Mental Health Topics

Any life transition can come with an unhealthy dose of stress. And when you feel overwhelmed, you might find that performing necessary tasks becomes nearly impossible. When you’re going through a major move, this kind of knee-jerk reaction is expected; unfortunately, it also comes when you need to be on…

Compassion is sharing someone’s pain without sharing their suffering, according to meditation teacher and researcher Shinzen Young. While this sounds kind of contradictory, there’s a point to Young’s logic.   One of the core skills of meditation involves focusing on the details of your experience while also accepting that experience…

As you may know, there are gender disparities in mental health. Why? Because men and women have biological, environmental, and societal differences, all of which play important roles in our health and wellbeing. And one common theme is that women are more likely to seek mental health help than men….

Asking for help isn’t easy—but it is necessary, especially when your health and wellbeing is at risk. When it comes to women, common problems include mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, low self-esteem, problems in the workplace, guilt and self-blame, and relationship issues. Fortunately, counseling can help women to address…

Major depression is one of the most prevalent mental illnesses in our world today. According to Mental Health America (MHA), more than 16 million people in the US are affected by major depression in any given year. And while people all sexes can develop this condition, it is more widespread…

Most of us could probably agree that social media can damage self-esteem—especially in women. Think about it: every magazine has a slender woman on the cover and a story within about how she lost the weight—and how you can, too. Additionally, TV shows and movies cast female leads that make…

There are two main categories of memory: short and long-term memory, which differ in what information is stored and how. Short-term memory is essentially responsible for storing temporary information and deciding what to do with it: throw it away or pass it to our long-term memory. Long-term memory, on the…

A new study says that women who go on dates just for free food are more likely to exhibit dark personality traits like psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. A “foodie call” is where someone goes out with someone despite a lack of romantic interest because they want a free meal. This…

A cardinal feature of depression, like other mental health conditions such as anxiety or trauma, is difficulty with memory: remembering, recalling, and—sometimes in severe cases—recognizing people, things, tasks, memories, events, and to-dos. Often, people with depression will have great difficulty remembering where things in the house or at work may…

Alzheimer’s diminishes one’s memory, ability to think, and everyday functioning; currently, an estimated 5.8 million Americans suffer from the disease. That said, memory loss doesn’t always signify Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia—instead, we might experience a simple lapse in our memory. It’s important to distinguish the difference and understand…

A recent study says emotional or traumatic events can create false memories, despite the widespread belief that traumatic events are more vivid and, therefore, reliable.  The latter belief is called flashbulb memory, which says that emotional events cause us to completely capture the context of the event and our reaction…

Rarely do we second guess the validity of our memory, but the truth is that our minds do sometimes deceive us by creating false or distorted memories. A recent study demonstrated this phenomenon, as participants claimed to remember viewing footage of United 93 crashing in Pennsylvania on September 11—but this…