Southwest Pennsylvania National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) held its annual conference at the beginning of April, and one of their afternoon breakout workshop presenters was Dr. Robert Hudak, assistant professor of psychiatry at Western Psychiatric ...

Disclaimer: The characters from these vignettes are fictitious. They were derived from a composite of people and events for the purpose of representing real-life situations and psychological dilemmas. Couples commonly talk about feeling unsupported ...

Mindfulness, or paying full attention to the present moment, can be very helpful in improving the cognitive symptoms of depression. These debilitating symptoms include distorted thinking, difficulty concentrating and forgetfulness. Cognitive symptoms can impair all areas of ...

Our monthly series delves into the personal and professional lives of clinicians from all over the U.S. Therapists reveal everything from the trials and triumphs of conducting therapy to their career path and coping strategies. This month ...

BOOK REVIEW.
The Beat Generation of the 1950s was part of an extremely controversial cultural phenomenon that continues to influence us to this day. Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and other members of this counterculture are still the subject of numerous works. Just last year, at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, a new movie version ...

“The texture of a depressed person’s brain functioning is that it’s operating in a depleted way,” according to Deborah Serani, Psy.D, a clinical psychologist and author of the book Living with Depression. This depletion ...

When we’re in pain, we want it to go away. Immediately. And that’s understandable. Chronic pain is frustrating and debilitating, said Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist and Psych Central blogger. The last thing we want ...

The idea of self-love and self-nurturing baffles most people, especially codependents, who by and large received inadequate parenting. The word “nurture” comes from the Latin nutritus, meaning to suckle and nourish. It also means to ...

A recent TV ad says it all. It follows a mom through her day with a little boy who appears to have some kind of developmental delay. The voice-over tells us ...

BOOK REVIEW.
As someone who has battled substance abuse, I was curious as to how a book could help the reader “overcome” addiction in a matter of 30 days or less. This undertaking, in Right Now Enough is Enough, by Peter Andrew Sacco, is an especially large one, given that so many loyal AA, NA, and other 12-step program ...

BOOK REVIEW.
This is truly a book I wish I’d had years ago. The aptly-titled Things I Wish I’d Known: Cancer Caregivers Speak Out, by Deborah J. Cornwall, is a welcome resource for those struggling to help the people they love who have cancer. My grandmother, mother, father, and wife all had cancer. My mother was a caregiver for both ...

BOOK REVIEW.
Sometimes a self-help book tries to be too many things. Beyond the Ego: Where Love, Joy, and Peace of Mind Await You, may be one of them. Written by David Mutchler, an author described as having earned an overwhelming number of degrees in education, philosophy, psychology, and social work, with advanced studies in religion, it is essentially ...