Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Psychology”
Set goals and stick to them A client recently recommended a new book: Essentialism: the Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Our client liked the way the book encouraged her to think “is this (object or activity) going to get you to your goals, or not?” She said she learned to pare down the tools she was using, so …
Grade A for effort In a conversation with a patient who was trying to quit smoking we discovered that people often grade themselves only for final success and not for “effort”. The patient said that he did feel like he is doing better, but he still has cravings for a cigarette, and he would like to be at a place …
Suicide remains a sad mystery in many ways. Those left behind can never really know what was in their loved one’s mind at the last. We blame ourselves, and we deal with all the guilt, anger and grief that the act leaves behind, but we can never completely understand what leads someone to take their own life. Willa Goodfellow, in …
Curiosity is an aspect of the open-minded flexibility that allows us to go on learning and growing for a lifetime. To be regularly reminded that I don’t know everything is to be motivated to go on finding things out, and to recognize that I don’t have the answers to all of life’s questions, and I don’t have to know it …
ADHD lasts into adulthood more frequently than thought Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may last into adulthood more frequently than previously thought. A recent study took a longitudinal perspective and retested individuals with childhood-onset ADHD up to eight times within a 16-year period after the baseline assessment. Although it is not uncommon to find young adults have completely recovered from childhood …
A friend and fellow psychiatrist, Ravi Chandra, MD, has produced a documentary about the impact of the twin pandemics of COVID and the more visibly surfacing wounds of racial trauma, and now announces its world premiere at the Queens World Film Festival on Sunday, June 27th, 2021 at 4 pm EST. For tickets and trailer click here. Ravi writes: “How …
Sometimes you just can’t get your mind working. You wonder what’s going on, things you want to remember just slip through your fingers, and time gets away from you. It happens to everyone, but major episodes of mania or depression can result in reduced cognitive capacity, which takes time to heal. Reduced cognitive capacity can be scary; we wonder if …
Link between screen time and depression? It’s complicated A new longitudinal study looking at video gaming and social media use at age 11 compared with the same subjects’ responses to a questionnaire about depressive symptoms three years later at age 14 has come up with some complex data. Boys who played video games daily reported fewer depressive symptoms three years …
A manic or hypomanic episode (mild or severe) can lead a person to taking actions that may be unhealthy, unwise, or even harmful to self or others. This can lead, afterwards, to feelings of guilt and shame. We feel bad about what we have done, but we don’t always know how to move on and make amends. These feelings can …
“Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” This “Serenity Prayer” attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, and often associated with Alcoholics Anonymous, is known to many, and found hanging in cross-stich patterns, wood carvings and photographs on walls across the country. It seems to offer …
How good is your life? Psychologists look at factors like “subjective well-being”, “overall life satisfaction” and “positive affect” (good feelings) to measure the effects of particular events and situations on how well or badly people feel like they are functioning in the world. The coronavirus pandemic has had a notable and obvious effect on people’s sense of well-being, bringing about …
Media Use and the Pandemic We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: media use is not always good for you. Now we have the pandemic-related phenomenon of “doomscrolling”, going obsessively through your feeds again and again, reading the bad news and skipping the good. Why do that? Well, 2020 has put a lot of stress on everyone. From …
Circadian rhythms are an important component of mental health. Humans have naturally evolved to live in the 24-hour light-dark cycle that our planet creates for us, and we run into difficulties when this pattern is disrupted. Depression and bipolar are conditions that may create circadian disruptions, or they may stem from an ongoing breakage in the circadian pattern. In either …
How do you make decisions? Major depression can have profound effects on decision making, causing apparently irrational decisions, for example, not choosing to change behavior in ways that will likely lead to rewards, and choosing instead a course of action that is likely to be unrewarding. Traditional psychological theories of depression have focused on the notion that the problem is …
How to develop resilience to face difficult times Resilience is a process that people can learn and activate to help recover from personal or community disaster, trauma or loss. While it has sometimes been described as a trait that some people have and others don’t, it is better understood as a skill, or series of skills, that we can all …
Are you supposed to be happy? Depression can be a really depressing thing to talk about and often we are told not to bring up “depressing” topics in conversation, even with close friends and family members. People struggling with depression are expected to put on a cheerful mask and not spread their sadness around to others. How can we learn …
Anxious Times, Anxious Thoughts Anxiety is a common companion for mood disorders, in fact, anxiety is, for many people, the first mood-related symptom they remember from childhood, before other symptoms began to develop. Studies show that as many as 90% of people with bipolar also have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety often takes the form of constantly repeated worry about worst-case …
What is my purpose in life? Having a sense of the purpose of one’s life, or a feeling that there’s a job to do or potential to be fulfilled is known to be an important determinant of both length of life and freedom from illness. A sense of purpose is the belief that one has a direction in life, or …
In this time of heightened fear and anxiety, all of us need to work on strategies for managing fear. The usual way most people try to manage fear is by repression or distraction, but we all know that those “strategies” just let the fears fester and come sneaking back later. How can we manage our fears in a constructive way …
Connections between mental health and the natural world Urbanization is a reality of modern life, and many people feel that their connection to nature – green growing things, animals, trees, the stars, the wind, the ocean and the mountains – has been disrupted, or has simply vanished. Mental illness is another reality of modern life that shows some correlation to …
