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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
Is your obsessive table habit secretly a sign of OCD?
It happens at restaurants, at home, sometimes without even realizing it the automatic urge to sweep crumbs off the table while eating. It turns out this is far more common than most people think. According to psychologists, more than 60% of people do it regularly, making it one of the most widespread and largely unexamined […]
Impact of lifestyle on health
The World Health Organization estimates that 60% of the factors tied to individual health and quality of life are connected to lifestyle. That is not a small number. It places the weight of health outcomes squarely on the patterns people build and repeat across years, from what they eat to how they sleep to how […]
How to protect your mental health from health scares
Every time a new virus makes headlines, something happens in the body before the brain even has a chance to catch up. The heart quickens. The stomach tightens. And for millions of people who lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, that reaction can feel all too familiar. A study published in Mental Health Research found that […]
Antidepressants and withdrawal: The essential truth you must know
Antidepressants are back in the spotlight, and the debate around them is louder than ever. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in his role overseeing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently announced a campaign to reduce prescriptions for these widely used medications. The push, which HHS framed as an effort to curb what it […]