Mental Health Related Articles & Blog Posts

After the excitement of birth and bringing home the new baby, it’s not unusual for moms to suddenly feel extreme loneliness in their new roles as parent. After all, taking care of a baby is tiring and stressful, not to mention labor-intensive. The very nature of newborns is that they need hands-on care 24/7, which [...]

It seems that laughing can be contagious.  Have you ever found yourself laughing after you see someone else laughing?  You don’t know why you are laughing but just seeing someone laugh can cause you to do the same.  Wouldn’t you rather catch a laugh then a cold or the flu?

The body’s stress response is genius. When stress happens, the body shuts down all extra “programs” in favor of the “get out of dodge ASAP” one to give us the best chance at survival.  Well, like every other genius, our bodies are a little quirky too.

Depression If any of the below occur and you see these in your child (or in yourself, a spouse, or another relative), get professional help fast. Your pediatrician or family doctor can guide you.

Losses from Divorce If you are divorcing it is very important to sit down with your children, preferably both of you together, and later separately, and tell them these things repeatedly:

Kids lead a stressful life. When babies, they are constantly learning – crawling, walking, talking – and as they become older, they are taking tests, dealing with everyday social issues and the emerging hormones.

Autism diagnoses have increased rapidly over the last two decades; so has the number of women taking antidepressants during pregnancy – from somewhere between 1% and 6% in the early 1990s to 7-13% more recently. The most common antidepressants alter serotonin levels; children with autism tend to have atypical serotonin levels in their blood. Antidepressants [...]

My father had two things on his bucket list. –  he wanted to own a Cadillac and to go to Hawaii. In his early 70s he proudly bought a Cadillac.  I asked him when he was going to Hawaii and he said, “Later.” He died at 73 never having seen the sun rise over the [...]

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” – Anne Lamott I love the simplicity of venturing out every week to the local CSA farm where we get our produce.

“There is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” –Shakespeare, Hamlet Have you ever stopped whatever you were doing to simply observe your thoughts? Yes, to do nothing else but watch the nonstop activity of the mind without doing anything to fix or change what’s going on in there?