A tweet from my colleague Jean Twenge—a world-class expert at tracking youth well-being in massive data sets—alerted me to the recently released 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Among its dozens of results, which you can view here,…
Posts published in “depression”
Consider two facts: Worldwide, smartphones and easier social media access exploded starting in 2010. Consider U.S. smartphone-use (and its projected future): Simultaneously—and coincidentally?—teen girls’ rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide have mushroomed (for Canadian, American, and British sample…
Fixing. Solving. Smoothing over. We often reach for the metaphorical superglue when we feel bad or out of sorts. We seek to plaster the cracks of ourselves so the negative emotions don’t leak out, keeping a self-imposed equilibrium of what…
Don’t wait until tomorrow to figure it out! Falling in love with someone you’ve been dating is typically a beautiful, romantic experience, but when depression, low self-esteem and other mental health issues crop up and cause you to turn to…
Is your love life suffering because of your mood? Is it hard to have a healthy relationship when you’re depressed? Absolutely, yes! Mixing depression and relationships is tricky. I know because I’ve been there. I’ve struggled with depression for my…
TMS refers to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a treatment method for clinical depression first developed in the 1980s. In the psychology research literature, TMS is often referred to as rTMS — the little ‘r’ is for repetitive, because the treatment…
The teen years are, for many, a time of rewarding friendships, noble idealism (think Parkland), and an expanding vision for life’s possibilities. But for others, especially those who vary from teen norms, life can be a challenge. Nonheterosexual teens, for…
Recently I was attacked by several people online, saying I must not have “real” mental illness since I am able to work, be in grad school, and have stable friendships and a marriage. Those words hurt me deeply. I don’t…
Happy Saturday, Psych Central readers! This week’s Psychology Around the Net takes a look at what “self-care” actually means for many people with mental illnesses, the different types of depression and anxiety a new study has identified, which people are…
We’ve expanded our minds. It’s no longer contained inside our heads — it now includes our devices, social media, and essentially anything digital. While the connectedness available to us today has opened a number of doors, it’s not always a…
I’ve been diagnosed, at one point or another, with depression, anxiety, PTSD and ADHD. It’s an annoying characterization of myself because my medical ‘diagnosis’ does not define me. Yet it has also been incredibly helpful to me as it explains certain…
Running away has always seemed so much easier than facing the problems we have in life. We believe that, if we get ourselves as far away as possible, our problems won’t follow us. I once ran away every single time.…
Daylight saving time has ended, and winter is in the air. During these darker months, up to five percent of people in the United States might suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). This article on SAD describes it as follows:…
Long time readers of mine know that I do two things on my birthday every year: Write a blog about the previous year through the lens of living with bipolar disorder. Whine, exactly the same way a toddler would if…
Halloween is over. We fell back an hour and the sun is setting sooner. The holidays are upon us. For some, it’s a time of joy and excitement. But for many of you, the thought of re-enacting last year’s…
As y’all know, females and males are mostly alike—in overall intelligence, in physiology, and in how we perceive, learn, and remember. All but one of our chromosomes is unisex. Yet gender differences in mating, relating, and suffering are what grab…