Adversity as a Building Block to Achieving Your Authentic Vision
Shirin Behzadi shares with us how she achieved her North Star and overcame adversity by sharing her inspiring story. She also gives us an in-depth look at how to balance your North Star with potential risks.
Brain Care: A Radical Vision for Reducing Risk of Brain Disease
Did you know you can take care of your brain and reduce the risk of developing dementia, stroke, or depression through simple lifestyle changes? Massachusetts General Hospital’s McCance Center for Brain Health lays out a bold vision for reducing the risk of brain disease and scaling it globally.
Pursuing Happiness: Lessons Learned from the Harvard Kennedy School Inaugural Leadership and Happiness Symposium
As you create New Year’s resolutions for 2024, consider applying some of the current research presented at the inaugural Leadership and Happiness Symposium, hosted by the Leadership and Happiness Laboratory Founded by Professor Arthur Brooks at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, to make yourself, your communities, and the world a happier place.
Brain Energy: New Hope – Treating Mental Health Disorders as Metabolic Disorders
Mental health disorders are costly to society and devasting to the individuals who suffer. By demonstrating that mental disorders are metabolic disorders, Dr. Chris Palmer offers new solutions and hope to address the mental health epidemic.
New Communication Skills Can Bridge the Political Divide and Address the Extreme Polarization Threatening Democracy
OPINION COMMENTARY:
Fierce political polarization is threatening democracy in the world and acting as a barrier to crafting effective solutions to critical social challenges. Alice Lombardo Maher, MD, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, has succeeded in bridging the divide by bringing together people on opposite sides of the political spectrum and modeling the skills that are core to effective dialogue.
Making House Calls to Those Who Have No House: A Street Psychiatrist’s Journey Supporting the Mental Health of Our Unhoused Neighbors
HEALTH & HOMELESSNESS SERIES:
Many think mental illness leads to homelessness, but a bidirectional relationship exists, and homelessness can lead to mental illness as well. Katherine Koh, MD, a practicing psychiatrist at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses how her innovative practice of street psychiatry supports our unhoused neighbors.
Destigmatizing Mental Illness is Essential to Improve Mental Health in Developing Countries and Everywhere
OPINION COMMENTARY:
In low-and middle-income countries, the stigma of mental illness and the lack of resources keep up to 90% of those in need from receiving appropriate care. Tsion Andine, an MD/MPH student inspired by personal experience living with someone with a mental disorder, wants to improve this number by tapping caretakers and the media.
Ambiguous Loss: Giving a Name to Global Disappearances
Climate change, natural resources depletion, COVID-19 pandemic, Russia–Ukraine war, and the possibility of a nuclear accident are some of the world-wide crises that we are facing. Some say these potential challenges underlie a mental health crisis. True for some, but for the majority of us, it is not an illness, but rather, a crisis of ambiguity and loss.
Teens, Social Media, and Mental Health: It’s Not As Clear Cut As You Think
OPINION COMMENTARY:
Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, researchers from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, encourage parents and caregivers to assess when and why kids might be most vulnerable to social media – and how social media may also make teens feel connected and supported. Effective interventions require “tuning into the particular” and challenging assumptions.
Thinking For Yourself: Intellectual Self Reliance in an Hyper-Connected World
Fundamentally, self-reliance in the twenty-first century is about thinking for yourself and not becoming paralyzed by the data deluge and overwhelming information we suffer through on a daily basis. Vikram Mansharamani discusses ways to harnesses the power of experts and technologies without giving up autonomy.
Election 2020: Loneliness, the Art of Healing and our Democracy
The reality of the seemingly endless pandemic combined with the stream of anger and violence exposed in media, is now fused with historic levels of loneliness and isolation. Robin Strongin discusses how reducing loneliness and social isolation is one way to reconnect people, to reestablish a meaningful sense of belonging and worth, and in so doing, provide an antidote to hate.