Articles on Policy and Advocacy
Narcissistic Abuse Affects Over 158 Million People in the U.S.
World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day is June 1, and everyone, unless you’re living under a rock, has heard the word narcissist. In fact, the word is tossed around so...
Book Review: Bad Feminist: Essays
The title of Roxane Gay’s New York Times bestseller is Bad Feminist. But you don’t have to be any kind of feminist, or even have any interest in feminism,...
Book Review: The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream
Courtney E. Martin opens The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream with the fact that “For the first time in history, nearly two-thirds of Americans do not believe...
Book Review: The Power Paradox
Want to understand power? Forget Machiavelli! For too long, argues Dacher Keltner, author of The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, we have accepted unquestioningly the version...
Book Review: When Your Child Is Gay
In late October 1996, Wesley Davidson discovered a note in her son’s bedroom. “It was a love note, my son’s name entwined with another boy’s surrounded by a heart.”...
Book Review: Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants
For those in the field of mental health, the debate about the efficacy of pharmaceutical medications has been an enduring and uncertain one, and this debate can sometimes end...
Book Review: Redeemable: A Memoir of Darkness & Hope
It has been said that to know true redemption, one must first know true devastation or destruction. After taking a step into the world of Erwin James through the...
Book Review: Negotiating the Nonnegotiable
Life is about conflict and negotiation. We have a sense of who we are and what holds meaning for us. What is meaningful is not the same for everyone,...
Book Review: Children Who Fail at School But Succeed at Life
Imagine being a child in elementary school who is not only overly active and engaging with adults, but also gets bored very easily, which results in poor grades and...
Book Review: The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin
It’s hard to watch the documentary Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street and imagine any of its five young subjects surviving past the age of thirty....
Book Review: Meaning Systems & Mental Health Culture
In his new book, Meaning Systems and Mental Health Culture: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Counseling and Psychotherapy, James T. Hansen argues that although meaning systems are central to the...
Hey, It’s 2007! Let’s Rate Doctors!
Most people gain value from reading reviews about products and videos and such online. We read a review of a book on and believe we can trust most...
Obama on Mental Health Care
The following statement was provided to Alicia Sparks of Mental Health Notes by Senator Barack Obama’s campaign in his bid for the Presidential election in 2008: Dear Friend,...
Suicide and the Military
When someone commits suicide, it’s a tragedy. When we are losing more soldiers to suicide than to the Afghanistan war, it’s a tragic epidemic. In June of 2010, there...
The Media and Mental Illness: The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous
When portraying mental illness and psychotherapy, the media tends to get it wrong — a lot — which has far-reaching results. Inaccurate depictions fuel stigma and may prevent people...
