All In The Mind

Claudia Hammond has been following some of the first tranche of trainee mental health social workers setting out on the Think Ahead scheme which is getting high-flying graduates into social work. As a 22 year old English graduate Al Toombs was one of the youngest people on the course. It's rare to be able to eavesdrop on actual sessions between mental health professionals of any kind and their clients, but Claudia spent the day with Al in Coventry on visits to clients such as Jo, who's lived with depression for several years whilst juggling a complicated family life.As we grow up we get better at tasks involving thinking. But there is something at which 5 year olds excel and that adults are really not very good at - and that is noticing things. New research by Vladimir Sloutsky, a psychologist at Ohio State University, shows that small children pay more attention to what's going on around them than adults do. It's a skill he thinks we've been underestimating and a finding that holds lessons for the appearance