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Shared Links (weekly) Oct. 18, 2020
When mental health emergencies end in fatal police encounters
How You Can Use Mindfulness to Guide Neuroplasticity to Improve Brain and Mental Health
How to Help a Suicidal Friend
Crisis Services & People of Color — We Can Do Better: Interview with Vic Armstrong
These apps make mental health easier for people in the margins
What We Know About LGBTQ Youth Mental Health and Suicide Prevention
Why hope is essential, not a luxury
Budget-Friendly Ways To Get Support For Your Mental Health
Sharing – The startling emotional health benefits of serving others
We talk about loneliness as a mental health issue often. We complain about the lack of third spaces in society. We complain about how people don’t reach out anymore. What we likely don’t talk enough about is how volunteering to help other people is an antidote to all of that.
Sharing – The Key Differences Between Social and Emotional Loneliness
I think it’s important that we understand our need for both. As science keeps telling us, we are social creatures. Even introverts like me need some sort of social activity and friends. We also need those intimate relationships where we can hit those emotional connections. Romantic relationships are an obvious example here, but other relationships can also be our emotional connection.
The lack of one of these will feel like loneliness, but the “fix” will be different. If I’m well-connected to my wife but missing out on the variety of social connections that a larger friend group might provide, that’s where my focus should be, and it might show up differently. The lack of an emotional connection would also look different and brings with it a different set of risks.
Sharing – New Study: Sleep Is Literally a Deep Clean for Your Brain
Having trouble with stress and anxiety? The suggested solutions often require adding even more to our to-do list. Meditate, practice mindfulness, do acts of self-care, etc. But we often forget that maybe the most important act of self-care is getting enough sleep.
Don’t even get me started on the fitness industry and the number of people who talk about “earning your food/sleep” through exercise. Argh!
This study would indicate that sleep is not something you want to mess with. Simply getting enough would help us with our mental “junk”. No, it won’t cure depression or eliminate symptoms of bipolar, or any of the other things that some of your friends will, unfortunately, suggest, but it does serve a core function for the healthy functioning of your brain, and that is certainly one place to start making things better, no?
