an adult and kind of forming your own identity and ownership of your own body and all of this stuff . I don't know what it was , but I remember that summer , after my GCSEs , I decided to start running .
Yeah , and I remember , you know , growing up and I live close to really nice parks in London , so , like near Primrose Hill , I used to always see runners , you know , all the time , and they just looked really happy . That's all I remember Generally . That's all I remember .
They looked good and they looked happy and I remember thinking , oh , when I get older , I want to look like that . And generally , that's all it was , and then that's what sparked my interest in running at that early age . So then in the summer after my GCSEs , I started running and just carried on since then and I'm 39 .
But my reason for running has definitely evolved and changed over time . And initially , I have to say , when I first started running , I did need a big motivation to carry on .
So in the early days I did my early 20s , I used to sign up to races , not big ones , but like 10ks , 5ks and things , and that was my way of just carrying on with the running , a way of keeping fit and just because I just enjoyed it .
Yeah , so it's nothing like in your family , like your father or your mother or your siblings , were they not into it , or is it just a ? Self-motivation thing .
Totally yeah . So I come from an Asian background , so my parents from Odesshi .
But yeah , running in sport is really not something part of our culture and definitely not something that I don't know , especially growing up in quite a conservative Muslim household , like for my mother seeing me and running clothes and stuff it's not something she was that proud about to be honest , right , okay , okay , so a bit controversial yeah .
Yeah , a bit controversial , yeah , but I think over the years she's actually changed her mindset about it too . So I remember in the early days she wouldn't like me going out like that or running . And over the years she encourages me and she'll be like , oh , that's really good .
She'll tell my siblings to do the same , or my sister-in-laws and other family members oh , you need to go for a run , you need to go out . And it's just amazing to see the shift in her as well , having seen me do it and , you know , be relatively healthy and happy through it .
But is that not to go off topic , but has that been like a change of attitude over the last you know ?
23 years in your culture ?
You know not , not yeah .
Oh , totally yeah , I think it's a , you know , in that kind of community it's a big shift , that's some sort of happening and I noticed it not just within , like the Asian community , but also other ethnic minority communities because I've spoken to also . There's a Tasha Thompson , founder of Black Girls Do Run . It's a big running community .
Yes , I've heard of that name . Yeah , yeah .
And they're brilliant and also they talk about the same challenges in sort of in those kind of communities as well , in minority communities , because it isn't . We're very underrepresented , you know , in the running community .
So she loves running and she's been really a big advocate of getting you know black women to start running you know , yeah , and so it's interesting there have been a few kind of sporting icons in like .
I think there was an Afghan woman who kind of like , was kind of I don't know whether she was threatened by the Taliban or something like that , and you know , and she competed the Olympics and I don't know if she did the she might have done a middle distance or something like that .
But they've been kind of like dotted in the last 20 , you know , years or so that people have been breaking through and you know doing it as a professional sport .
So yeah , yeah , I mean , that's brilliant to hear and I feel like it's in terms of sort of looking at it from the ethnic minority perspective . I think we have a lot of way to go , way to go .
To be honest , it's only just scratching the surface of getting more people from my background , from the backgrounds , into , into these kinds of sports or physical health and mental health .
¶ Understanding Mental Health
So moving on in sort of just understanding about mental health itself as a subject . I mean , like I said , it's really come into its own in the last 10 , 15 years . You know probably more , you know in the last 10 years , sort of thing . What , in your opinion , has really pushed that ? Why has it sort of come to the forefront ?
Yeah , well , I think there's a combination of different things , I think , firstly , I'm really pleased to see that we're talking about it a lot more and it's less stigmatizing . And I've been I was in , you know , mental health research for over 10 years .
I did a degree in psychology , so that was about , you know , that was a long time ago now , but I came out that for about six , seven years ago . So it's good to see a big shift happen in that sense in terms of people talking about it being less stigmatizing . And I think a lot of it comes down to , you know , social media celebrities talking about it .
So all of these things and also these schemes that are in the workplace , the people in the workplace are talking about it , recognizing that , you know , mental health has an impact on productivity , all of that . So that's really good to see .
But you know , if I'm honest with you , I feel like , although we are talking about it more , I feel in some ways , we're also going in the wrong direction in terms of mental health . Yeah , and I can tell you why , because I mean , for example , it you just have to look at the numbers , you know , to be honest . So I don't know .
I mean , have you looked at the biggest for mental health problems or people suffering in the UK ? No no , I mean at the moment , like the current stats say , 16 million people in the UK suffer from mental health problem , so that's one in four .
And in terms of like suicide rates , for example , over 5000 people commit suicide every year in the UK yeah , that's a lot of people considering .
Is there a particular demographic , an age bracket ?
Yeah , it is actually . What's really interesting and really sad is that one of the biggest striking things about the suicide rates is that a third I think , believe it are males . Yeah , or two thirds , something like that . So it's a number of males are committing . So two thirds are males and it's a huge number , you know .
And what's interesting about the suicide rates and about the rates of mental illness is that that hasn't really changed over the last few years and even when I was working in mental health services and in the academic world and in that field , we were still quoting the same numbers .
But I think what I find more depressing is when we look at the stats on young people , and this is when actually , it gets quite scary , right . So I was looking at some of the NHS data recently and they were saying they were looking at the rates of mental illness among young people in the UK .
So in the period of like three or four years , we went from one in nine people suffer from young people suffer from mental health problems in 2017 to one in six in 2020 . So that's a huge increase , you know , and that's recently .
And on top of that , there has been also another study done by the Office of National Statistics and their 2020 2020 data says that around 30% of young people report suffering from depression or anxiety .
Right , yes .
It is huge , you know it's a huge problem . So that's I feel like that's , you know it's . What that illustrates is that this problem is not going away , is actually getting worse and we're going to see it getting worse in the next generation . Right . And then we looked at a sort of the Google trend data .
If you look at what people are searching online again , it's the paints are really interesting picture .
Yeah .
So when I looked at how many people are looking for trauma because that's what I'm looking at for the book how running helps with trauma so in the last five years , the people searching for trauma has doubled in the last five years and the search term for people seeking mental health support has also doubled in the same period .
So what that's saying is that people are struggling out there , people are looking for solutions and what we have currently isn't really working .
So , yeah , so it was a so specifically when you say , when they're searching for trauma , I mean can you kind of just enlighten , expand on that ? Yeah .
So yeah , so when they're like , it's like so , with Google you can look and see like what search terms people are searching for . So they might just be typing in trauma and it picks up like how many times people are searching for that specific term Right , right , right , okay , okay , yeah .
So , yeah , I feel like it's pointing to kind of a big problem in our society and at the moment , like the best solutions currently are still external , so it's all you know . Go for medication or psychological therapy , which is great , but you know , on the NHS you're still waiting for months if you're lucky to get it . You know , and that's the reality .
And another sad statistic is that , especially for people who suffer from depression , is that if you do manage to get through the door , get to see a psychologist , there's a 30% chance that it's not going to work for you . So lots of people are resistant to that kind of treatment . So again , it points to a situation where we need other solutions .
You know , and this is why I'm really passionate about running as a more holistic approach , an alternative approach to try and deal with stress , trauma and , yeah , difficulties really .
Now , I just wanted to sort of touch on what you've just said , and that I mean I'm of the age where mental health , well the term mental health didn't exist , sort of thing , and you know sort of the 80s and 90s and whatever . So was it that the people ?
It wasn't talked about then , but in terms of actual figures it was very much the same , or , you know , it's very hard to know . I mean , it's very much the heart to say then as it is now . it's just that more people are aware of it and therefore that's why they they recognize it as a you know , either a state of mind , or you know , or whatever .
Yeah .
Do you think that's true ? Do you think it was ? You know , people kind of didn't , they didn't want to talk about it in the 80s and 90s , or they just thought it was just something . You know , oh it's . I'm just going through a phase . I'm just sad and that's that kind of thing and and it was just not talked about .
Yeah , yeah , I guess
¶ Attitudes Towards Mental Health and Technology
. Yeah , that is a really interesting question , very interesting one , and yeah , I guess it is partly that , partly you know it's a difficult way to it's difficult to answer that one , but partly it is that you know there's just more recognition about it and we're talking about it a lot more and wanting and willing to get help for it .
But also , I mean , if you look at the UK , for example , you know , even in the last decade , you know it's a culture towards it hasn't changed dramatically , but still the rates of people who are getting diagnosed with these things are increasing , and not just in the and not just in the UK , but worldwide as well .
So , yeah , it's a complicated one to really give a an exact answer to . I think .
I mean , we do live in . You know , in the last 20 years it is very different times . I mean we've got the internet . You know what comes along with social media and everything . So it may be that because we didn't talk about it then , you know there weren't the stresses to younger people and to you know us as adults , they're not , they weren't the same .
It was a completely different time and even I don't know , I've never known . You know Absolutely .
Yeah .
Yeah .
I mean exactly . I mean I'm kind of curious about that as well to see , like you know , because I often talk to teachers about this issue that I've got two young kids who were at school , in primary school .
And even the other day I went to a local school and I was going to talk about writing and we talked about social media and the impact , and you know it was just . The teachers are just . You know , it's just so obvious that you know children struggle with these things . You know comparison becomes a big thing , body image , all of that .
You know , and I'm not sure I mean you know it would be interesting to talk to teachers who , from 20 years ago , and what they thought about kids who have struggled with these things and compare that . But just anecdotally , you know , you know it's .
You know the conversation is such a big one at the moment in school setting about the difficulties of this generation with technology and changing lifestyles and things like that . Yeah , and wanted health .
I mean we could , we could talk about this for ages .
But I mean , yeah , I know , it's just it's just .
It's just something I'm interested in . Is that the you know from the , you know from the 50s to you know the late what , even when I left school , which was you know 1980 or whatever , or even later than that , but it's just , there was a . There was that period of time where it is so different to what's you know , I mean , I'm just as an anecdote .
I just joined my local gym recently . I just saw someone there and I who I recognized , who I used to work there a long time ago it was about 20 years ago , and I just thought to myself it's just that when the last time I saw you , the world was a completely different place .
It was I don't know , it is , it is .
Anyway , moving on .