I still remember what she was wearing. A red, one-piece bathing suit. A red, one-piece bathing suit over a turtleneck, in the middle of a harsh Pennsylvania winter. No coat. No pants. No shoes. This was my first experience seeing someone experience psychosis. Let’s call her Sarah. Over the course of one incredibly cold January […]

Disordered thinking. Hearing voices. Living in an unreality. These are descriptions of some of the key symptoms of psychosis. We see those with lived experience as suffering, as having a second mental world thrust on them in the form of an illness that needs to be treated and cured. But what if psychosis is merely […]

I don’t think anything of leaving my house in the morning to take my kids to school or to go to work. It’s nothing for me to walk into a store, make small talk with a cashier, and hold the door for a stranger. But I’m one of the lucky ones. I don’t suffer from […]

From our first moments in life, we’re dependent on other people. Babies are born completely helpless, dependent on their caregivers for every need. Toddlers need someone to teach them the basics of life, from when to sleep and how to use the bathroom, to making friends and interacting with others. In childhood, we take this […]

Back in the 90’s, we often heard that video games made kids violent. Parent advocates in that day and age (and yes, I know I’m showing mine!) were quick to believe that playing video games would increase a child’s likelihood of committing violence in real life (or IRL, as the kids say). While a 2010 […]

I’m packing up my DSM 5-TR, lap top, notepad, perennial mug of tea and leaving community mental health in West Virginia. Working in the Appalachian mental health has been equal parts enlightening, startling, weird, and frustrating. Oh—and lest I forget—endlessly amusing. I was not raised in West Virginia and moved to work in community mental […]

We’ve talked about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) before on this blog (What is Borderline Personality Disorder? – Quiet Minds, but did you know that it has a complex relationship to Psychosis? According to Dr. Daniel Fox, a licensed psychologist and author who hosts a video series on BPD, the term “borderline” was given to BPD […]

So as a supervisor to psychology/counseling interns and early career mental health professionals, I am often asked to review the differences between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. I think people, who potentially have these disorders, and the loved ones who support them, should also know what symptoms to look for. Here is a mini-primer on both […]

We all know that music can change the way we feel. Think of a bar full of strangers all stopping to sing along to Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ or a church full of congregants raising their voices to ‘Amazing Grace’. As humans, we’re wired to respond, and it naturally follows then that symptoms […]