Ashley Peterson

Some people claim that vitamins and minerals can cure serious mental illness. That's not what I'm talking about here. While in general, there's not a ton of research funding for supplements and herbal products, there are a number of supplements that do have some research evidence to support their effectiveness in depression.

One of the things I talk about in my new book Managing the Depression Puzzle is the idea of differentiating between illness treatment strategies and wellness promotion strategies. I think it’s a distinction that applies to mental illness in general. So what’s the difference?

It's not all that uncommon to hear people self-diagnose a mental illness or suggest a diagnosis for someone else. It's certainly something that seems tempting, but is it accurate?

When I first heard of ayahuasca, I was skeptical. How was a hallucinogen going to be helpful in treating mental illness?

There are a lot of introverts in this world, but society in general seems to have pretty strong expectations of extroversion, or at the very least extroverted behaviour. Susan Cain's bestselling book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking has helped many an introvert to realize they're not alone in the world, but it takes another step to get to the point of embracing introversion.

Sometimes it takes a while to figure out if what has happened to you counts as trauma. Not all trauma is capital-T Trauma, and not all trauma causes PTSD. PTSD at its core is a disorder of processing; the brain gets stuck processing the traumatic event(s), and those memories remain active but fragmented. Not everyone who experiences traumatic events gets fully stuck, but processing may be slow and interrupted.