If you come across a wrist tattooed with a semicolon, don’t write the person off as a grammar dweeb or unstable weirdo. The decorated individual is merely expressing that his life … much like a sentence … almost ended, but didn’t. The Semicolon Movement on Tumblr was created “for anyone who has ever self-harmed, has...

Although American poet T. S. Eliot didn’t have an advanced psychology degree, I think he nailed the reasons why so many people get depressed and anxious in the spring in his classic poem, “The Wasteland.” He writes, “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull...

According to renowned psychiatrist Peter Kramer, happiness isn’t the opposite of depression. Resilience is. I’ve always loved that reminder because the word “happiness” makes me uneasy. It’s not that I want to be unhappy, or I don’t want to be happy. It’s that every time I make happiness my goal, I become very unhappy. Like...

I spent this morning looking for a beautiful quote I read about a month ago, something along the lines of what motivational speaker John Bradshaw said: “I define a ‘good person’ as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their ‘shadow’ – they know their...

In the fall of 2007 Mother Teresa graced the cover of Time magazine when her private writings were published, many of the excerpts filled with surprising doubt, despair, and a kind of spiritual anguish. Some journalists questioned whether or not she was clinically depressed. Did this modern saint have an untreated mood disorder or did her pain...