Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Psychology”
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 …
Depression, particularly recurrent depression, has pretty significant effects on how we perceive the world and how well we make plans for the future. In an article published in Biological Psychiatry in March 2020, Tobias Kube and co-authors develop a model of how depression affects critical cognitive processes that expands and extends the traditional model of cognitive changes associated with depression …
Are you contemplating a significant lifestyle change this year? Quitting smoking for good, or really getting fit, not just losing a few pounds and gaining them back later? Research shows that making real changes in life is not just a matter of motivation, commitment, or not being “lazy”. Change requires skills and knowledge that can be learned and applied for …
Daylight Savings Time (DST) is an item again, as we all try to remember “Spring forward, Fall back”. Many people complain of difficulty sleeping, or getting enough sleep, and also of depressive episodes associated with “falling back” in November. In our clinical practice, the main thing we have observed year after year, is sleep disruption, which is especially problematic for …
Can smiling make you happier? A long held folk belief holds that if you smile even when you don’t feel happy, the act of smiling itself will lift your spirits, and conversely, frowning makes you feel worse. A 1998 study asked volunteers to hold a pencil between their teeth in such a way that their mouths were forced into a …
Will you take $75 now or $100 three days from now? In the fields of economics and psychology, (and the new field of economic psychology) the choice is called “delay discounting” although many people may be more familiar with the term “delayed gratification”. The two terms are opposites; delayed gratification means you will wait for the larger reward even if …
Global Warming. Climate change. Hurricanes and wildfires. More and more people are showing evidence of deteriorated or threatened mental health because of the terrifying threats posed by our changing environment. In a recent TED Talk, science writer Britt Wray noted that she is encountering more and more people who are losing psychological health because of fears of climate change. Those …
Dr. Jed Diamond has a website called Men Alive that looks at men’s health in new ways. Depression, stress management, anger and love are all life experiences that play out very differently for men and for women. Yet depression, in particular is often viewed as a “women’s” problem, and notably more than twice as many women as men are diagnosed …
Is there a link between teenagers’ use of electronic devises and depression? Well, it’s complicated. A new study analyzing data from high school students in Montreal has found a significant link between increased “screen time” and an increase in depressive symptoms. Interestingly, the increase in depression is linked to television and social media use, but not to video gaming. Researchers …
Sometimes our lives can become so full of the myriad items to manage and tend to that we lose track of what is most meaningful. Rarely do we afford ourselves the time to stop and ask, “How do I really want to be spending my time? What is it that I value?” The end-result of this way of functioning tends …
Can getting angry ever be good for you? Is anger a cause or a symptom of mental illness? Do men get angry more often than women? Does anger always have to be a part of life? Aristotle is quoted as saying: “Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the …
Interventions to reduce maternal depressive symptoms, especially during infancy may have lasting effects on child neurological development. A longitudinal study recently published in the Netherlands has found that children whose mothers exhibited depressive symptoms during their infancy have measurable reductions in brain size even by age 10. These findings provide evidence for an observed link between maternal depression and ADHD …
A link between creativity and mental illness has been a long-standing area of conjecture, and there have been some recent attempts to research such a link, with varying results. The first major problem is that there is no real agreed-upon definition of “creativity”, and therefore no way to pinpoint people in the general population who have it (or more of …
Several recent studies are looking at the interaction between bipolar and increased impulsiveness. Impulsivity is often found as a component of bipolar, but researchers remain uncertain whether it is a core trait of the disorder or a separate characteristic. Impulsiveness has different behavioral factors, including: “1) Non-planning Impulsiveness, which refers to a present orientation or failure to consider the future; …
Vulnerability! If your first response is “Ummm, no, thanks”, you’re not alone. Vulnerability sounds like something we want to get away from, not something to cultivate. Yet researcher Dr. Brené Brown of the University of Houston has done considerable study of this topic and her findings are that being or becoming vulnerable to risk, to emotional upset, to shame and …
“What’s the use”. “It won’t work anyway”. Do you find yourself thinking hopelessly and helplessly about your own situation, unable to find any constructive steps to take to move forward? Learned helplessness is what psychologists call it when a patient believes strongly that no action they can possibly take will make their situation better. It’s the “dark side” – or …
