Have you ever walked into a big warehouse store and immediately felt overwhelmed? I sometimes feel frozen in these places. There’s so much to look at. So many colors and details. It’s too much! I forget what I came in to buy and I want to leave as soon as I get what I came […]

Many of us are very grateful for the way our mental health medications help us to feel better. I can tell you from experience that even a mild antidepressant can get you feeling like yourself again when things once seemed hopeless and nothing else is working. But how do these drugs work their magic on […]

A few months back, we blogged about a British study focusing on COVID-19 patients that had experienced psychosis. Now, psychiatrists on this side of the pond are taking a look at Americans who have beat COVID-19 but are just beginning to experience symptoms of psychosis. Across the country, doctors are reporting that a small number […]

The state of California has made a major move to help individuals struggling with their mental health. Late last year, state governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation that will set up a certification process for mental health peer counseling. This means that individuals living with a mental health condition will help others like them who are […]

What would it be like to live with not just one schizophrenic in the family, but six of them? That’s the question that faced the Galvin Family in the new non-fiction book, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker. Six of the Galvin’s 12 children – all born between […]

I always knew my sister-in-law was smart. Years before she introduced me to her brother (who became my husband. See? Told you she was smart!), she would spend hours on end studying in our college dorm room. I knew she had a passion for psychology, but when she told me her post-grad studies would focus […]

If you’re a follower of true crime, you may have heard the words “the dark triad” uttered in the past when characters or a narrator is describing the crime’s suspect. This mysterious phrase gives you that feeling that something sinister is about to pop out from the shadows like Voldemort or Darth Vader, the phrase […]

Late last month Netflix released a new show called The Queen’s Gambit. The series focuses on the life of Beth Harmon, a young woman navigating the world of professional chess tournaments in the 1960’s. We get to follow Beth through the loss of her mother at a young age, her early obsession with the game […]

Let’s say you have a day when you hear voices and hallucinate, the world around you becoming like a terribly un-fun house of mirrors. This day is then followed by a day when you feel extremely sad and hopeless. ‘No wonder I feel this way,’ you think, considering the confusing and scary day that came […]

Fight. Flight. Freeze. These are the three commonly known F-words of the mental health landscape. (What? Were you expecting another F-Word?). Whether we think about it or not – and chances are good that we don’t – as humans, we respond to stimulation in the world around us in one of three ways. You might […]