For the most part, mental health issues don’t come with the extremely straightforward diagnostic criteria that many physical illnesses do. You can’t check for the presence of certain antibodies to identify depression or take an x-ray for anxiety. So how do psychiatrists and physicians differentiate between, say, sadness and major depressive disorder, or anxiousness and […]
Online therapy is a thriving field — with good reason. While research shows that face-to-face therapy can be more beneficial in a lot of contexts, online therapy is accessible to a lot of people for whom traditional therapy may be out of reach in cost or distance, or because of stigma. But where reputable online […]
For many of us, games are an important, welcome escape. They give us social and creative outlets, provide temporary distractions from anxiety, and offer a little happiness when it’s otherwise hard to come by. But escapism can be harmful, particularly when we use it to avoid our problems and disengage from our lives. Writing for […]
Streaming and creating videos about mental health takes a lot of courage. Opening yourself up to stigma by talking about your mental health issues, and doing it on camera in public? It’s scary stuff. So why do it? At VidCon 2016, five popular YouTubers took part in the Everyone Struggles panel to talk mental health, […]
Last week, the Disrupting Japan podcast hosted Ayako Shimizu, the founder of Hikari Labs. The podcast features entrepreneurs taking on unusual challenges in the world of Japanese startups, and Ayako’s business certainly fits the bill: she’s attempting to bring a University of Auckland-developed therapeutic game to a country with a significant amount of stigma surrounding […]
As any dog owner knows, dogs can be very therapeutic. Generally speaking, though, they can’t actually be therapists. But what if they could? Exploring that magical possibility is a Ellie Beagle: Therapy Dog, an upcoming adventure game by Kelli Dunlap, PsyD. It’s about a canine therapist named Ellie who works with troubled dogs at her […]
Do you know the difference between a psychiatrist, and psychologist, and a counselor? And if so, do you also know the difference between an LPC, LMFT, LCSW, PsyD, and all those other letters you might find following the names of therapists in Psychology Today’s directory? If you do, then our hats are off to you, […]
Therapy can bring with it all kinds of surprises. For games reporter Nathan Grayson, one of those surprises was that the same issues that were complicating his relationships were also complicating his video game playthroughs. For Valentine’s Day, Grayson bared his heart to Kotaku readers, delving into the ways he sabotaged a recent romantic relationship. […]
The folks on Rooster Teeth’s Always Open are willing to talk about just about anything, but in last week’s episode they got particularly personal as they dished about mental health. Barbara Dunkelman, Blaine Gibson and Mariel Salcedo brought therapist and YouTuber Kati Morton to answer questions and have a thorough chat about their own issues, […]
I’ve been listening avidly to the first season of The Mental Podcast this week. It’s hosted by comedian Ian Boldsworth (also known as Ray Peacock), but it’s not always a particularly funny podcast. In it, Boldsworth brings in friends and loved ones to talk about mental health — his and theirs, and broader issues on […]
