The bad news is that our collective mental health these past few years has been deteriorating. Stress, anxiety, depression, drug overdoses, and suicides have all been on the rise. Between illness, suicide, and other behavioral health-related deaths, we are recognizing the fragility of life. Our sense of certainty and security continues to be challenges challenged. The good news is that...

Mental health conditions can be particularly tricky to treat. Most mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder, stem from a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes the brain to behave in ways that aren’t considered to be “normal”. Because of this, most mental health treatments revolve around different forms of therapy instead of medications, as most medications also cause...

OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder is a mental health condition that affects millions and millions of people on a daily basis. Many people wonder, what does OCD feel like? Well, for some people, having OCD can be a mere minor inconvenience throughout their day, like a lingering cough or the sniffles. For some though, it can be so debilitating that it...

Pro-ana, pro-anorexia, and pro-bulimia (or pro-mia) are terms that refer to content that is primarily found online and promotes the behavior and attitudes that are part of some eating disorders. The pro-ana sites and social media that provide this content often state or imply that this is part of a personal lifestyle choice instead of symptoms of an illness. Why...

Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, domestic violence, or sexual assault. Immediately after a traumatic event, you may experience shock and denial as well as other typical reactions that can cause long-term trauma, including unpredictable flashbacks, strained relationships, and other physical symptoms.  When a person is exposed to multiple traumatic events such as domestic...

By Susan Reiner for Montare Behavioral Health It’s January, and while some of us are happy to have just made it through 2021 intact, many of us have likely begun this new year, as with many others in the past, with resolutions to improve in countless ways. Maybe you’ve decided to quit smoking, or to finally clean out the stack...

A mood stabilizer is a type of medication that helps people control and ”even out”  mood swings such as  Mania  Hypomania  Depression They work by decreasing abnormal activity in the brain. Many people don’t fully understand how mood-stabilizing medications work. Scientists believe that they influence certain neurotransmitters in the brain (chemicals in the nerve cells) that may play a part...

Two of the most common mental disorders are attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADD is technically a type of ADHD. As a result, some of the character traits that are associated with ADD are also associated with ADHD.  As a result, many people use the terms ADD and ADHD interchangeably. While this may be socially...

The end of the year is commonly a time when many of us reflect on how we’ve spent the last twelve months: what we’ve learned, how we’ve grown, our wins and successes, and also the things that haven’t gone as planned, the people or things that have hurt or disappointed us, and the ways we haven’t lived up to the...

We’ve all heard the stories of the Big Bad Wolf who ate Red Riding Hood’s grandmother and blew down the Three Little Pig’s houses… and so, many of us have the idea that wolves are aggressive, savage animals. Thus, it might be quite a leap to imagine that such an animal could actually be therapeutic for humans. Wolf Therapy may...