HG newsletter - March 2025

Last year, Creative Tuition, an organisation working to support students from low-income backgrounds, marginalised and under represented communities, were sponsored by the Human Givens Foundation to deliver a ‘Design a Mental Wellbeing App’ challenge, inspired by the Human Givens approach, to 50 young people aged 11–14. They worked with 3 university psychology students, two professionals and Human Givens therapist, Judith Desbonne.

The challenge (outlined in the report's appendix), focused on introducing key concepts related to the nine emotional needs and included workshops that explored the origins of these emotions in the brain and their underlying causes and practical exercises aimed at regulating emotions such as stress and anxiety. The team also incorporated engaging games and thought-provoking questions, encouraging students to actively explore and understand their emotional wellbeing.

"This approach proved to be not only educational but also empowering, as it transformed the term 'mental wellbeing' from a potential trigger into a source of personal growth and insight. Students responded enthusiastically, creating thoughtful and well-designed apps, all while increasing their comfort levels around mental health discussions..."   Find out more >

The Human Givens Foundation is a charity set up to help support projects like this and raise funds for research into HG.  You can find out more here >

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What is Good Mental Health?

– new podcast with Joe Griffin

In this insightful episode of The Good Mental Health Podcast, Jo Baker was joined by the renowned psychologist Joe Griffin, Director and Co-Founder of the Human Givens approach. Joe has spent decades shaping the world of psychotherapy through his groundbreaking work in brief therapy and the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and addiction. His practical wisdom has transformed the practices of countless health professionals across the UK and beyond. This episode is well worth a listen – read more >

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Human Needs in Politics

A new Charter from the Conciliators Guild

The Charter of Human Needs in Politics offers ideas on how to build a more common sense world in the light of new knowledge about our innate physical, psychological and emotional needs and the different ways our brain hemispheres pay attention to the world. Providing an antidote to the ironically anti-human world we are devising and living in - if it can truly be called living - it begins where we must, not where we have ended up (through lopsided development) live, in tune with our innate needs.  This will be the very basis of human flourishing.

This is a new reference point for politics and government, which casts a lateral light onto the way bureaucracy functions, policy decisions are developed and leaders guide us. From that angle, our politics appear dangerously random, peculiarly obsessive, and sometimes downright pathological. 

The idea that political systems and decisions should aim for our health and welfare, and that they can be humane, may seem a fantasy given the dark fascination with power, conflict and the metastases of bureaucracy that we see all around us. However, the risks presented today, whether conflict across the globe or an ethically empty if efficient overregulated technological planet, urgently call for a more sensible world rooted in our psychological and material wellbeing.

Time is one of the most misunderstood and abused elements in politics. To satisfy the rapid media cycle or respond to critics, answers and solutions are required immediately – whereas the best policy recommendations will inevitably require much more time and reflection to develop. It is almost certain too that much time will be needed for the ideas in this Charter to be absorbed and serve as ferment for a new way way of managing institutions or international relations. This therefore speaks, above all, to the need to put human givens ideas forward now.

Do please share this Charter with whoever you think may be interested – you can download it here >

You can find out more about the Guild's work at:  www.conciliators-guild.org/ 

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The Mind-Body Connection

taking a deeper dive with Dr Andrew Morrice – live online

We're delighted to announce that you can now join Dr Andrew Morrice live online wherever you are for his fascinating indepth look at the inextricable links between our mental and physical health.

Suitable for anyone interested for personal or professional reasons, his two new Mind-Body Connection online workshops: Emotion, Movement and Calm and Food, Mood and Sleep can be taken separately or form part of a 2-day, deep-dive exploration – the workshops are held a month apart.

Each day is jam-packed with valuable information which will enable you to provide more informed psycho-education and tailor powerful therapeutic interventions. Together, they cover all the key areas needed for maintaining overall health – so you'll learn plenty to benefit yourself too...

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Could you spare a minute to help us?

– add your google review

We're passionate about improving mental health. If you’ve found HG training helpful, we’d really appreciate it if you could help boost our google reviews – many people find us online and customer reviews are a valuable way of reassuring people of the quality of our training.

Leaving a review doesn’t take long – simply visit: https://g.co/kgs/h4Tixbj

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Food for thought

"The right hemisphere's ability to see the big picture is essential for effective leadership and decision-making....”

"The left hemisphere's need for certainty can lead to dogmatism and intolerance..."

Dr Iain McGilchrist

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