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Articles and Essays ^{Top Rated}
The old index of articles and essays I authored or published on Psych Central. You can still view this page for historical purposes, but all of the articles listed there are also listed within this index. (Indexed for archival purposes.)
Preview Website - 8-Mar-2000 - Hits: 9741 - Rate This | Details

Choosing Happiness in Our LIves
All too often in our lives, we place happiness squarely out of reach. I hear people complain, "I'll never be happy," and "Happiness just wasn't meant for me." Unfortunately, these statements are symptomatic of the problem. Happiness is not out of reach; we just put it there due to other, often less important things, getting in our way...
Preview Website - 17-May-2001 - Hits: 2891 - Rate This | Details

Ideas for Building Self-Esteem
This article from Psych Central offers a few good ideas to help you build your self-esteem.
Preview Website - 15-Nov-2004 - Hits: 2615 - Rate This | Details

Love Versus Infatuation ^{Top Rated}
Love versus infatuation, important considerations before you take the plunge in a new relationship.
Preview Website - 6-Nov-2004 - Hits: 2358 - Rate This | Details

Mental Health Information ^{Top Rated}
This web site offers mental health information that covers a variety of subjects such as depression, family and marriage counseling, attention deficit disorder (ADD), forensic victim psychotherapy, addictions, and more, from Dr. Marty Tashman.
Preview Website - 28-Jun-2001 - Hits: 1780 - Rate This | Details

10 Things You Might Not Know About Mental Health
Dr. Grohol's cheat sheet of mental health is listed here, in 10 easy to read and understand bullets. Read up, and, yes...it is okay to "cheat" on this one.
Preview Website - 29-Mar-2006 - Hits: 484 - Rate This | Details

A disorder by any other name...
An article about how the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) has reinvented mental disorders as medical brain diseases, while the evidence is still coming in. NAMI emphasizes the biology of mental disorders, while virtually ignoring the psychological and social components of disorders.
Preview Website - 11-Feb-2004 - Hits: 452 - Rate This | Details

About the Winter Blues ^{Top Rated}
This article from Psych Central is an introduction to the winter blues, also known as seasonal affective disorder. Written by John Grohol, Psy.D.
Preview Website - 15-Nov-2004 - Hits: 1576 - Rate This | Details

Allan J. Comeau, Ph.D. ^{Top Rated}
Dr. Comeau writes a weekly column, Your Mind Matters, which is published in several Southern California newspapers. His site archives a large number of these columns on a wide range of mental health topics.
Preview Website - 26-Jul-2004 - Hits: 427 - Rate This | Details

An Overview to Understanding Mental Disorders
Mental disorders and mental illness are often misunderstood by most folks who either think everyone who's got one is just plain crazy or has a medical disease that simply needs medications. Neither extreme captures the complexity of mental disorders. This article examines the complex causes and origins of mental disorders found in most people, and describes how they are most commonly treated today.
Preview Website - 11-Feb-2004 - Hits: 758 - Rate This | Details

Capture that Springtime Optimism!
With spring being the season of new growth, can a person go back mentally and spiritually with their life? There is a discussion of Easter, and mainly how to "go back" to help reclaim a person's mental "springtime".
Preview Website - 29-Mar-2006 - Hits: 270 - Rate This | Details

Dangers of Diagnosis
It's a dangerous thing to throw around labels and diagnoses as though they have little meaning. This article examines those dangers and describes better ways to talk about these labels to maintain their informative value while losing their stigma.
Preview Website - 11-Feb-2004 - Hits: 534 - Rate This | Details

Detecting deception: A Quick Review of the Research
An article that provides a literature review of the research in the area of detecting when people are lying or trying to be deceptive. It shows that our track record in accurately detecting deception is fairly poor.
Preview Website - 11-Feb-2004 - Hits: 523 - Rate This | Details

Development of CERS
What's the big deal about this? Try getting psychotherapy services from your HMO or insurance company and you'll soon realize what the "big deal" is. There are two major and a whole lot of minor problems with regards to how managed care hurts your ability to access timely and effective treatment. The first problem is that insurance companies, looking out for the bottom line, will seek to limit either the time or type of psychotherapeutic services offered you. The second problem is that these same companies seek to limit your choices in who you can see.
Preview Website - 1-Apr-2000 - Hits: 671 - Rate This | Details

Dispelling the Myth of Violence and Mental Illness
An article about the relationship (or lack thereof) between higher rates of violence and people who have a mental illness. This myth continues to be published and reprinted in newspapers and new articles regularly.
Preview Website - 11-Feb-2004 - Hits: 352 - Rate This | Details

Dr. Grohol's Presentations
A selection of professional presentations made by Dr. Grohol over the years. Most have to do with describing how the Internet is being used by mental health professionals and consumers.
Preview Website - 13-Feb-2001 - Hits: 811 - Rate This | Details

Employment and Mental Illness
It's often a vicious circle. Having mental or emotional problems can make it harder to get a job, or to get the job that you want. Being unemployed or settling for a job that is unsatisfying to you doesn't do your mental health any favors either. The problem is quite serious and breaking the cycle can be difficult. Many homeless people have mental health issues, without which perhaps they would have jobs and access to housing, but not having an address contributes further, and makes it that much harder to get a job. Sometimes one thing just seems to build on top of another, making it harder to see solutions to anything. Yet there are also people who have mental and emotional struggles, yet they have good jobs. Sometimes they may struggle with work-related issues also, but they can serve as an inspiration and example to others.
Preview Website - 22-Dec-2004 - Hits: 340 - Rate This | Details

Families in Business
Psychologist and family/business coach Kathy J. Marshack, Ph.D. writes about the psychological issues that face couples and families that work together. These issues include addiction, family disagreements and more.
Preview Website - 21-Mar-2008 - Hits: 18 - Rate This | Details

FAQ of Life
Everything you wanted to know about mental health and disorders online. This FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions file) will answer your common questions on topics that I often receive in email. I figured if I wrote this once, I would save myself from having to write the same things over and over again, trying to find new ways of essentially saying the same things! If, after having read this whole thing, you still don't have an answer to your question, well then, go ahead and write... We are only on this planet for a very short time (in my book anyway) and I want to help out in any way that I can while I'm here.
Preview Website - 1-Apr-2000 - Hits: 1585 - Rate This | Details

Five Easy Tips for Keeping Your New Year's Resolutions ^{Top Rated}
Five easy-to-digest tips for helping you keep your resolutions in the New Year. Read it and find the help you need to stick with them this year!
Preview Website - 11-Feb-2004 - Hits: 236 - Rate This | Details

Gambling Addiction or Greed?
Harvard Medical School has an ethical conundrum on their hands with their Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders. How can the gambling industry fund this supposedly independent institute 100% and not be biased in the research it approves for funding??
Preview Website - 6-Nov-2004 - Hits: 288 - Rate This | Details

Getting Help for Procrastination ^{Top Rated}
Procrastination is a common issue amongst students and many adults. There are many who struggle with deadlines everyday, with the feeling of impending doom as the exam or project date looms. It is one of the largest problems seen in college counseling centers, and it is something nearly everyone has had to deal with at some point in their lives. This article describes strategies to help yourself overcome procrastination.

The first thing you have to know about procrastinating is that you should set your expectations realistically. It took you a lifetime to get to where you are today in terms of procrastination, so it's not something you can fix overnight. But it is something you can fix, all you need is the dedication to do so and the willingness to try something new.
Preview Website - 10-Jan-2005 - Hits: 796 - Rate This | Details

Healing Through the Light Within
There is a natural process of inner healing that can be facilitated through certain practices and understandings.
Preview Website - 4-Mar-2005 - Hits: 1409 - Rate This | Details

Latinas in Pursuit of Healing
"Latinas in Pursuit of Healing: Cultural Implications for Counseling Sexually Abused Latinas"
Preview Website - 30-Jan-2008 - Hits: 12 - Rate This | Details

Learn About Procrastination ^{Top Rated}
Procrastination is a common issue amongst students and many adults. There are many who struggle with deadlines everyday, with the feeling of impending doom as the exam or project date looms. It is one of the largest problems seen in college counseling centers, and it is something nearly everyone has had to deal with at some point in their lives. This article describes the roots of procrastination, while the second article describes strategies to help yourself overcome procrastination.
Preview Website - 10-Jan-2005 - Hits: 421 - Rate This | Details

Modern Love: Ways Women Can Be More Assertive
Ladies, do you want to be more assertive in relationships? Would you like to be able to stand up for yourself in dating situations? Would you like to be more specific and strict in whom you are going out with or involved with? Read this article by Jane Collingwood, and stand up for yourself!
Preview Website - 29-Mar-2006 - Hits: 615 - Rate This | Details

Music for meditation, relaxation and stress management
An article about Music and Stress Management from musician Paul Adams. "I wanted to keep this very concrete. This is not a clinical presentation. There are sub branches that also mention areas of Panic and Depression as well as Diaphragmatic Breathing. The approach is purposefully simple."
Preview Website - 24-Apr-2004 - Hits: 406 - Rate This | Details

My Turf or Ours?
Musings about psychotherapy and why it doesn't always work as well as it should.
Preview Website - 15-Jan-2003 - Hits: 452 - Rate This | Details

New England Psychodiagnostics Library
Various articles, from sexual harassment to back pain disability.
Preview Website - 26-Dec-2005 - Hits: 114 - Rate This | Details

Psychology of Weblogs
Weblogs (or "blogs") and their brethren, online journals, have infiltrated every crevice of our online society today. You can’t shake a URL these days without stumbling upon someone’s attempt at self-disclosure or masturbatory linking. Weblogs have been around since the very first Web site was popularized, even before Yahoo, making them nearly as old as the Web itself. Yet it is only in recent years that they’ve gained greater attention and notoriety, as though a new phenomenon. If they were new, at least they might be interesting...
Preview Website - 17-May-2001 - Hits: 784 - Rate This | Details