Mental Health Topics

Listening to music increases productivity and happiness at work. This, from researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University. The research team analyzed emotional and physiological responses to music, as well as how these responses affect work performance. They found that all music helps productivity and increases happy feelings at work, but certain…

Listening to music and practicing mindfulness can aid stroke recovery. Researchers from the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and East Anglia recruited 72 participants who had suffered from a stroke and divided them into three groups. One group listened to music, another to audiobooks, and the final group to music as…

Watching Spiderman and Antman might help you overcome your fear of bugs. Researchers from Ariel University and Bar-Ilan University say that doing so can act as exposure therapy for people who are afraid of bugs. Exposure therapy is exposing oneself to their phobia until they’re no longer afraid. With this…

Spirituality varies from person to person; however, it is essentially the practice of finding peace and purpose in life. It also involves evaluating and creating one’s identity—their purpose, experiences, and connections. Many benefits come with tapping into your spiritual self; first, it can help you to cope during stressful times,…

Here’s an undeniable truth a lot of us don’t like to talk about: we all have problems. We suffer from emotional turmoil—post-breakup, mid-job change, as a consequence of depression… you get the idea. And often, to cope with these unfavorable circumstances and difficult feelings, we need to reach outside of…

You’ve probably come across an online mental health forum before. It’s a site for talking about all things mental health, from depression to breakups, stress, anxiety, family issues, and so on. But now there’s this new thing (which isn’t really a new thing) everyone’s talking about: online counseling. And you’re…

Online counseling—or maybe you know it as teletherapy, e-counseling, or cyber-counseling—challenges the traditional therapy model, being that sessions are held online via video, phone call, or chat widget. That being said, it isn’t a completely new idea… but it’s certainly picked up speed and increased in popularity. The concept of online…

A machine learning algorithm was used to analyze children’s speech and identify depression and/or anxiety with 80% accuracy. Three features proved to indicate these illnesses: low pitch, repeated speech inflections and subject, and a higher pitch when surprised. Kids came up with a three-minute story on the spot, of which…

Mindfulness can help caregivers of military veterans cope with stress and anxiety. This, according to a study from the University of Illinois. Researchers taught mindfulness to 11 informal caregivers of veterans, such as spouses and other family members. These participants met for two hours each week, over an 8-week period,…

Assuming too much responsibility could increase your chances of developing OCD and anxiety. Researchers from Hiroshima University surveyed American college students about their feelings related to three types of responsibility: responsibility to prevent or avoid harm, responsibility for negative results, and responsibility to resolve a problem. The team found that…

Do you have trouble falling or staying asleep? Researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience say your insomnia might stem from emotional distress. The team asked participants to relive shameful moments from their past, while receiving an MRI scan of their brain activity. Researchers found that good sleepers neutralized those…

The unfortunate reality is that mental illnesses do go undiagnosed, for years or even lifetimes. There are multiple layers to why this occurs, including the individual’s failure to recognize that something is wrong or that the problem requires mental health treatment—additionally, many are hesitant to seek treatment out of fear…