Health + Wellness
Everything you need for a long and healthy life.
An Altered Sense of Reality; Schizophrenia
Throughout history many explanations have been offered to explain why people act in unnatural ways; from supernatural explanations such as possession by demons or gods to an imbalance of bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile). Today, western civilizations' theories of abnormality emphasize biological causes. Our advanced knowledge of human biology has allowed us to systematically name, diagnose and offer treatment for an ever expanding list of psychological disorders.
By Joe Snaith7 years ago in Psyche
A Pause for Cookies and Sunshine
I am not sad. I am not grief-stricken. I am me, in all my glory, an emotional being that feels and thinks too much. I remember long ago a friend proclaimed, “Tommy, you can’t express this side of you, people will make fun of you.” She was right. How I wanted so much for her to be wrong. She saw what I did not want to see: a world that does not care that you are hurting. And today it gives me pause, as I watched a tear cascade down the cheek of an unknown woman in the middle of Starbucks, for the world to see her at her weakest, her most vulnerable. What will people think of her, as she tries to quietly melt away into the world? Why, instead of reaching out, does the world shy away from pain?
By Thomas Switzer7 years ago in Psyche
Stigma Reduction Can Have Different Outcomes
Things have been said in the past few months that really got me wound up about the different types of stigma reduction. It consists of raising awareness, including being comfortable talking about the topic and normalization, including an acceptance of the topic.
By Bushra Shahriar7 years ago in Psyche
Okay
The table was grimy, covered in years of spilled coffee and cigarette ash, the hand-made doilies my stepmother had laid out making the edges between clean and filth stand out garishly. It was late, but summer in Norway means that there was light coming into the windows even at half-past two in the morning. Across from me was a chain-smoking man with my nose and dark hair, slack faced and glazed over with either fatigue or nicotine; it didn't seem possible to tell which. My stepmother hovered just outside the door to the area that served as dining, living, and occasional guest room in the tiny European house and my half-brother who was just a few months past seven years old was asleep upstairs. As my father smoked one cigarette after another, sometimes lighting the next before the first was fully finished, I tried to find my words, to put what had happened into the air between us.
By Amanda Frazier7 years ago in Psyche
Destigmatizing Mental Illnesses, Trauma, and Addiction
Suicide is never an easy thing to cope with or talk about. This year seems to have become the year that quite a few high-profile celebrities have elected to take the "easy" way out of their problems. The problem with regarding suicide that way, however, is that it's rarely an easy choice for the person who feels like life just isn't worth living anymore.
By Raven Aurora7 years ago in Psyche
My Experience of Parenting with Mental Illness
Being a parent is a huge responsibility, but for someone with mental illness, it can be very difficult. I became a parent at just eighteen years old, it wasn't planned and I had no idea I was pregnant. I had never been taught about pregnancy, contraception or child birth, so as you can imagine, I was in shock.
By Carol Townend7 years ago in Psyche