On October 6, 2009, the popular television show Oprah aired a program about a 7 year old girl, Jani, who has “schizophrenia.” Schizophrenia is fairly rare within the population to begin with; it’s nearly unheard of in children as young as 7. That’s what made this an interesting and engaging program. The disorder apparently started [...]

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that with recession-related anxiety saturating the very air we breathe, we might be a bit slow to trust our financial decisions.
For decades, economists did not find much merit in connecting psychology with finance. That changed when a young economics professor from the University of Chicago, Richard [...]

We’re often told, “You should sleep on it” before you make an important decision. Why is that? How does “sleeping on it” help your decision-making process?
Conventional wisdom suggests that by “sleeping on it,” we clear our minds and relieve ourselves of the immediacy (and accompanying stress) of making a decision. Sleep also helps organize our [...]

As Dr. John Grohol has cogently argued, there are many reasons to be skeptical of “Internet Addiction” as a discrete and specific “disorder” or diagnosis. Yet I am impressed, and a bit dismayed, by all the attention this issue seems to garner in the popular media. I don’t intend any disrespect to the reporters and [...]

Ever since I was discharged from the inpatient psychiatric program at Johns Hopkins, I have kept a mood journal where I daily record the amount of hours I sleep, my mood (rating it a fantastic and serene no. 1 to a frazzled, and I’m-headed-back-to-the-community-room no. 5), any foods that have triggered hyperactivity or irritability (such [...]

“Mental illness is just part of the human condition,” Glenn Close said Oct. 21 on “Good Morning America.” Halleluia! A Hollywood response to all the scientology. Today Close spoke out for the first time on television about the legacy of mental illness in her own family: Her sister, Jessie, suffers from bipolar disorder, and Jessie’s [...]

As promised, this is one in a series of posts I’ll write about online interventions that help treat specific mental health concerns. In this post, I’ll talk about some of the depression programs available online.
The Australian National University’s Centre for Mental Health Research is one of the unsung heroes in the development and research of [...]

One of the classic books on how to establish better personal boundaries is “Boundaries: When to Say Yes, When to Say No, To Take Control of Your Life” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. This summer I brought it to the pool with me the week before our family vacations–just to help me get into [...]

Well, today’s the day. After many months of long, hard work by many talented professionals — among them, Sarah Greene, managing editor; co-editors Jessie Gruman and Charles Smith; and Alan Greene, deputy editor — the Journal of Participatory Medicine is now live!
What is the Journal of Participatory Medicine? And what the heck is “participatory medicine” [...]