Mental Health Topics

Depression on Halloween? You might be wondering, “Who’s depressed on Halloween?” That’s a good question. The answer: Many people are depressed on Halloween.

A young boy refuses to go to his first day of third grade. His mom thinks he must just be nervous for the new year and will be okay tomorrow, but he fights her for weeks to come. He also seems to have lost interest in playing his favorite sports,…

Making a schizophreniform disorder diagnosis can be tricky because its characteristics are identical to those of schizophrenia, considering it is a short-term type of schizophrenia. However, the key to distinguishing the two is looking at the very duration of the episodes. Schizophreniform episodes last for at least 1 month but…

None of us live perfect lives—we make mistakes, we lose our way, and sometimes we’re total victims of unfortunate circumstances. However, life’s blows hit some of us a little harder than others. For example, someone somewhere in the world has just gotten fired. Let’s call him Tom. While it might…

Max is 8 years old with a heavy interest in bugs and photography. He rarely makes eye contact when he talks to others—including his closest family members—and prefers to keep the conversation short…especially when something’s bothering him, like the bullies at school or a smashed lens on his camera. And…

Today is National Food Day, and it’s all about helping people “eat real.” It’s a day to take a step back from consuming sugary drinks and packaged foods in favor of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. You know, actual “food.” Not only can eating healthy help you lose weight, it…

Just recently I was watching an old episode of Criminal Minds that was on the TV at my gym. Hotch and his trustee sidekicks were investigating a young boy’s disappearance and trying to put all of the pieces together—but the case ultimately went back to the suspicious parents. By the…

There are several personality disorders that can have a direct and harmful effect on those who suffer with them—a few examples include dependent personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. These mental illnesses are characterized by strange thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns, which cause individuals marked distress and/or…

There are several sexual disorders that can have a direct and harmful effect on both males and females—a few examples include hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), sexual aversion disorder (SAD), and male or female orgasmic disorders. These disorders are characterized by specific sexual dysfunctions, such as low sex drive, aversion…

  Your locus of control is simply your belief system, it’s what you attribute your experiences, your successes and failures to. Now, you can have either an internal or an external locus of control: individuals with an internal locus of control attribute their successes and failures to their efforts and…

Dreams are weird: they’re these alternative realities that feel freakishly real until we finally realize we’re just dreaming or we wake up. I remember this one week where I had a significantly weird dream just about every night: in just 7 days, I fought anacondas, rode a train into the…

‘Never Eat Soggy Waffles.’ Not a bad piece of advice, but actually not a piece of advice at all—instead, an easy way to remember where North, East, South, and West are on a map. This mnemonic device made first grade a whole lot easier. As did ‘My Very Educated Mother…