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...

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...

Harold Kushner explains what NOT to say to a grieving family in his classic “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” using as an illustration the story of Job (the faithful, righteous, and pious man who loses his livestock, house, servants, and children, and is afflicted with boils all over his body). Having lost his...

Idiots. The world is full of them. How hard it is for us, non-idiots, to put up with them. But to get our jobs done, our kids fed, and our pets groomed, we must deal with them. Idiots come in many shapes, forms, and types, but the ones that frustrate me the most are those...

Today’s interview is with Tracy Thompson, the author of “The Beast: A Journey Through Depression” and “The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression.” She has won numerous mental health awards, including one from NAMI for her “lasting contributions to mental health issues.”   Question: The first two sentences of your...