A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
A new study adds weight to the idea that happiness and physical health go hand-in-hand. The study, by researchers in Singapore, looks at two groups of people who have been previously underrepresented in research on the health effects of happiness:
It’s unclear whether going gluten-free has any health benefits for people without celiac disease, but that hasn’t stopped the diet from catching on. Last month, a Gallup poll found that one in five Americans make a point of including at
We live in a society that is obsessed with celebrities. But if you have concerns that idolizing someone you’ve never met might not go hand-in-hand with good mental health, you could be on to something. People differ in the extent
We know a decent amount about people with depression. At this point, quite a few studies have been done on people who have depression. But we know less about people who used to have depression – and especially about people
As I’ve written about before, having a sense of purpose in life is consistently linked with better mental health. It’s hard to be happy when you’re also wondering what the point of it all is. Of course, people’s sense of
We think of “parenting” as something that’s done for children, but of course you don’t simply stop being a parent the moment your children reach adulthood. The quality of a parent-child relationship can make a real difference for emerging adults,
Find your passion. It seems like such self-evidently good life advice. But it’s worth stopping to think about what it means to “find” your passion. The implication behind this phrase is that your passion already exists somewhere, and you just
A theme that often comes up on this blog is that people tend to be biased in their judgments about themselves and about the way other people see them. In many situations, it’s as if people are wired not to
A common treatment for anxiety disorders is cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT for short. CBT aims to help people develop effective coping strategies for addressing stressful situations and managing their emotions. It provides a set of techniques that people can use
When mental health conditions appear during the teenage years, one of the most complex questions is what the long-term implications are. Some conditions tend to be life-long, but for behaviors like self-harm, it’s harder to know what to expect over
