The Efficacy of Placebos - Head of Mental Health Neuroscience Lab Camilla Nord

There are many routes to wellbeing. Head of the Mental Health Neuroscience Lab at the University of Cambridge, Camilla Nord joined us with a tour of the scientific and technological developments that are revolutionising the ways we think about mental health. We commonly misperceive mental health as being all in the mind, and physical pain in the body; but neuroscientist Camilla Nord’s groundbreaking research presents a new view of mental health – one that reframes mental health as an intricate, self-regulating process which is different for all of us. In doing so, she reveals why treatments, from therapy to medication, work for some of us and not for others; and how the small things we do to lift our mood during the course of a day - a piece of chocolate, a coffee, chatting to a friend - often work on the same pathways in our brain as the latest pharmacological treatments for mental health disorders. What is the relationship between depression and chronic pain, and should we treat physical ailments with talking cures?