The blog index provides an overview of some of the posts that are part of major recurring themes on Mental Health @ Home, to serve as an easy starting point to explore the site.
The weekly blog schedule is:
- Community features may show up Mon–Thur.
- Wednesdays are MH book reviews
- Thursdays are often for “about me” type posts
- Fridays are posts from the What is… Insights into Psychology series, which looks deeper into the meaning of a variety of psychology-related terms
- Saturdays are weekend wrap-ups, a look at what’s going on in my world each week
- Sundays are for info and discussions about all things blogging
Explore MH@H
Resource Pages
These pages go into depth on some of the major areas of focus on MH@H, with a mix of information, tools, and links to other resources. You can find these in the menu bar above.
Posts By Diagnosis
Here you can find posts tagged under each of these conditions, including guest posts by emerging bloggers.
- Anxiety disorders, emetophobia
- Bipolar disorder
- Conversion disorder
- Dissociative disorders
- Eating disorders
- Kleptomania
- OCD
- Oppositional defiant disorder
- Pornography addiction
- Personality disorders: antisocial / avoidant / borderline / dependent / histrionic / narcissistic / obsessive-compulsive / paranoid / schizoid & schizotypal
- Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
- PTSD
- Schizoaffective disorder
- Schizophrenia
The Managing the Depression Puzzle page provides an overview of all things depression on MH@H.
The Psych Meds Made Simple page gives an overview of medication-related content on MH@H.
Head over to the Making Sense of Psychiatric Diagnosis page for more on psychiatric diagnoses.
Popular Tags on MH@H
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Find Posts by Category
Conceptualizing Chronic Mental Illness
The way that we conceptualize our illnesses influences how we relate to them. The following posts discuss this issue:
- Getting spoonie with it:
- Rainbow Model of Mental Illness Functioning: a way of conceptualizing the complexity of mental illness symptoms and functional domains
- Is “Chemical Imbalance” a Useful Simplification of Mental Illness?: Depression and other mental illnesses are often described as a chemical imbalance, but that’s not really accurate. Is it still useful as a simplification?
- A psychiatric view:
- The social factors in mental illness, which are often intersectional, shape how we experience illness
Negativity & Toxic Positivity
Mental illness can be really hard, and expecting that we should just “choose happiness” is ludicrous.
- Are you an unsafe person?: maybe we shouldn’t be labelling people as good or bad
- Book review: Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich
- Happiness is a choice, my ass: it can’t be a choice if mental illness takes it off the menu entirely
- It gets better… or does it?: some things do get better, but some just don’t
- Pessimism vs. realism: is negativity pessimistic if it’s actually realistic?
- Positive psychology: is it a good fit for mental illness?
- “Should” you avoid negative people?
- The “toxic person” label
- You don’t need to be positive: other emotions are just as valid
Recovery & Wellbeing
What can support it?
- Action for Happiness: making joy about action rather than emotion
- Contemplative Practices
- Emotional support animals
- Music
- Painting
- Peer support
- Therapeutic writing/blogging
Treatment Toolbox
- Medications: the Psych Meds Made Simple page has an overview of all things medications on MH@H
- Therapy: see below; as well, the COVID-19/Mental Health Coping Toolkit has links to a broad range of sites that offer free therapy-based workbooks and worksheets
- Brain stimulation for depression (e.g. ECT, TMS)
- Alternatives
- Hospitalization: this is sometimes necessary, but it can be problematic when it’s involuntary; you can read about my own experiences in Postcards from the Loony Bin
- Community treatment: Open Dialogue is a novel approach to managing psychosis
Besides illness treatment strategies, it’s important to have wellness promotion to take care of your whole self.
Therapy
Psychotherapy alphabet soup provides an overview of several types of therapy, while Understanding Mental Health Provider Credentials tells you what the letters after mental health professionals’ names mean.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- ACT life compass
- Dead people goals
- Role of Values in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
- Suppression of unwanted thoughts – does it work?
- Thoughts as leaves on a stream: a metaphor for de-fusing from thoughts
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Behavioural experiments
- CBT for insomnia and for chronic pain
- Cognitive distortions – and on a related note, Albert Ellis’s 12 irrational beliefs
- Core beliefs
- Exposure and response prevention (used for OCD)
- Safety behaviours: you think they make you safer, but they actually just reinforce anxiety
- The should monster and shoulding ourselves to death
- What, You Don’t Do Mind-Reading?
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
- Book review: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
- Emotion myths
- Wise mind: represents the overlap between rational mind and emotion mind.
- Wise Words from DBT Creator Marsha Linehan
Psychoanalysis/Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Therapy Tools
There’s also some ideas in the post Therapy Tools for Mental Health.
This post on the diving reflex explains how you can take advantage of this innate reflex to slow down your heart rate.
The post also explains the biology behind why you should slow down your breathing when experiencing acute anxiety/panic.
The therapy mini-ebook collection is also available from the MH@H Download Centre. It includes:
I have a strong educational background in science and utilizing research, combined with a finely tuned BS-detector. Debunking pseudoscience and public health misinformation makes my mind do a happy dance, and I like to write about it!
How to Spot Pseudoscience talks more about how to fine-tune your BS radar. The main idea, though, is to use critical thinking. Don’t accept things just because they’re put in front of you.
Hallmarks of pseudoscience:
- Starting with a belief, and then working back from there, with an “it exists until you can prove it doesn’t”, unlike a scientific “until you prove it, it doesn’t exist” approach
- Broad statements about what something does, but no scientifically sound mechanism is described
- Explanations based on quantum physics coming from people with no physics background
- Energies and energy flows are described without any actual evidence of their existence
Critical Thinking, Media & Research Literacy
- Can you believe statistics?: We’re presented with statistics all the time, but often more information is needed to actually evaluate what they mean
- Conspiracy Theory Psychology
- How Do You Search for Information?: tips on using Google and Wikipedia
- Separating Reality from Fake Health News: There’s a lot of wrong information floating around about the COVID-19 pandemic, so how can you spot it?
- The importance of what we don’t know we don’t know
- What Political Polls Mean – And What They Don’t
- Why research literacy matters in mental health: a basic understanding of research makes it easier to separate the science from the BS
Debunking Pseudoscience
- Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
- Essential oils
- Homeopathy:
- “Natural” health products
- Placebo effect: what exactly is it?
- Psychic surgery
- Reiki
- Vitamins to “cure” mental illness?
- Law of attraction: There’s something to be said for the idea that believing something positive will help you to act in ways that increase the chances that something positive will end up coming your way. Except the law of attraction says don’t act, just vibrate out to the universe.
- Speaking of which, do thoughts vibrate? The law of attraction relies on pseudoscience to yes, but actual science says nope, not a chance.
- Can You Manifest a Purple People Eater? I’m guessing probably not.
Trauma
The MH@H Download Centre has a mini-ebook on PTSD Treatment Options.
I’ve reviewed some remarkable books by fellow bloggers who have written about their experiences with trauma; you can find these in the book reviews directory. A number of bloggers have contributed guest posts about trauma as part of the emerging blogger series; these are listed in the community features series directory.
- Creating a Trauma Account
- EMDR Therapy (guest post)
- How Trauma-Informed Practice can Improve Mental Health Care
- SKIDS: Traumatized Kids and the School System
- TED Talks on Trauma
- The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences
- The Neurobiology of Traumatic Fight/Flight/Freeze
- Trigger Warnings: are they useful?
- What is… series posts: flashbacks; intergenerational trauma; polyvagal theory; trauma vs. PTSD; window of tolerance
- Why isn’t Complex PTSD in the DSM-5?
Work, Disability, and Workplace Bullying
After experiencing workplace bullying in 2016, my nursing career began to crumble due to depression. I last worked in 2019, and started on disability benefits in 2021.
- Adventures Applying for Disability
- An Identity Milestone: No Longer a Nurse
- Disclosing Mental Illness at Work
- Facing Job Interviews with Mental Illness
- Flush… Is That My Career Going Down the Toilet?
- How to Manage Working with a Mental Illness Disability
- Mental Illness Disability & Identity Shifts
- Mental Illness and Employment Discrimination
Workplace bullying
- Looking For Forgiveness – And Finding it in an Unexpected Way
- Making Sense of Workplace Bullying
- The Effects of Bullying on Mental Health
- The Other #metoo
