Abraham Lincoln is a powerful mental health hero for me. Whenever I doubt that I can do anything meaningful in this life with a defective brain (and entire nervous system, actually, as well as the hormonal one), I simply pull out Joshua Wolf Shenk’s classic, “Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His...

Have I ever said how much I wish I didn’t need therapy? I look forward to my annual pap more the therapy. Not because I don’t like my therapist – actually, I think she’s brilliant. But because it is so gut wrenchingly difficult to give words to some of your feelings and thought you wish...

The other day I covered 10 things you should not say to a loved one if you don’t want your name to come up in her therapy sessions. It covered a lot of ground, so I get why some folks would say, “Then what the hell CAN I say?” I’ve been thinking about that, and...

CBS News and Health.com recently published a nice gallery listing what you SHOULD tell a depressed love one and what you SHOULD NOT. I have my own list. Here are 10 things you definitely DON’T want to say, a collection of the gems that I heard when well-intentioned people opened their mouths and said something...

In her new paperback, “An Altar in the World,” bestselling author Barbara Brown Taylor writes: Popular religion focuses so hard on spiritual success that most of us do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits of failure. When we fall ill, lose our jobs, wreck our marriages, or alienate our children, most of...