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Ketamine for Mental Health Treatment: How Promising Is It?
For centuries, we have sought cures for depression. Some discoveries, such as psychotherapy and medication treatment, are now widely accepted. But they don’t work for everyone. More recently, an unorthodox drug has garnered attention as a new, possible intervention: ketamine. Classified as...
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An Overview of Seasonal Affective Disorder
Many people go through short periods of time where they feel sad or not like their usual selves. Sometimes, these mood changes begin and end when the seasons change. People may start to feel “down” when the days get shorter in the fall and winter (also called “winter blues”) and begin to...
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Families and Suicide: How to Engage Your Child in Conversation
As parents, we must balance our feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, on top of our own emotions with those of our children. There are many aspects to the relationship between suicide and families, especially having conversations to find out if children are thinking about suicide. Many parents are...
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Using the Partnership to End Addiction’s Online Risk Assessment Tool to Assess and Combat Children’s Risk of Developing Addiction
As a society, we’re well versed in the factors that can increase our risk for diseases like cancer and diabetes. But what about risk factors for addiction? Addiction, like diabetes and cancer, is a disease. And as a disease, it is caused by a combination of many different factors:...
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The Hidden Effects of Combat-Related PTSD on Spouses
The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (2014) reported that approximately 20% of service members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan developed combat-related PTSD. Mental health issues following combat tours are not exclusive to service members. de Burgh et al. (2011) stated that spouses of service...
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The Silent Battlefront of Veteran Suicide and the Measures Being Taken to Help Them
On Friday, May 30th, 2014, I woke up to one of the most devastating phone calls I’ve ever received. My best friend for almost a decade, Joshua Drury, who was in his mid-thirties at the time, had taken his life. Joshua had served many years in the U.S. Army prior to our meeting. While he told us...
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Family Mental Health: How Your Organization Programs and Services Are Helping
For over 50 years, Vibrant Emotional Health (formerly known as The Mental Health Association of NYC) has been fulfilling its mission to help people achieve mental and emotional well-being with dignity and respect. The work of the organization has branched into comprehensive direct service programs...
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From the Desk of Dr. Max: The Impact of Employee Depression in the Workplace
Although the impact of emotional health challenges is well documented in the literature, its impact and consequences for the workforce and the work environment is ever increasing and prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four out of ten adults reported symptoms of anxiety and depression during...
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Depression Detection Has Never Been More Important: PHQ-9 Enables Clinicians and Patients to Track and Address Depression With Combined Physical and Emotion Symptoms Score
The COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts, economic dislocations, and other concerns have affected mental health around the globe. Clinical depression, which affects 300 million individuals worldwide, is projected to increase. With findings that are significant for both clinicians and patients,...
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Virtual Care Platform Supports Text-Based Mental-Health Research Program for Transgender and Nonbinary Participants
Reaching individuals with information designed to help with anxiety and depression can be difficult, especially when they’re in rural areas. Consistent, fast internet is still not available in many of these areas, so text-messaging outreach is highly preferred (about 95% of US residents have a...
