In an article about apologizing, I confessed to stealing a friend’s hair brush when I was six. That brush burned a hole in the back of my closet until the unbearable guilt ratted me out to my Mom. She marched me over to my friend’s house and stood at a supervisory distance while I did [...]

Filed under the “better late than never” department, we have word via The New York Times today that the U.S. military is finally recognizing the importance of fitness. Not just physical fitness, mind you, but mental fitness training, in the form of improving one’s resiliency:

The training, the first of its kind in the military, is [...]

Most folks think they know what sarcasm is and could recognize it if they heard it.
Most folks would be wrong.
Sarcasm is one of those areas of human behavior which has historically been a little difficult to study. But psychologists and researchers have gained some insight into sarcasm and how folks use it, and how well [...]

According to a news article we published today, simple everyday activities are all we need to keep our minds sharp as we age, mixed in with a healthy dose of daily physical exercise.
The study measured over 4,000 participants’ brain and cognitive functioning over a 6 year period to arrive at these results. Boiled down to [...]

It’s that time of year again, when we either strap on the backpack or we help our kids do it. I know several parents who sit down their young ones every September to go over the basic school essentials: Listen to the teacher. Be nice to everyone. Try new things.
In his book “You Don’t Have [...]

Texas is not a state you want to live in if you have a developmental or mental disability.
As we noted in June, Texas punished 268 abusive employees who take care of this vulnerable population in state-run care facilities (such as hospitals and schools). Previously, over 1,100 employees were fired or disciplined for mistreating the folks [...]

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing one of my first Internet buddies, James Bishop, who runs the site FindingOptimism.com and writes the Finding Optimism blog which has been voted as one of the top depression blogs by Psych Central. James also is the brainiac behind Optimism Software, a tool to help you track your [...]

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the opening of a mental health court in Philadelphia to help deal with a problem that’s overwhelming the U.S. justice system — poor mental health care in prisons, affecting up to 30 percent of those incarcerated.
Some of the problems our prisons face can be traced back to a [...]

A few weeks ago, a Beyond Blue reader asked me what to do regarding a toxic friendship. She wrote:
I’m in the process of dealing with a toxic friend. She is broken, in a different sort of way. We no longer have anything in common except for the past. Her relationship is highly [...]

In a study of 308 Facebook users, researchers discovered that folks who are more prone to jealousy will find Facebook just reinforces that jealousy.
The researchers created their own specialized quiz for the study, called the Facebook Jealousy scale. The scale is composed of 27 items that are measured on a 7-point scale from “very likely” [...]