Category: mental health
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5 Ways to Support Your Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic
It’s perhaps cliche to say that crisis brings out the deepest human love and solidarity, as well as the deepest grief. But that statement is a truism because it is true. Even during the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic, there is hope in community. If you, like billions around the world, are currently socially distancing…
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Staying Safe When Socially Distancing With an Abuser
When stringent social distancing measures went into place to help slow the spread of COVID-19 in mid-March, the calls began. These weren’t calls to doctors from people concerned about symptoms, or to unemployment officers from people without work — though those calls started, too. Instead, they were calls to domestic violence hotlines, from abuse survivors…
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Preventing Household Conflict When You’re Stuck at Home Together
Most of us are so busy with jobs, school, and caretaking responsibilities that extended time at home with our loved ones once seemed like an unattainable dream. Self-isolation, resulting from the coronavirus crisis and government orders to shelter in place, however, can bring with it the silver lining of getting to reconnect with those we…
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The COVID-19 Pandemic and The Dire Need for a Mental Health Safety Net
As governments across the United States are requesting, or mandating, their residents to “shelter in place” to help prevent the further spread of the novel coronavirus, acute anxiety grows exponentially one group in particular: our neighbors without housing. Many U.S. residents have already lost their jobs, or risk future job loss, due to closures in…
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5 Tips For Maintaining Community During the Coronavirus Crisis
Having a strong community is one of the most important factors in our mental and emotional health. Loneliness or social isolation increases our risk of depression and anxiety, and it can even make us more vulnerable to physical ailments, increasing our risk of heart disease by 29%, and stroke by 32%. Usually, maintaining strong community bonds is as…
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Rape is an Economic Crime: The Case for Mental Health Restitution
On TV, the plot looks something like this: a woman is raped or abused. She is a sympathetic character, traumatized yet brave. She reports the crime to the police, who perform a detailed forensic investigation and arrest the perpetrator. A trial ensues, and the survivor steps forward to tell her story. She wins over the…
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Why It’s Harmful To Tell Kids “He’s Mean Because He Has a Crush on You”
If you are a child of the 90s, you might remember Helga Pataki. She was blond, had a strangely shaped head like the rest of her peers, lived in New York City, and, most importantly, relentlessly bullied television’s cartoon sweetheart, everyone’s favorite oblong-noggined Arnold. A character on the Nickelodeon kids’ show Hey, Arnold!, Helga typified the…
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Can Abusers Change?
The year was 1980, and feminist activist Ellen Pence had just moved to Duluth, Minnesota. Since 1975, with the tide of the feminist movement rising across the United States , Pence had been involved with organizing against domestic violence — work she furthered with friends when they founded the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) in Duluth.…
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How to Tell Someone You’re Not Interested
The anxiety starts in my chest and then blooms, smothering my lungs and filling my belly: a guy has just asked me out. Oh no, I think, panicked. Am I interested? How do I turn him down? I’m not a character in a preteen novel, with butterflies in her stomach because she’s never been asked on a…
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Dealing with Complicated Feelings Around Abusers
Recently, a man I know was outed as a serial sexual harasser. I say “know” in a rather unfortunate sense: I’d been approached online by, went on a date with, and even kissed the guy a couple years ago. His too-forward sexual advances had always left a bad taste in my mouth. When the revelations…
Reina Gattuso 