U2 has a song called “Stuck in a Moment”. It’s a pretty great song (this version and this version, too). I’d say it’s a top 3 U2 song. But I’m writing this because I’ve long thought that the line, “Don’t say that later will be better/Now you’re stuck in a moment/And you can’t get out…
Recent research is showing that it may be possible to diagnose mental health conditions through blood tests. It’s intriguing work. One of the most frustrating parts for patients with mental health issues is the process of diagnosing the condition. It’s a lot of trial and error and it takes a long time. Like with any…
After reading my two-parter about why it can be so hard to talk about depression, a friend sent me this article: 18 Words for Sadness & Depression That Don’t Exist in English. It is exactly what it sounds like. Some of the words are helpful. For instance, the Pitjantjatjara (aboriginal Australian) word “Watjilpa” apparently describes…
Asking what mental illness is might seem a little silly. I mean depression, anxiety, bipolar, OCD, schizophrenia, etc., etc., etc. are mental illnesses, right? Yes, of course they are. But I mean the question more generally. I don’t want examples of mental illnesses. I want to know what makes something a mental illness. AIDS, Covid,…
I had a bad day yesterday. It prevented me from writing about what I had intended writing about. Instead, I just tried to describe some of the feelings I was having. I didn’t think it was very good, but a bunch of people reached out with words of support. That was nice even though it…
I’m not having a good day. It sucks. There’s the obvious reason it sucks, you know, because I’m having a bad day. But it also sucks because I’ve started this little mental health project and I don’t want to stumble and lose all my momentum after only a few days. But I’m not capable of…
When I started this post yesterday, I wasn’t intending to write a two-parter. I was talking about the reasons the mental health conversation is so hard to have, even in an ideal world where everyone is kind and supportive and wants to understand. While talking about how the symptoms of depression make depression hard to…
If we’re going to have the big mental health conversation, there’s something that we need to get out of the way first. It’s a hard conversation. I mean really hard. And I’m not talking about all the baggage that comes with it like the embarrassment, stigma, shame, resentment, and all that. Those are real and…
Last year, I wrote a piece for a friend’s website called “The Conversation Around Mental Health Is Long Overdue – and We’re Screwing It Up“. I said we were making two mistakes. The first was that we are focusing too much on celebrity in this conversation. I talked about Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles in…
Every holiday season, at least since the advent of social media, I see people asking other people to be aware of people who struggle during the holidays. They want us to be sensitive; to watch what we say and do. As far as I can tell, the requests for sensitivity rarely come from people who…
