In this blog post, I reflect on my experience at the 2017 Reclaim Mental Health Conference and share some thoughts on the power of personal storytelling and the importance of language in mental health advocacy
If we look at the process of diagnosing mental illness, we can see how in their interactions with patients, psychiatrists try to fit an actual human with abstract experiences in one of the made-up categories in the DSM
Gardening is a uniquely beautiful activity that has the potential to improve many mental health conditions. Anxiety? Depression? Sleep problems? Here are some fantastic benefits of gardening for mental health.
In movies, hearing voices goes hand in hand with killing people. Popular culture greedily perpetuates the image of an aggressive psycho. As a result, I suspect it is a common belief that people who hear voices are dangerous.
When I was seventeen, my friend told me about his experience in a "yellow house"—the slang term for public psychiatric hospitals in Russia. Because I did not want to lose my friend—and I was convinced that I absolutely would the second he admits to his experience—I wanted him to stay quiet.