Psychology Around the Net: June 15, 2019
This week’s Psychology Around the Net covers ways you can be “good” at therapy (no joke), highlights an 11-year-old Montreal boy who created a video game to help kids understand mental health, how focusing on a few key habits can help keep you grounded when life gets hectic, recognizing postpartum depression in fathers, and more.
Get to learning!
Therapists Share 7 Ways You Can Be “Good” at Getting Therapy: No, this definitely is not about winning at therapy. You won’t find tips on how to make your therapist like you or trick your therapist into thinking you’re not as sad as you actually are or that you’re “getting better.” Instead, this is about how you can get the most out of therapy. Several therapists weigh in on how you can better understand your role and your therapist’s role, how you can best set yourself up for success, why it’s important to make therapy a priority, and more.
When Anxiety and Panic Come to Work: Ralph Kellogg of the Forbes Human Resources Council and adjunct professor at Bellevue University, discusses anxiety and panic attacks in the workplace, how they were accepted when he first entered the workforce versus how they’re accepted in today’s job setting, and what leaders in the workplace can do when when an employee discusses experience with panic and anxiety. (Further Reading: How Business Leaders Can Tackle Anxiety in the Workplace, Especially Among the Young)
Montreal Boy Develops Video Game to Teach Kids About Mental Health After Father’s Death: When he was just two-years-old, Luke Toledo’s father committed suicide after struggling with mental illness. Now 11 years old, the Montreal kid has developed a video game to educate his peers about mental health and reduce any stigma they might associate with mental health. The game allows players to navigate characters through a journey of depression, jumping over gray blocks that represent depression (and display messages like “depression is a disease; it is not a person’s fault”) and eventually finding more colorful blocks (which represent the fact that “it gets better”). Luke even has plans to enhance the game with more mental health information and online meditation spaces so he can further teach kids how to take care of their mental health in real life.
How Ketamine Opens a New Era for Depression Treatment: If you keep up even slightly with drugs researched for various mental health treatments, you’ve probably heard of ketamine at least once or twice. Ketamine was approved and used as a battlefield anesthetic during the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and later became more widely known as a popular recreational drug, especially among the dance culture of the 1980s and on. Most recently, researchers have been studying ketamine’s mental health benefits. Now esketamine, a close relative of ketamine, is available via a nasal spray called Spravato made by Johnson & Johnson. Because of abuse concerns, esketamine is available only under supervision at a few hundred Johnson & Johnson-certified medical centers but the drugmaker hopes to win approval to use esketamine as a suicidal depression treatment by 2020.
12 Hard Things to Start Doing for Your Happiness: Doing things for your happiness should be easy, right? Not always. Sometimes, doing things for your happiness means stepping outside your comfort zone, changing your current natural thought processes, and sticking to your guns when it’s likely not a popular choice. While avoiding these kinds of things might bring you happiness in the short run (hey, who isn’t happy not having to deal with a bit of discomfort?), it won’t last. Check out this quick — but important — list of actions you can take to foster long-term happiness in your life.
‘I Was a Total Wreck’: Dads Experience Postpartum Depression and It’s No Joke: We often associate postpartum depression with mothers only; fathers experience postpartum depression, too, and unfortunately their pain often gets overlooked or ridiculed. A few experts weigh in on how men experience postpartum depression and how to recognize postpartum mental illness in men.
When Life Gets Busy, Focus on a Few Key Habits: We all live different lives, but one similarity we can always count on is that no matter how great our lives are overall, we are going to experience periods when things get busy, disordered, and stressful. During those chaotic times, it’s better to focus on short-term habits rather than long-term goals to keep your focus as well as not only survive, but thrive. Of course, just because they’re “short term” doesn’t mean they’re disposable. Your short-term habits should focus on key areas of your life and health including personal reflection, professional reflection, building and maintaining your relationships, and your physical and mental health.
Sparks, A. (2019). Psychology Around the Net: June 15, 2019. Psych Central. Retrieved on May 27, 2020, from https://psychcentral.com/blog/psychology-around-the-net-june-15-2019/