Divorce is the second most stressful life event, preceded only by the death of a spouse. And what is stress is capable of? Expediting a severe bout of depression and anxiety to your limbic system (the brain’s emotional center) if you’re not careful. Acute and chronic stress, especially, undermine both emotional and physical health. In...

Below, I have reprinted a fascinating article by James Potash, associate professor of psychiatry and co-director of the Mood Disorders Program (where I graduated with the help of Dr. Smith) at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. More and more research is showing that the brain actually shrinks with severe depression, and that...

Back in the mid-twentieth century, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—and they stuck. Heck, I just wrote about them last month. According to Susan Berger, researcher and practitioner in the health and mental health fields for over twenty-five years, those five stages may work well for the dying...

Two years ago I asked prominent psychiatrist and bestselling author Peter Kramer to endorse my manuscript, Beyond Blue. I have been thinking about his response ever since. He told me that he no longer blurbs books, because to blurb a book would require him to real the entire thing, from cover to cover. He would...

I recently joined “The Psychology Network” on LinkedIn and have been enjoying the discussion among mental health professionals (since I’m not really one, but pretend to be all the time). Especially intriguing was the discussion thread called “What are some of your favorite quotes that have motivated and inspired you?” They are quotes that they...