Description: When you experience a flair of stress or anxiety what is your first thought? I suspect it is some version of “What is going on in my world that is stressful or challenging”. Especially these days with a raging pandemic, that is not a bad first thought as it can lead to problem focused… Read more »
Posts Categorized: mental illness
Your Brain on Dissociation
Description: What does dissociation involve? At its “simplest” level, it an involve a sort of out of body experience sometimes described as being out of the pilot chair of your body or consciousness and watching things happening to you from a third-party perspective. More complex forms of dissociation include amnesia (often related to trauma), identity… Read more »
Psychology of COVID-19– Suicide Prevention
Description: September is Suicide prevention awareness month in both Canada and the United States. Suicide rates have risen in the United States through the current year and seem to be and are projected to increase in Canada as well. The additional burdens of social, economic, employment, isolation, stress and uncertainty arising from factors associated with… Read more »
The Psychology of Covid-19: Depression or Boredom?
Description: Think about this distinction for a moment in relation to your own experiences within and related to our time with the Covid-19 pandemic. How much of our negative emotional, social and cognitive experiences could or should we attribute to bad things that have happened to us (e.g., health challenges, job losses, life disruptions) and… Read more »
Psychology and Covid-19: Self-Care is Vital
Description: Most of us have been spending a LOT of time in the past couple of months looking outward, using television and online media, at the world around us and at how the other people in it have (or have not been) coping with the impacts associated with Covid-19. We are also starting to see… Read more »
Psychology and Covid-19: When We Did Not Know We Had the Rugs That Were Yanked
Description: I am sure you have heard the phrase “having the rug pulled out from under you,” before. Interpreted literally, it obviously means having the very thing you are standing on violently shifted from under you, typically with catastrophic results. The “magic” act of whipping a table clothe out from under a fully set table… Read more »
Psychology and Covid-19: Stress and Disorder (Depression)
Description: We (well, the media) have largely been discussing the Covid-19 pandemic is terms of physical demands and consequences and while that makes sense given that its origins are viral (literally not virtually). One of the consequences of this focus is that, even in countries with socialized medicine programs (e.g., Canada), when we mobilize the… Read more »
Psychology of COVID-19 Part 2: Coming to Terms with Anxiety
Description: I have been thinking a lot about and posting a lot about anxiety recently — it is a central part of the current times what with COVID-19 and all. I recently finished teaching the section on one of my introductory Psychology courses having to do with Psychological Disorders and Treatment. Our class discussions about… Read more »
Two Types of Schizophrenia: A Matter of Grey Matter
Description: Think about this statement. We have drugs that can treat the symptoms of schizophrenia for many who struggle with it and that means that we have figured out what causes schizophrenia or at least how it works on the brain. Is this true? Is it a little bit true? What do you think? The… Read more »
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): We The North!
Description: Have you heard the phrase “We The North?” It was associated with the enjoyable run of the Toronto Raptors to the successfully through the NBA championships in 2019. Despite having a great basketball team, however, there are some challenges associated with living in the north. Throughout much of Canada in the winter it is… Read more »
Books for Success!
