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 »
Posts Categorized: mental illness
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 »
Ending Psychotherapy: Don’t Slip Out the Back Jack!
Description: Think about how relationships tend to go for you. Think about how relationships end for you (assuming you have had one or two relationships end). Now imagine you have been seeing a psychotherapist for the past 6 months, perhaps to help you sort of what is or did go on in your relationships. How… Read more »
Northern Mental Health: Treatment Challenges
Description: You have no doubt heard about the difficulty small towns and rural or northern communities face in recruiting and retaining doctors, but have you heard or wondered about whether this same issues plays out in relation to mental health and mental illness related services? In Canada over one third of psychiatrists (physicians specializing in… Read more »
Self-Help for Anxiety: Tips from CBT
Description: There is a LOT of talk, research and theorizing these days about stress and anxiety including discussion of the possibility that there is an epidemic of anxiety among high school, college and university students and emerging adults in general. Early, over-simplistic blame has been laid on smartphone and social media use among adolescents and… Read more »
Is (or When is) City Living Good For You?
Description: Is city living good for you? When lecturing on mental health and illness I usually refer to research suggesting that rates of a number of mental disorders are higher in urban centers but that causal nature of that observation is problematic as cities are where most mental health treatment centers are located and most… Read more »
When You Think Of Anxiety or Depression Does Anger Come to Mind?
Description: Someone you know become quite angry rather unexpectedly (in an out of character manner). What is are the first and second thoughts that come to mind for you? The first thought would likely be that you are missing some piece of situational data that would help you to see why they are so angry… Read more »
Self-Harm: Symptom or Treatable Issue?
Description: What do you know about self-harm? I do not mean, do you engage in self-harm but, rather, what have you heard of it? Over a relatively short number of years (20 tops) there has been a marked increase in the rates of self-harm (cutting etc.) among young people and particularly among teenaged and young… Read more »
Just How ARE ACE’s Related to Mental Illnesses?
Description: You have likely heard about the data that is piling up regarding the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences and beyond childhood incidences of mental and physical illness (if not there are a couple of links in the Reference section below that will provide you with an overview of that work). An obvious question to… Read more »
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