This is an area where common sense, your mother’s advice and science have finally met. Having a good cry to relieve your frustration, tension or unhappiness is what we naturally tend to do, usually accompanied – if we are lucky – by someone holding our hand and telling us to ‘let it all out’.

Scientists love to explain the everyday things we have all taken for granted, and reported by the Association for Psychological Science is a joint study by the University of South Florida and Tilburg University in the Netherlands that explores the benefits of crying. Not surprisingly they found that most people in their study reported improvements in their mood following a bout of crying, but that around a third found no difference and a tenth felt worse.