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
The resource pages go into depth on some of the major areas of focus on MH@H and contain a mix of info, tools, and 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, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic
- Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
- PTSD
- Schizoaffective disorder
- Schizophrenia
The official book pages for Managing the Depression Puzzle, Psych Meds Made Simple, and Making Sense of Psychiatric Diagnosis, have lots of info and links to related posts on depression, psych meds, and psychiatric diagnosis.
Popular tags on MH@H
about me addiction anxiety bipolar disorder blog community blogging blogging tips book review books brain cbt cognition cognitive behavioral therapy depression disability discrimination emotions health identity major depressive disorder medication mental health mental health care mental illness mindfulness mood disorder personality traits prejudice pseudoscience psychiatric diagnosis psychiatric medication psychology psychosis ptsd recovery relationships social interaction social justice society stigma suicide therapy trauma WordPress writing
Find posts by category
Conceptualizing Chronic Mental Illness
The ways in which 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 shape how we experience illness
Negativity & Toxic Positivity
Mental illness can be really hard, and expecting that we should just “choose happiness” is ludicrous.
- 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
What is it?
- Action for Happiness: More Than Just “Choose Happiness”
- Finding Recovery in Spite of Mental Illness
- Is Mental Illness Recovery a Choice?
- Medicine Wheel: what we can learn from it
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
- The Moving Target of Recovery
- What Is… Recovery?
- What Would Recovery Look Like?
What can support it?
- Action for Happiness: More Than Just “Choose Happiness”
- Contemplative Practices
- Emotional support animals
- Illness Treatment vs. Wellness Promotion
- Music: how it affects brain and mood
- Painting as a Mindfulness Activity
- Peer support
Therapy
Besides the posts listed here, I’ve done quite a few book reviews that cover acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), and other therapeutic approaches.
- Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT)
- Hypnotherapy
- Psychotherapy alphabet soup: an overview of several types of therapy
- Therapist-Speak Pet Peeves
- Understanding Mental Health Provider Credentials
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- ACT life compass
- Book review: Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life by Steven Hayes
- Dead people goals
- Exploring values
- Thoughts as leaves on a stream: a metaphor for de-fusing from thoughts
- Thought suppression
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
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
- Book review: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
- Emotion myths
- Wise mind: represents the overlap between rational mind and emotion mind.
Psychoanalysis/Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Therapy Tools
The COVID-19/Mental Health Coping Toolkit has links to a broad range of sites that offer free therapy-based workbooks and worksheets. There’s also some ideas in the post Therapy Tools for Mental Health.
The stress bucket is a great model for conceptualizing how stress pours in and coping mechanisms allow it to pour out.
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.
- 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 – a great resource on this topic is The Conspiracy Theory Handbook
- 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.
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.
- Are Trigger Warnings Useful?
- Childhood Trauma and the ACEs Study
- Creating a Trauma Account
- Does Ayahuasca Have a Role in Mental Health?
- 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 Neurobiology of Traumatic Fight/Flight/Freeze
- 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
- Adventures Applying for Disability
- Disclosing Mental Illness at Work: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- 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
- Workplace Bullying: The Other #metoo
