Self-help

When Your New Year’s Resolution Falters

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If you’re like most of us, you’ll struggle with maintaining those well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions. In fact, one study shows that less than half of us (about 46%) will maintain our New Year’s resolutions for six months. So what can you do when your resolution starts to falter? Here are 10 quick steps you can take to assess what’s going wrong and to get back on track. 1) Think “goals” instead of “resolutions.” The term “resolution” has more to do …

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10 Things To Consider When Selecting Mental Health Apps

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There are a gazillion apps for just about everything. There are an estimated 165,000 health-related apps and more than 10,000 are focused on mental health issues. Let’s explore 10 questions you may want to consider as you think about selecting and trying out mental health apps.   1. Will mental health apps help everyone who uses them? No. But then nothing helps everyone. Responses vary to apps just as they do to other options for mental health care, including therapy, medication, and …

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Lessons Learned from Making a Mistake

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Have you ever made a mistake and then beat yourself up with self-criticism? Did you say negative things to yourself, like “I’m such a loser!” or “I can’t believe I was so stupid!”? Or did you get angry at yourself and end up feeling miserable, depressed or ashamed? Perhaps you even threw things, yelled at the dog or your family, or isolated yourself from others. I’m confident we have all had these experiences and reactions following mistakes we’ve made. They are …

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9 Proven Strategies To Help You Change Problematic Behaviors

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In a recent post, I talked at length about the “Stages of Change,” an effective research-based approach outlining a series of five steps that people go through when attempting to change many problematic behaviors, such as losing weight, stopping smoking, quitting drugs and alcohol, and reducing stress, anxiety or depression. To recap, the five stages of change are: 1) Precontemplation – not ready for change; 2) Contemplation – getting ready for change; 3) Preparation – ready for change; 4) Action …

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Are You Ready For Change?

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Have you ever struggled with changing a persistent, problematic behavior? Maybe you’ve wanted to stop smoking, quit drinking alcohol, reduce depression or anxiety or lose that extra weight, but you’ve never been able to make it happen. Perhaps you have even tried repeatedly over several months or years, but you’ve made little or no significant progress. You may now feel it’s fruitless to make another attempt and that you’ll never change. The stages of change Actually, there’s a lot of …

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Top 20 US Mental Health Organizations (Part 2)

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In a recent post, I listed the first 10 of my personal list of 20 top US-based mental health organizations. Now, let’s go over the other 10 organizations comprising the rest of the list. As I mentioned before, my informal criteria for including an organization on the list are: a) being well-established and credible; b) having goals of education and raising awareness; c) having a well-organized website with extensive resource links. Also, as with the first half of the list, the organizations aren’t …

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Top 20 US Mental Health Organizations (Part 1)

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It’s always a risky venture to do a “top 10” list. You invariably leave out some really worthy and wonderful entries, which may create some hurt feelings among the groups who weren’t included. Nevertheless, I’ll take that risk and offer not just 10, but 20 of the top mental health organizations based in the United States, in my humble opinion. In this post, I’ll cover the first 10 organizations, with a review of the remaining 10 in a subsequent post. My informal …

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How to Evaluate Online Health Information

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It’s well known that most people go online to find health information. In fact, 80% of Internet users have searched for health information online. However, there’s great variability in the quality and reliability of online health information. While some is from top-notch health care organizations, other information can be misleading and even harmful. How can you know if the health information you find online is current, accurate and helpful? The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) offers considerable help with …

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