Old books in a pile

Reviews Elsewhere – The Stressed Years of Their Lives

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

Psych Central has a review of a book that covers a topic that has been in the news, and on the minds of parents, quite a lot recently.

In their new book, The Stressed Years of Their Lives: Helping Your Kid Survive and Thrive During Their College Years, Hibbs and Rostain offer a comprehensive guide for parents and children to cope with the challenges that the college years bring, and in the best circumstances, find strength in them.

The review, by Claire Nana, talks about how the book deals with many of the things we are seeing out here in the real world, kids who have not learned how to deal with setbacks, the unrelenting pressure to live the perfect life, and deal with the changes that come from just being an adolescent. When you really step back and look at it, there’s not much wonder at why we are seeing high levels of anxiety and depression. But, there’s also hope, and help available. Hopefully this book can be part of helping people navigate the current world we live in.

If you are in college, or have a kid in High School or college, you may find some of what the authors have to say helpful. If you do decide to pick it up, come back and let us know what you thought of it!

 

Similar Posts

  • Can you Spot Mental Health Misinformation?

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    Mental Health misinformation is a big deal. It can damage people dealing with mental health issues to spend time chasing down “bogus ” fixes. It can create stigma when the public believes there are easy ways to fix depression and anxiety because how dumb are we not to have done that?

  • Link – Untrue Things Depression Makes You Believe

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    No one likes you. There’s something wrong with you. You never do anything right. Depression’s voice isn’t kind, and it can be difficult to separate out depressive thoughts from reality. If you’ve experienced depression, you know it can trick you into thinking things about yourself and your life that aren’t true. Here are some thoughts…

  • Link – Why Self-Care is Hard for Depressed Individuals

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    Anyone who has dealt with major depression has dealt with this at some point: “In short, self-care is care provided for you, by you. But when you live with depression, self-care can sometimes feel unattainable. You’re tired, listless, with feelings of despair and corrosive thoughts that push and shove in an endless tug-of-war within you. Often,…

  • Sharing – Coronavirus: Will It Bring Out the Best or Worst In Your Character?

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I think the question Ivy asks here is one of the most important things we should stop and think about, for many reasons: “Is that who you want to be? The real person this adversity reveals is the person you’ll be stuck with for the remainder of your days. Who do you want that person…

  • New Research on Social Media and Teen Mental Health

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 3 minutes

    I think that second quote is really the key. We’ve seen studies that are reported as showing that kids who use social media get more depression and anxiety, but those studies do not address the question of whether there’s any proof that the causality is in that direction and not the other. In other words, do teens who use social media a lot develop depression, or do depressed teens use social media more. This study seems to indicate it’s the latter. As we continue with a lot of social distancing, and activities being canceled and in person gatherings are very limited, we know everyone will be relying more on social media to stay connected, so this is an important question, and I think what this study, and others, really shows us is that there are ways to use social media as a positive influence on our mental health, and a way to use it that will not be a positive influence on our mental health.

    In the physical world, we have these same choices. Do we interact with people who are toxic? Do we spend all of our time comparing ourselves to others? Do we isolate? Or do we find out tribe, our group of supportive friends/family that can interact socially in ways that help our mental health?

    We all make those same choices on social media, but the key difference here is that if we simply don’t choose, and make no effort to make conscious decisions about who we follow and interact with, social network algorithms will make the decision for us. Anyone already struggling with mental health is maybe more likely to not spent much time thinking about these things, and just let the app show them what it wants to show them, and that is not necessarily going to be good for our anxiety. Especially right now.

    So, if you find yourself feeling more anxious, angry, irritated, etc. every time you hop on Twitter or Instagram, maybe instead of just being that way, spend some time thinking about who you follow, and what they are bringing in to your life?

    For any of my social media using readers, can you share some of your favorite positive accounts that you interact with to HELP your mental health?

  • Sharing – What We (Still) Refuse to Believe About Mental Illness

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    It’s true that most people dealing with bipolar or schizophrenia are not dangerous, and it’s also true that someone in the middle of a psychotic episode is not going to seem very “normal” to us. Unfortunately, what that often means is that people will call the police, because who else is there to call? Then, the police, who are trained to deal with dangerous criminals, act accordingly, because, again, they have no other training. The best option for them is to get the person off the streets and way from the public, which means jail, because, once more, there’s probably not anywhere else to take them.

    Now they are part of the criminal justice system. A place with almost no mental health treatment available.

    Of course, as the article below also reminds us, that’s only if they actually survive all of these encounters, which is, far too often, not the case.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)