Book Review: What If This Were Enough?
At a time when we are relentlessly urged to do better, be better, improve ourselves, be happy, and display our happiness for all to see, what a relief it would…
Essays
Why We Believe Fake News
Denial is serious. It’s a refusal to acknowledge truth or reality. Sometimes, it has benefits, but it can also be our undoing and can have life-threatening consequences. Denial is particularly…
Depersonalization: A Strange Mental Illness Captured in Films, Music & Celebrity Confessions
For many in the world, depersonalization isn’t really a familiar word. Sometimes, it is used to refer to the act of removing human characteristics or individuality from someone or something….
How Discovering Your Core Values Could Prevent Discontent
I want to talk about values for a moment. Values is a small word that does not get the recognition it deserves. Its reputation is pushed aside by many, as…
Women as Property: An Existential Challenge in Psychotherapy, Part 2
This is Part 2 in a series. To read Part 1 click here. In this second installment, I examine the historical roots of women’s subordinate status around the world, but…
Women as Property: An Existential Challenge in Psychotherapy, Part 1
We live in an era when women increasingly demand to be treated equally with men. In the United States, this effort has had some success, at least in contrast to…
’13 Reasons Why’: Critique by a Recovered Depressive
I almost had the same fate as Hannah Baker. After having teetered so close to the edge of death, I am surprised a lot of days that I am actually…
Developing a Conscience: Knowing the Difference Between Right and Wrong
“Moral development is the process through which children develop proper attitudes and behaviors toward other people in society, based on social and cultural norms, rules, and laws,” according to the…
Rigidity versus Flexibility: The Key to Mental Health
Over recent decades the use of rigid language in our thought patterns has become a prominent focus in the understanding of problematic human behavior and emotional functioning. The origins of…
Treatment of Hoarding-Induced Trauma and Perpetration
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Standards Manual, Edition V (2013) reports that between 2 and 6% of the general population have a hoarding disorder. Once considered a type of obsessive…
Marriage and Mania: Disparate Depictions of Bipolar Disorder in Mainstream Romance Novels
When characters with mental illness appear in popular fiction, it is typically because the work itself focuses on the mental illness. However, there is a small contingent of fictional projects…
Splitting the Sexual Harassment Debate
First thing: If someone had told me a month ago that Charlie Rose and NBC unperson Matt Lauer had lost their jobs, possibly careers, due to sexual misconduct while Howard…
An Open Letter to Any Child Who Lost a Parent to Suicide
You will spend countless hours, days, and years asking why. Why you weren’t enough of a reason for them to stay and fight. Why they were able to end things…
Right, Wrong or Indifferent: Finding a Moral Compass
In this polarized political climate, people are vocal about their perceptions of right and wrong. What might appear to be simple, has become complex. The values we hold are, in…
Growing Up with a Psychotic Mother
I was ten when my mother had her first psychotic break. It was May. I was looking forward to lazy summer days at the pool, an art camp, a stack…