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How strongly and accurately you feel your heart beating could tell you something about your mental health. Open at source
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BBC Breaking News
Coronavirus: How to protect your mental healthBBC Breaking News
5 min read · 2020-03-16 · Advice on protecting your mental health during the coronavirus outbreak.
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WIRED
Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental HealthWIRED
5 min read · 2020-06-25 · Checking your phone for an extra two hours every night won’t stop the apocalypse—but it could stop you from being psychologically prepared for it.
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The Conversation
Writing can improve mental healthThe Conversation
4 min read · Jun 17th · Plus some prompts to get you started.
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Writing creatively offers a unique way to explore thoughts, feelings, ideas and beliefs. For instance, you could write a science fiction novel that represents your concerns about climate change or a children’s story that speaks to your beliefs about friendship. You could even write a poem from the perspective of an owl as a way to represent your insomnia.
Ernest Hemingway famously said that writers should “write hard and clear about what hurts”.
Each of these writing prompts will give you a chance to reflect on this past year, ask yourself important questions, and make creative choices. Spending just 15 minutes doing this may give you an opportunity to become more self-aware – which could lead to improvements in your mental health
The Atlantic
The Pandemic Did Not Affect Mental Health the Way You ThinkThe Atlantic
5 min read · Jul 4th · The world’s psychological immune system turned out to be more robust than expected.
health
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We imagine that negative life events—losing a job or a romantic partner—will be devastating for months or years. When people actually experience these losses, however, their misery tends to fade far faster than they imagined it would
Human beings possess what some researchers call a psychological immune system, a host of cognitive abilities that enable us to make the best of even the worst situation. For example, after breaking up with a romantic partner, people may focus on the ex’s annoying habits or relish their newfound free time.
We learned that people can handle temporary changes to their lifestyle—such as working from home, giving up travel, or even going into isolation—better than some policy makers seemed to assume.
Aeon+Psyche
Chinese philosophy has long known that mental health is communalAeon+Psyche
5 min read · 2020-06-01 · The early Chinese philosophers knew that a healthy mind comes from a harmonious community, not a matter for individuals alone
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we should take to heart their point about how communally influenced features of our behaviour and attitudes can contribute to causing mental illness and must play a role in treatment.
As Confucius himself said: ‘The faults of an individual are in each case attributable to their group.’
The Guardian
What we're getting wrong in the conversation about mental healthThe Guardian
6 min read · Mar 29th · Increased use of psychiatric language means ordinary distress is being medicalised, while the seriously ill are not being heard, says psychologist Lucy Foulkes
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Evidently, since my friend’s acute distress passed within a few weeks, he didn’t sit clearly in the territory of what we might call “mental illness”. But he certainly wasn’t mentally healthy for those weeks either. Instead, I realised, he sat somewhere in the vast grey plains between the two.  Everything we might think of as a “symptom” of mental disorder – worry, low mood, binge eating, delusions – actually exists on a continuum throughout the population. For each symptom, we vary in terms of how often we experience it, how severe it is, how easily we can control it, and how much distress it causes. In the terrain of mental health, there is no objective border to cross that delineates the territory of disorder. On top of this, the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that appear temporarily as a natural response to hardship and stress – like when we’re heartbroken – exactly mimic those that, should they persist, are defining features of mental disorders. So blurry are these boundaries that some psychologists argue we shouldn’t use the terms “illness” or “disorder” at all, and should only view all of this as matters of degree.
The current conversation can be summed up as follows: you should notice, scrutinise and seek help for negative psychological experiences. Of course, for some people, this message will be essential. For those who are suicidal, it can be lifesaving. But the message misfires when it implies that all negative states are problems, health problems – and things that can and should be fixed. That’s not how life works.
Interpreting your low mood as a sign of depression, for example, can actually cause you to spiral into the very depression you’re worried about. We know this from research into mindfulness-based therapies for people with recurrent depression: learning to view low mood as “just” that, rather than as a start of a new depressive episode, can help reduce risk of relapse.
The Guardian
Lost touch: how a year without hugs affects our mental healthThe Guardian
6 min read · Jan 24th · Humans are designed to touch and be touched – which is why so many who live on their own have suffered during the pandemic. Will we ever fully recover?
psychology
mental health
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One set of fibres exists purely to register gentle, stroking touch: the C tactile afferents (CTs).
The highest density of CTs across the body are in the parts we can’t “groom” ourselves, such as the shoulders and back.
Axios
Mental health is the next big workplace issueAxios
2 min read · Aug 16th · Firms that confront mental health are poised to win the war for talent.
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72% of U.S. employers say stigmas associated with mental health and addiction are keeping workers from seeking help, per The Hartford's study. The more we talk about it, the faster the stigma goes away, Swift says.
Without chance encounters at the water cooler, we can slip into the habit of only discussing work matters with colleagues.
Managers should regularly check in with workers and should themselves be responsible for fostering an environment in which workers feel comfortable discussing personal problems,
WIRED
It’s Not Just You: Everyone’s Mental Health Is SufferingWIRED
2 min read · Jan 18th · If you’re thinking, “Oh, I just need to suck it up,” stop. What you’re feeling is real. Here’s how to cope.
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