How working students can protect their health from burnout

A silent drain on your body and grades has a simple everyday fix Holding down a job while carrying a full course load is one of the toughest balancing acts around. Shifts bleed into study sessions, deadlines stack up, and the quiet expectation to keep everything running can slowly flatten even the most driven person. […]
Why grandparents matter more than ever for children’s mental health

Grandparents may play a far more important role in children’s emotional development than modern family life tends to acknowledge. With a large share of American teenagers reporting ongoing sadness or hopelessness, one child psychologist believes the decline of extended family involvement has quietly contributed to what public health officials have described as an ongoing crisis […]
7 signs your loved one’s mental state is slipping

Early warning signals worth taking seriously before it worsens Spotting a physical illness in someone close to you is often straightforward. A limp, a cough or a fever tends to announce itself. A decline in mental health rarely works that way, especially in someone who has learned to mask mental strain well on the surface […]
All women deserve great sex and doctors are finally saying it

Sexual health has long occupied an awkward space in medicine, discussed in hushed tones if at all, treated as secondary to what gets called “real” health concerns. Nicole Cirino, M.D., is a reproductive psychiatrist, certified sex therapist, and co-director of the Menopause and Sexual Medicine Program at OHSU’s Center for Women’s Health, which is recognized […]
How to stop people pleasing without losing the relationships that matter most to you

People pleasing is one of the most misidentified patterns in modern psychological life. From the outside it resembles generosity, agreeableness, and social sensitivity. From the inside it feels like anxiety management, the reduction of the fear that disagreement, disappointment, or conflict will cost something too valuable to risk. The distinction between genuine generosity and people […]
Mental health maintenance, the daily practices that protect emotional wellbeing before crisis arrives

Mental health conditions rarely arrive without precursor signals. The shift from ordinary stress or sadness into a clinically significant condition is almost always preceded by behavioral and emotional changes that are recognizable in retrospect, and often recognizable in real time by people who know what to look for. Identifying these warning signs early, in oneself […]
Body dysmorphic disorder is not vanity and it nearly costs lives

Mandy Rosenberg was eventually diagnosed with a disorder that had been quietly controlling her life for years. Body dysmorphic disorder, a mental health condition that traps people inside a distorted image of themselves, is not about vanity and it is not about caring too much about appearance. It is something far more consuming than that. […]
Anxiety relief — the 5 nerve exercises that could quiet your mind in minutes

Anxiety affects tens of millions of Americans, yet fewer than half of those living with it ever seek formal help. While professional medical care remains the most important step for anyone managing a diagnosed condition, emerging research is shedding light on a set of simple physical exercises that may offer meaningful relief by targeting one […]
What is alexithymia? The hidden condition affecting millions

Imagine feeling your heart race or your stomach tighten and having no clear idea whether you’re excited, anxious or upset. For millions of people around the world, that uncertainty is a regular part of life. The experience is known as alexithymia, a trait that affects how people recognize, interpret and describe their emotions. Although the […]
Motivation is being quietly stolen by modern life and what your brain is losing every single day

Motivation is one of the first things people notice slipping in the modern world, and most never connect it to what is actually happening inside their brain. The neurochemical most responsible for that drive, the one that makes pursuing goals feel urgent and worthwhile, is under a level of pressure that evolution never prepared it […]