Depression is a Treatable Illness According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 17 million adult Americans suffer from depression during any 1-year period. Depression is an illness that carries with it a high cost in terms of relationship problems, family suffering and lost work productivity. Yet, depression is treatable. Everyone feels down […]
Anxious, depressed, or both?
Anxious people fret. Depressed people brood. Anxious people worry about what may happen, while depressed people ruminate about what has already happened. In each case, life becomes more and more constricted. Sometimes the two conditions may look similar because both use avoidance as a coping strategy. Think of avoidance as going back to bed and […]
How Anger Hurts Relationships
Getting angry…is easy and everyone can do it; but doing it . . . in the right amount, at the right time, and for the right end, and in the right way is no longer easy, nor can everyone do it. —Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (II.9, 1109a2 Managing Conflict Rather than Eliminating Conflict Conflict is inevitable […]
Finding Happiness: You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Grasping for Happiness may Lead to Depression Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness. – Mill Judging by the huge number of psychological and self-help books claiming to know the secret to happiness and how people can increase it, we have become a nation […]
How Lifestyle Changes Can Be Therapeutic—And What To Do When They’re Just Too Hard
How Lifestyle Changes Can Be Therapeutic—And What To Do When They’re Just Too Hard The October 2011 issue of American Psychologist featured an article on how mental health professionals significantly underestimate how unhealthy or missing lifestyle factors—for instance, nutrition and diet, or service to others— contribute to many emotional health problems. It also discussed how […]
