The Anxious Perfectionist by Clarissa W. Ong and Michael P. Twohig uses an acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) approach to help readers who struggle with perfectionism. I’m a big fan of ACT, and I think it makes a great approach for perfectionism. The book begins by exploring what perfectionism is, including the differences between adaptive …
I’m currently on day 9 in hospital. I had my first ECT treatment yesterday. As they were getting ready to take me over to the post-anaesthetic care unit to get treatment, the nurse said she was waiting for a security guard to come along with us as an escort. I told her that was absurd, …
Goal-setting is a popular thing; plug it into Google search, and there are billions of hits. But is goal-setting always the best approach? Maybe identifying and heading in valued directions can be a good alternative some of the time, especially if something like mental illness is making the whole goals thing difficult. Valued directions in …
Pocket Therapy by Sarah Crosby takes readers on a journey of self-discovery to find ways to feel happier and more confident. The author is a therapist with a large Instagram following (@themindgeek), and the paperback version of the book comes in a square shape à la Instagram. The reviewer copy I got didn’t have graphics, …
I was reading a post a while back on Life In Unreality about how we need to talk more about psychosis, so I decided to chime in. In this post, I’ll talk about psychosis in general as well as my own experiences. The basics We’ll start with some basics. Psychosis is a group of symptoms, …
Healing by Thomas Insel, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), explores what’s wrong with the mental health care system and why there are so often poor outcomes for people with mental illness. While he characterized the current system as broken, he expressed hope that there are ways to fix it, …
Super Simple CBT by Matthew McKay, Martha Davis, and Patrick Fanning provides a quick and easy introduction to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). While it addresses depression and anxiety, it’s not diagnosis-specific; rather, it provides strategies that are useful for dealing with difficult thoughts and emotions in general. The book consists of six chapters, one devoted …
Investing in mental health care and workplace mental health programs takes money, and in the short term, that can be an obvious deterrent. However, it can really pay off in the longer term. A number of organizations have each put together solid economic cases for investment in mental health, and this post will take a …
Losing Our Minds: The Challenge of Defining Mental Illness by psychologist Lucy Foulkes explains why it’s so hard to define what mental illness is and how it happens. The author herself has experienced mental illness, and while this is not a major focus in the book, I thought it was great that she did bring …
The incel (a portmanteau of “involuntary celibate”) phenomenon, at least in its present incarnation, has emerged in the last decade and a bit. It’s come into the public eye through acts of violence committed by the likes of Elliot Rodger (in 2014 in Isla Vista, California) and Alek Minassian (in 2018 in Toronto, Ontario). Misogyny, …
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