All romantic relationships have challenges and require some work. Being in a relationship with someone who has Asperger’s syndrome (AS) can create an additional challenge, according to psychologist Cindy Ariel, Ph.D, in her valuable book, Loving Someone with Asperger’s Syndrome.

That’s because you and your partner think and feel very differently, she says. And that leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding and miscommunication.

In her book, Ariel provides wise advice and practical exercises to help you improve your relationship and overcome common obstacles. (She suggests keeping a journal to record your responses.) Here are five ideas you might find helpful.

In the late 1990s and continuing on into the past decade, bipolar disorder started being diagnosed more and more in children. This became a problem only because the criteria for bipolar disorder in children have never been firmly established. Researchers developed their own set of criteria which contradicted the official diagnostic criteria for the disorder. The research criteria basically did away with the need for a manic or hypomanic episode, and instead replaced it with irritability and anger.

Coincidentally, a few pharmaceutical companies also released a set of medications — called atypical antipsychotics — which can be used to treat certain symptoms of bipolar disorder.

Doctors started diagnosing bipolar disorder in children with a looser set of criteria, and felt more at ease prescribing a treatment for it because these new medications had become available.

This set of circumstances led to a reported 40-fold increase in the past decade of bipolar disorder diagnoses in children. This suggests a pretty obvious problem in the diagnostic criteria, since nothing has changed so much in the past decade to offer a reasonable explanation for this sort of increase.

Even in today’s advanced world, there’s still much misunderstanding and stigma surrounding mental illness. Many of us are quick to dismiss people with mental illness as inferior or less than or wonder why they can’t just snap out of it.

Many of us also rarely believe that mental illness merits the same understanding and compassion as medical illnesses such as diabetes, cancer or heart disease.

Such stigma has devastating effects. It “prevents some people from accessing support and professional help and breeds shame and secrecy, which can significantly worsen a person’s condition as well as their prognosis — even to a point of being life-threatening, in the case of suicidal ideation,” according to Joyce Marter, LCPC, a psychotherapist and owner of Urban Balance, a multi-site counseling practice in the greater Chicago area.

That’s why it’s so important to talk about the facts. Below, experts share accurate information about mental illness.

It would be hard to open a popular magazine or psychology journal these days without finding some reference to a new advance in positive psychology. 

The research is pouring in from all over the globe indicating that sustainable ways to shift our thinking and perception toward a more optimistic perspective of life has amazing health and well-being benefits — not the least of which include a longer, healthier, and more productive life.

Here are six questions about some of the findings that may intrigue you and test your knowledge. The good news?  You can’t fail a positive psychology quiz!  Use this as a guide to learn more about the developing field. Or, if you got them all right, you know how good it is to be kind — so get out there and help someone!

Everyone feels frustrated and frazzled with their jobs from time to time. But burnout goes beyond the occasional bad day — or bad week.

“Burnout is a ‘silent condition’ induced by chronic stress that is characterized by emotional [or] physical exhaustion, cynicism and a lack of professional efficacy,” according to Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World.

Psychoanalyst Herbert J. Freudenberger coined the term “burnout” in 1974.¹ He defined burnout as ”the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.”

In his book, Freudenberger compared job burnout to a burned-out building.

1. He also coauthored, with Geraldine Richelson, the first book on burnout, called Burn-Out: The High Cost of High Achievement. [↩]

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) defended the actions of its agents yesterday, saying they were only following procedure when they insisted on doing a patdown on a traumatized 4-year old girl. I hope the family finds a way to sue the TSA for all of the psychological counseling this little girl is going to need in the future.

The girl, Isabella Brademeyer, had already successfully passed through the security checkpoint at the Wichita, Kansas airport. But then she went over to hug her grandmother — her grandmother — who was still being processed by the TSA. The TSA pulled the grandmother, Lori Croft, out for a pat-down because she apparently set off the metal detector.

But c’mon… the little girl? She’s 4. She didn’t know any better.

That set off a flurry of activity among the TSA agents, who then insisted that the 4-year old also needed to undergo a patdown. Again… because she hugged her grandmother.

It made the news this past week — researchers have found what they believe to be a blood test that may identify depression in teenagers. But some write-ups of the news got the importance of this possible test completely wrong.

Melissa Healy, writing for the LA Times, for instance, suggested in her opening sentence that, “Even among psychiatric disorders, depression is a difficult disease to diagnose.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Depression is so easy to diagnose, in fact, that family doctors — who have no special training in psychiatric disorders — feel perfectly qualified to do it every day. You simply ask a person about 9 possible symptoms, and if they agree to 5 or more of them, and have felt that way longer than 2 weeks, they likely have depression.

In fact, it’s so easy to diagnose, we have an online 8 question depression quiz that research has shown can screen for depression nearly as accurately as a professional.

So what’s the real significance of this potential blood test for depression? And what unintended consequences might it have?

Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant in the world.  We drink it in our coffee, we consume it in our cans of Coke and Pepsi. People take in so much of this drug, they rarely think twice about it.

Caffeine is found naturally in so many of our foods and beverages, we take it for granted. On top of that, it’s often referenced for its positive effects on attention and mental alertness.

Not only is caffeine found abundantly available in natural and supplemented foods and beverages, you’ll also find it in products sold over the counter for fatigue, migraines and colds.

But what are caffeine’s effects on our thinking? Is it helping or hindering our thought processes? Let’s find out…

Many of us have fond memories of Easter egg hunts from our childhood. I remember my parents hiding about two dozen little plastic colored eggs throughout our yard, and the excitement of going out to hunt for them with my two older brothers on a chilly Easter morning. The joy of finding one of those brightly colored eggs against the drab of the a winter-dead yard was one of the highlights of the day.

Because we didn’t have a lot of money growing up, the Easter eggs didn’t always contain a tiny toy or piece of candy. They often contained little slips of paper that you could turn in for something special in the future. An ice cream at Dairy Cream. A week of not having to dry the dishes (one of our chores). Little thoughts that would mean something to us kids (since not all gifts are instant or materialistic).

This holiday tradition remains fresh in my mind as one of those personal, family traditions I grew up with.

But my mom and dad’s role in this activity was limited to the purchase of the plastic eggs, putting things into them, and then hiding them in the yard. They never participated in the egg hunt, because it was a fun activity for the kids.

Stealing is not a crime — at least when you’re stealing ideas from a variety of artists. That’s the basis of Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. (A premise that he, of course, stole from other artists.)

In the book, Kleon shares unique insights on cultivating creativity.

Specifically, he presents the below 10 tips, which he created for a talk at a community college. They represent the things he wished he would’ve known when starting out.

On Wednesday, March 7, 2012, one of my mother’s worst nightmares came true.

At Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC) in Pittsburgh, Penn. — one of the state’s best psychiatric hospitals — a shooting spree left two dead and seven injured.

WPIC helps educate future psychiatrists, psychologists, and masters-level mental health therapists. Medical doctors of other specialties, including surgeons, anesthesiologists and radiologists, and other health care professionals also receive training there. It is an institution where education, science, and practice merge together.

I remember the day I spoke to my mother about potential danger at mental health hospitals and the possibility of violent occurrences becoming my reality as a therapist providing treatment to various populations. Her eyes said it all; I could see the terror across her face. Many — primarily professors, professional speakers, and coworkers — reassured me that such incidents were rare because most institutions were highly secure and provided their employees with emergency protocols and trainings. WPIC trains their employees on issues relating to mental health policies, emergencies, and “unusual occurrences” — that is, patient violence.

Do the physical twinges of anxiety make you even more anxious? For instance, for some people, even though the sweaty palms, racing heartbeat and shaky limbs are a result of exercise — and not an impending panic attack — they still experience intense anxiety about their anxiety.

This is called anxiety sensitivity. According to authors and clinical psychologists Margo C. Watt, Ph.D, and Sherry H. Stewart, Ph.D, in their excellent book Overcoming the Fear of Fear: How to Reduce Anxiety Sensitivity, anxiety sensitivity is “the tendency to respond fearfully to bodily sensations associated with fear and anxiety.” Put simply, it’s “the fear of fear.”

People who are prone to anxiety sensitivity tend to catastrophize, or automatically assume that the worst will happen. For instance, you might fear that your trembling might catch the attention of others or a racing heart might mean a heart attack.