Depression

Depression | Recommended Reading

We All Have Mental Health Issues
ByMike McBride October 1, 2024October 2, 2025 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Imagine frowning upon someone taking ibuprofen for a headache because they should “tough it out.” Or talking about how the common cold affects people “over there” and not your group.

It’s nonsense. Yet, when it comes to talking about mental health, people start that same nonsense as if they have never had a day where they struggle with anxiety or need to take a break from the stress of day-to-day life.

I think it’s time we started looking at mental health the way Dr. Lee describes it. We all have mental health issues of some form or another, just like we all have different physical ailments at times. Stigmatizing people who need mental healthcare and being unable to provide it is a failure for all of us.

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Depression

Music for your mental health – Where the Road Goes
ByMike McBride July 12, 2024July 7, 2025 Reading Time: 2 minutes

The words reminded me so much of a time in my life when I could have died and thought none of this was worth it. It also reminded me of why I didn’t – my curiosity. My desire to see what happens and “where the road goes” may have been the only thing that kept me alive back then. I didn’t have much hope to hold on to, but I knew enough to know that I didn’t have all the answers and couldn’t tell the future. Why not see what happens tomorrow and the next day?

Eventually, I found some lovely things mentioned in the song—people, places, and thingsI love.

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Depression | Newsworthy

Recommending Some Podcast Episodes on the Mental Health of Young People
ByMike McBride April 22, 2024April 21, 2024 Reading Time: 3 minutes

Listen to both episodes. You’ll be challenged to think about youth mental health in a much broader sense. Hopefully, you will also see that these are not easy questions to answer and that existing in the world and planning for a future right now is hard. It’s no wonder that young people are struggling. It’s time we start taking serious steps toward making it less challenging for everyone and quit looking for a silver bullet that’ll fix it.

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Depression

Social Connections Don’t Solve Everything But They Matter, A Lot
ByMike McBride December 23, 2023December 23, 2023 Reading Time: 3 minutes

On the other hand, when we are struggling, our first instinct is often to not get in touch with someone. It’s to isolate. I suspect that is because we live in a world that has been telling us to be positive. That feeling down shouldn’t be shared, lest we negatively influence our friends and be cut out of their lives. (Good vibes only, am I right?)

That’s not the way any of this is supposed to work.

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Depression

Anxiety and Depression as an Evolutionary Response to Adversity
ByMike McBride June 20, 2023June 20, 2025 Reading Time: 3 minutes

We evolved to feel depression and anxiety in response to difficult experiences because it serves a purpose. We’ve also evolved to depend on each other as a community. One without the other is going to go poorly for us, and I fear that is precisely where we are now. The significant increases in rates of depression and anxiety, not to mention what seems like our complete inability to make a dent in the rates of suicide in the US, might just be because of this imbalance.

Be good to each other and stay connected. It’s what we need most in times of adversity.

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Depression

Are We Past Stigmatizing Mental Health Issues?
ByMike McBride May 8, 2023May 7, 2023 Reading Time: 4 minutes

Nothing tells me that we still have a long way to go when it comes to stigma like learning about a clearly distressed young man getting killed on a subway while other passengers sat and watched. Because his situation was uncomfortable. His manic behavior made them uncomfortable and all of the compassion for other people who struggle with mental health issues went right out the window in this case. This wasn’t a well-put-together person speaking calmly, this was very different. The same core issue – mental health – but different results. One group is acceptable. The other not so much.

That’s stigma.

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Depression

We All Have Mental Health Issues

Music for your mental health – Where the Road Goes

Social Connections Don’t Solve Everything But They Matter, A Lot

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