Dr Olivia Remes has spent her career researching mental health and wellbeing. In her new book, The Instant Mood Fix, she brings together the research in this field in a bid to help others. Writing it has been a very personal quest.
For Dr Olivia Remes, the fight with anxiety is both professional and personal. She’s a renowned mental health researcher at Cambridge whose talks have been viewed by millions around the world. But in the midst of a global pandemic, she is also having to cope with the stress of supporting her loved ones through the hardest of situations.
“My mother’s cancer recently returned for a second time,” Remes explains.
This has been a very difficult time for Remes’ mother and for the entire family. To help her family and many others to deal with such circumstances, Remes has just published The Instant Mood Fix, a book that brings together research on mental health and her personal drive to figure out the science of wellbeing.
In recent years, science has begun to explore the relationship between self-control and wellbeing, and has shown how important this relationship is for our mental health. Remes saw a need to bring this new research to a wider audience – to empower people in the fight against anxiety.
“The Instant Mood Fix is based on my experience with my mother and what I was going through, as well as people's life stories and related science. The book teaches people ways that they can cope with difficult life situations, and how they can become more optimistic, more decisive, more confident, and take charge of the lives that they want.”
Olivia in Lammas Land, Cambridge. (c) Lloyd Mann
Olivia in Lammas Land, Cambridge. (c) Lloyd Mann
Remes first arrived at Cambridge via the Institute of Public Health, where she examined the risk factors of anxiety and depression, focusing on the incidence of these conditions at a societal level. While her work still focuses on mental health – she is now looking at depression in young people – she has made the unusual transition to the Department of Engineering.
While this might seem counterintuitive, engineering approaches can actually help select and prioritise innovations in the treatment of depression, she explains. Engineering concerns itself with the design of different structures, using specialised mathematical models to test potential solutions to a given problem. By focusing on the effectiveness of mental health innovations across disparate parts of society, engineering methods can help identify interventions that prevent people becoming depressed in the first place.
Over the past few years, Remes’ pursuit of the science of wellbeing has taken her beyond academia. She’s headed seminars with hundreds of people at the University and around the world. She’s started her own radio show to have conversations with people experiencing mental health issues. And she’s spoken at mental health conferences and TED, where her talks have been viewed millions of times online.
Watch Remes' TED talk on how to cope with anxiety.
Remes’ far-flung conversations form the basis of her book, which distils scientific findings on anxiety into practical steps for a better life. But in order to navigate anxiety, she says, we first need a map.
