Who's in need?

I met with a senior planner on Friday who had just finished working on a large piece of research with a group of doctors. He said that the rise in visits from patients who 'just felt down' was noticeable. The suggestion was that the recessionary doom was impacting on our mental state. No surprise I haven't been jumping with joy recently. But what do you expect when everywhere you turn there's some miserable commentary on the recession? Apparently there's a link with negative thinking and brain neurons - too many bad thoughts and your brain actually physically starts changing (or something like that). So I figured that before I turn to the valium I might just stop watching the news.

But I was cheered up that evening watching the BBC's Children in Need.

If you are a fundraiser in the UK I don't think you have an excuse for missing it. Not because of its class acts (obviously) but because this would be the first time we would witness in real time what effect the economic downturn would have on public donations and support. It was generally believed that this year would not be the best for Terry.

But Friday night's show was a spectacular, positive, up-lifting and memorable event. And I think if you were watching you'd have learnt a lot. Because when times are tough people do come together – and in an amazing way. Unbelievably more money was raised that night than ever before.

It seems that rather than ignore the recession we should use it as a way to unite people. Judging by the night's success and the obvious pleasure felt by hundreds of thousands of people, helping others is a great way of finding respite from the otherwise relentless bad news.

This will be of no surprise to the hardened fundraiser but nonetheless with all the doom and gloom it's a useful reminder. Perhaps we should talk to those doctors. Maybe they should prescribe a good bit of fundraising before reaching for the happy pills.