Antipsychotic Drugs - Breaking Habits - PTSD

People with severe mental disorders are at much greater risk of dying prematurely compared to the general population. How much are the drugs for some mental illnesses contributing to their risk of disease? Anti psychotic drugs can cause people to rapidly put weight on and increase the risk of developing conditions like heart disease and diabetes. Claudia talks to psychiatrist, Dr Alex Mitchell about whether psychiatrists are doing enough to monitor these potentially health threatening side effects in their patients and what needs to be done.

Can bad eating habits be changed just by changing the hand you use to eat? New research on cinema going popcorn eaters has found that these kind of strategies could be a very effective way of disrupting the brain processes in habitual behaviour. Dr David Neal from the University of Southern California explains.

Also in the programme marine, Jess Goodell talks about about her role in Mortuary Affairs in the US Marines. Her job was to recover the remains of soldiers in Iraq so they could be returned to the US. She talks about the psychological impact of retrieving bodies often in the aftermath of Improvised Explosive Devices. In her training she was told "PTSD is real - like 'flu." She discusses the reality of living with PTSD and how she dealt with the nightmares and depression on returning home to civilian life.