Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
Most of us are naturally inclined towards being more rational or intuitive in our decision-making. Personally, I tend to be much more on the rational side of the spectrum. But then you layer mental illness on top of that, and it can start to get more complicated. The basic scenario we’ll use for the post… Continue reading What’s Your Mental Illness Decision-Making Style?
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week we're taking a bit of a detour to look at neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to make changes to itself in response to conditions and experiences, including forming new neuronal connections. This ability is maintained in adulthood, although… Continue reading What Is… Neuroplasticity
I started this post about three months ago after Rookyn of Never Stop Growing did a post about the beneficial effect of music and other positive/motivational audio on mood. She wondered what the science/psychology behind it might be, and of course, my virtual ears perked up at that. Unfortunately, she's since vanished from the blogosphere,… Continue reading How Music Affects the Brain and Mood
Mental illness often affects what we think about, but it can also affect how we think, including the speed of how we think. Mania is an obvious example of speeding things up, and this may show up outwardly as pressure of speech. Anxiety, worry, and rumination can also be speedy in a sense, but tending… Continue reading What Speed Does Your Mind Move At?
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term isn't so much a term as a category. We're going to look at psychological effects that impact the process of reading. Missing Letter Effect If someone is asked to identify each occurrence of a particular letter in a… Continue reading What is… Psychological Effects on Reading
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is cognitive remediation. Cognitive remediation (CR) aims to improve psychosocial functioning by addressing several areas of neurocognitive functioning, such as attention, working memory, and executive functioning. CR is used mostly in schizophrenia and traumatic brain injury. It's also… Continue reading What is… Cognitive Remediation
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is intelligence quotient (IQ). We've probably all heard of the IQ test as a standard way of measuring intelligence. What's actually involved, though? Well, to begin, we should consider what intelligence is. There is no single agreed-upon definition,… Continue reading What Is… Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is amnesia. Amnesia is a memory deficit that can go in two different directions. Retrograde amnesia goes backward, affecting previously stored memories. Anterograde memory loss goes forward, affecting the ability to move short-term memory information into new long-term… Continue reading What Is… Amnesia
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is attention. We are constantly bombarded with a steady stream of stimuli, both internal and external. Attention is the process by which we narrow our focus to certain pieces of information while excluding others. Visual attention Visual attention… Continue reading What Is… Attention
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week's term is memory. Memory is highly complex. There are multiple different types, and multiple areas of the brain that are involved. Memories not only need to be encoded in the first place, but they also need to be stored… Continue reading What Is… Memory?