A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. his week's term is psychopathy. Psychopathy is a cluster of personality characteristics. It is sometimes described as a personality disorder or a neuropsychiatric disorder, but it's not a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The diagnosis… Continue reading What Is… Psychopathy
I got thinking about this a while back when reading a post by MJ about being put in a seclusion room while on a psych ward as a teenager. While seclusion is sometimes necessary for safety, I think serenity-promoting spaces could be more useful, at least in some cases. In my last nursing job, which… Continue reading Creating Serenity-Promoting Spaces
The Gratitude Explorer Workbook is by Kristi Nelson, the executive director of A Network for Grateful Living, a non-profit organization. I decided to get a copy of this book after seeing a review by Liz on Lemons But No Lemonade Recipe. This workbook has lots of journalling prompts and plenty of writing space. It's visually… Continue reading Book Review: The Gratitude Explorer Workbook
We're surrounded by awareness campaigns, particularly health awareness campaigns. In the US, the number of designated national health awareness days had reached 200 by 2015 (Purtle & Roman, 2015). In 2017, the Stanford Social Innovation Review published an article titled Stop Raising Awareness Already. Pointing to the great many awareness month designations all for a… Continue reading How Effective Are Mental Health Awareness Campaigns?
Should people with mental illness have access to medical assistance in dying? In Canada, that's going to happen in the near future, but exactly what it will look like hasn't been decided yet. This is something I support, but a lot of people don't, so I thought I'd write about it. A bit of background… Continue reading Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Illness
There are two different ways you can do WordPress: having a plan with WordPress.com where they host your blog, or being self-hosted using the WordPress.org software. What's the difference, and which is better? Let's chat about that. Note that your domain name is unrelated to this; hosting is about the servers where your blog lives.… Continue reading WordPress.com vs. Self-Hosted (WordPress.org)
Here's what happened in my life over the past week: Amazon does weird things to the colours of book covers. I have three editions: ebook, paperback, and hardcover. The colours look different for each listing, and they all look different from the original cover file that I use here on the blog. WTF, Amazon? But… Continue reading Weekend Wrap-Up
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is reductionism. Reductionism is the idea that complex theories or phenomena can be reduced down to other theories or phenomena. Essentially, the whole shebang can be boiled down to one thing that explains it all. It's a philosophical… Continue reading What Is… Reductionism
Unfortunately, mental health professionals are a major source of stigma towards people with mental illness. Recovery-oriented practice is one possibility for transforming mental health care into a less stigmatizing place, so let's talk about what that might look like. What recovery is Personal recovery, also known as psychosocial recovery, is a different can of tuna… Continue reading Recovery-Oriented Practice and Mental Illness Stigma
Canadian War Museum In Flanders' Fields by John McCrae In Flanders' fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row That mark our place and in the sky The larks still bravely singing fly, Scarce heard amidst the guns below. We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,… Continue reading Today, We Remember