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Sleeping better

September 30, 2024 in LINKS

Sleeping patterns and the amount of sleep adolescents get can get jumbled because of mental illness: we’ve also previously talked about “depression naps” and the effects that they can have. Overall, it’s difficult for adolescents to get the recommended amount of sleep they should be getting, and with higher rates of mental illness within this age group today, it can be even more difficult because of the ways that it can affect your sleep, such as depression napping and insomnia.

There are tons of resources available online and through app stores that offer ways to contribute to measuring and stabilizing your sleeping patterns, but we’ve pulled a few that you can check out below!

Flux You can install Flux on your computer so that your screen automatically adjusts with the sun. Screens emit brighter, blue lighting that can hurt the eyes, especially at night. Flux dims your computer to a softer, orange color at sunset, and you can adjust how strong the color and softness are.

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Sleep with Me This podcast is dedicated to help you fall asleep by telling bedtime stories. The host, Drew Ackerman, takes a comedic approach in his story choice and storytelling, but still does so in a way that helps the listener not feel like they have to pay attention and eventually drifting off to sleep. There are over 700 episodes too, so you don’t have to worry about running out of content.

There are also other podcasts available meant to help the listener sleep. You can check out some other lists for more info and ideas.

Pzizz Science-based and celebrity-backed (J.K. Rowling has tweeted about using it before), Pzizz uses soft music, voices, and sound effects to help you fall and stay asleep. It’s not just limited for sleeping at night, and includes options if you want to take a nap and to help you stay focused.

Do you use anything on your phone or computer to help you fall and stay asleep at appropriate times? If you nap (whether voluntarily or involuntarily), what have you tried to make sure you don’t interrupt your sleep at night?

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Music and Social Media

September 27, 2024 in LINKS, Social Media Guide

What are your favorite genres? Do you enjoy the stuff currently on the radio? Do you like pop, rock, rap, or any of the specific subgenres within them? Maybe you like a combination, or even all of them.

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Music is an extension of ourselves and a way to not only express, but figure out our identity. Music is especially meaningful for adolescents during a time when they’re experiencing a crucial time figuring out who they are. Studies have shown that adolescents listen to more music than any other age group and use it to help shape together their identity, since there’s often a culture and sense of style associated with different genres.

Studies have also shown that adolescents use music as a way to connect with others and make friends with those who have similar tastes, since they are likely to have other tastes in common too outside of music. Social media is one way of connecting people over their taste in music.

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Using social media to find out what your peers are listening to isn’t new: Last.fm was specifically created so that people could share what they were listening to by connecting it to their iTunes and other music sites. Of course, aspiring musicians can also use sites like Soundcloud and YouTube to post their original works, sharing it with others not just on these sites, but on other platforms too.

Nowadays, social media sites give users the option to post what music they’re listening to when they make a status (like Facebook), and some give them the choice to play a snippet of a song over their story (like Instagram). Even Spotify counts as social media: Spotify gives you the option to add friends by using your email or Facebook, and they can see what you’re listening to as you’re listening to them.

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Spotify also has a “private” listening option, so that you could listen to whatever else you want without others seeing. Both the public and private feeds on Spotify create a discussion about how people, and adolescents specifically, can manipulate what and how they listen to their music based off what others will think of them. Some might have a genre that they’re embarrassed of, or something that might not be that popular with their friends, so they might go into private mode so no one knows that they listened to it. They may only keep the regular setting on if they are listening to groups that their friends also like and contributes to the image they have created for themselves.

Picking and choosing what people see versus showing all of your music history can be similar to picking and choosing what sorts of brands adolescents want others to see them wearing and what type of photos they post on Instagram. It can be even more anxiety inducing too since adolescents listen to more music than any other age group, so it’s natural to forget that the friend feed is there as you’re listening to music, and a song might slip in that might be “judged” by someone. Some may not care, and some may not mind monitoring it. Some may even turn off this feature completely and listen to their music without others knowing when they’re doing so.

If anything, if you want to expand your taste in music outside of Spotify’s Discover Weekly, the friend feed is a great option to find some new songs.

If you use Spotify, do you have the friends on your feed? Do you look at what others are listening to, or do you think others are looking at yours? Why do you think some people judge each other’s music tastes so harshly?

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Bringing Some Color In

September 25, 2024 in LINKS

There are many outlets to take advantage of if you need a distraction that go beyond procrastination purposes. These kinds of situations can include sitting on public transit, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, or those times when anxiety can feel so overwhelming that you it can seem like you’re frozen, itching to do something to make the feeling go away. One of the most simplest and convenience ways to waste a little bit of time and keep yourself busy is through the infinite number of games available through the app stores on your smartphone.

While some are designed specifically for stress relief purposes, some simply end up being that way. This can be through the low stakes involved (such as the levels not being timed) or the minimal thinking required. One such game is I Love Hue, which is based on organization and color. Your goal is to move around scrambled colored tiles so that they create a gradient, which can seem complicated, but can feel incredibly satisfying once a pattern begins to emerge. Not all of the tiles need to be moved, and some are locked with a black dot to serve as reference points.

The game has an overall tranquil vibe to it, with soft sounds and pleasing, supportive words like “magnificent” when you finish a level and “mystic” and “prophet” to refer to the level types. The colors are also soft as well as aesthetically pleasing, and can also feel a little educational, helping your eyes recognize the subtle differences in colors better (Is this red-orange? Or orange-red?). There is a slightly competitive component to it too, as each level shows the average number of steps people take to complete it, which can be a bonus for those who want to build up their motivation towards another task.

The game is free and available on both the App Store and Google Play.

Would you consider playing a game like I Love Hue? How do you think puzzles help with stress? How do you think colors help with stress?

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Can a Poor Diet Predict Mental Illness?

September 23, 2024 in Educate Yourself

Food is so much more than gaining energy to get through the day. Many see food as an experience: some see cooking as therapeutic, eating with others as a way to deepen relationships, and taking photos of their food and posting them as a hobby. This doesn’t even account for how good food can taste, given the variety in cuisine and combinations.

Because of its importance and presence, especially for adolescents as they enter a rapidly developing stage in their lives, food can also be a huge influence in other parts of our lives. Studies are starting to look at the relationship between food and mental health, seeing how one’s diet and what they eat can affect or even influence the presence of mental illnesses.

One recent article explored this, focusing on a poor diet, and particularly how sugar can impact a teenager’s mental health. In it, they explained the results of a study that showed that men who consumed 67 grams of sugar a day were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who ate under 40 grams, as well as how teenage girls who consumed fast and processed food were associated with a higher risk of depression. These sorts of results can have a huge impact on adolescents in general, not just because they’re more at risk for mental illnesses, but youths are often the key demographic when it comes to marketing. The bright colors and cartoonish imagery in advertisements for sodas, sugary cereals, and processed snacks are meant to target those who are younger.

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Another study back in 2014 also looked into previous research to see if there was any overlap between a poor diet and mental health in children and adolescents. While not as strong, the results were still similar, the relationship was still there. This study went into more detail as to why this relationship exists, giving one example that the nutrients found in healthier food, such as magnesium and zinc was inversely associated with depressive disorders. This means that those nutrients were less likely to be consumed by those who have depressive disorders. Another explanation says that high-fat and high-sugar diets can negatively affect proteins that play a huge role in brain development. This sort of impact can affect how our brain processes things, and therefore can make people more susceptible to mental illnesses.

With this information, we must also keep in mind that some don’t have a choice in their diets. Eating healthy can be a privilege given the costs of organic products and food alternatives, as well as the accessibility and location of certain grocery stores and restaurants. Depression can influence how much and when we want to eat, and some may eat more as a coping mechanism when they’re anxious. Though studies have shown a link between mental health and a poor diet, there are still so many factors to consider as to why there is such a connection.

How do you think what you eat affects your mental health? Do you think your mental health affects what you eat? How do you think that changing one’s diet can impact their mental health? Let us know below!

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Ways to Stay Focused

September 20, 2024 in LINKS

It can be incredibly difficult to concentrate on something for a long period of time, especially when it comes to the more mundane and boring things, like chores, homework, or cleaning out your closet like you swear you were going to do when the weather started to change but has only become an even bigger pile of clothes.

Having a mental illness doesn’t help either, as it can play a factor in disrupting your work performance. This doesn’t just include ADHD, but anxiety and depression also have a relationship with difficulty concentrating on tasks. There are a variety of reasons, since mental illnesses all affect people differently, but things such as worrying about doing a good job and your mind struggling to even think about the assignment at hand when it’s hard to function in general are a couple of examples.

The Internet, as usual, can try to help with its endless resources. At the very least, there are apps and websites that can help block electronic distractions so you can focus on what needs to be done. While these aren’t the only ways to help with concentrating, especially since they are limited to blocking out websites and other apps, these are still options that can maybe make finishing that essay a little bit easier.

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Self-Control While it can seem a little intimidating at first (the icon is a skull, for example), Self-control has you make a list of specific websites that you want to blacklist, such as social media websites, and once you set a time limit, you can’t access any of them until the timer runs out. It doesn’t block other websites, however, so if you need to do research or Google something, you can still access them. Don’t try and restart your computer to access the blocked sites though, because you still won’t be able to access them.

Focus Writer are for those who don’t need to use anything else on their computer, and just need to write. Here, you also set a timer, and your screen becomes nothing but the document (with a customizable background), so you’re forced to look at it and nothing else on your computer.

Flipped takes things to more of an extreme, as it was created to help people break any bad habits that they have with their phone. It can still be helpful on a lower level, however, since it also gives you the ability to control how much time you need to spend away from your phone and its distractions. Just like Self-control, the main catch is that the apps you choose to block will absolutely stay blocked, even if you try to restart your phone.

Do you have any tips on how to concentrate on important tasks? What do you do to stay focused? Let us know below!

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Giving Back

September 18, 2024 in LINKS

There are going to be a lot of chances to reflect and give back now that the holiday season is in full swing. This doesn’t only include Thanksgiving during November, but other holidays such as Veterans’ Day here and Remembrance Day in places like Great Britain, Canada, and Australia. While reflecting and giving back can be done on a very personal level, such as evaluating how the past year has gone and what can change in the upcoming new year, or participating in local food and gift drives at school or work.

There are going to be plenty of options and organizations to donate to (some more popular and available than others), and it can get pretty overwhelming to decide which ones to choose (of course, if being able to donate is something you can do). Each organization is different, and everyone has issues that are more personal to them and have respective charities that they’re drawn to, but if you still want some options to consider, we’ve listed a few mental health organizations below. You can directly donate, buy merchandise where the proceeds go to the group, find volunteer opportunities, or even just share the resources on social media to get the word out.

What are you doing for the holiday season? What issues and matters are meaningful to you? How do you think you can help give back besides donating?

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Curling Up With a Good Book

September 16, 2024 in Be Positive

There are so many ways to get comfortable with a book and get lost in the words and stories that it contains. You can read in the car during a long journey, in between classes, at the dining table, your bed, the couch, the bath, and so on. There’s the classic physical books that can be compact and slim and easily carried in one hand, or so heavy that you can use it as a weight. E-books like Kindles or Nooks can hold hundreds upon thousands of stories in one small device, providing an endless selection in the palm of your hands. These e-book services are also available as apps, so if you already have a tablet, you can read them on there, or even on your phone.

Nowadays, many wonder if kids and adolescents even read for fun anymore, often citing social media and technology as the major factor. The question about youth reading habits is not new, however. For example, when the Harry Potter phenomenon was at its peak, many noticed that kids had an increased interest in reading, despite being more consumed with TVs at the time. Despite this, young adult novels are still being published (and often adapted into TV shows and movies).

Studies have shown that leisurely reading can have a positive effect on anxiety and stress. There are several ways that this happens; some psychologists believe that because reading is such an intensive activity that requires concentration, it can drown out distractions while also indulging you in a good story. These good stories can ease muscle tension and lower heart rates in as little as six minutes! In fact, reading can reduce stress up to 68%, having a greater effect than going for a walk or listening to music.

It’d be impossible to list the kinds of books that you can read, but there are so many genres and so many new releases that it can get pretty overwhelming to decide where to start. There’s always the New York Times bestseller list – and they even have a specific list for young adult hardcovers as well. You don’t need to stick to the most popular books though: ironically, social media websites like Goodreads and tumblr are great outlets to find books that match up with your interests. They usually have forums or blogs specifically for more diverse literature in both characters and authors too.

So when you find yourself having some free time, or simply want an escape when things begin to get too stressful, reading just the first chapter of a book, whether old or new, can have a tremendous effect.

Do you like to read? What kind of books are you drawn to? Do you have any recommendations? Let us know in the comments!

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Seasonal Affective Disorder

September 13, 2024 in Educate Yourself

As the days get shorter this time of year, some have trouble maintaining a positive mood. One type of depression is known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD typically sets in at the beginning of late fall and early winter and lasts through the beginning of spring and summer. Many often experience decreased mood from the fall through the winter, and then an elevated, more positive mood in the spring and summer.  This type of depression usually effects individuals more as the days become shorter, meaning there’s less sunlight. Because SAD is a category of depression, the symptoms are the same. The thing that makes SAD a specific type of depression is the way the disorder matches with the changing seasons.

Some great forms of treatment exist to help those with symptoms of SAD. These treatments are outlined by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). One example NIMH mentions is light therapy, which recommends individuals experiencing SAD sit in front of a light box for 20-60 minutes for extra exposure to light during the seasons with shorter days.

Any thoughts or comments about Seasonal Affective Disorder? How do you deal with the seasons changing?  

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Why Do Plants Improve Our Mood?

September 11, 2024 in Educate Yourself

The cliched image about someone having a “green thumb” typically involves someone in their backyard, their overalls covered in dirt, hands protected by thick gloves that are rough to the touch. The garden can be filled with colorful plants, various kinds of produce and herbs, or vivid greenery with large leaves. Typically, it can include all three!

Nowadays, the green thumb image has had a few additions, and may have even shifted slightly for some. If you go on social media, you’re likely to find all kinds of hashtags about plants relating to aesthetics, interior design, and indoor gardening, just to name a few. Plants have become increasingly popular with younger generations, particularly when it comes to houseplants and those taken care of indoors. Because young adults spend a majority of their time indoors, plants literally provide more life into the room. They’re a way to bring the pleasant aspects of nature inside, they add a touch of color, and are an overall way to tie the room together.

Also, they’re pretty.

There are benefits to keeping plants beyond them making your space look more appealing. Some of the more obvious ones are for health reasons: plants absorb pollutants, which can help improve any breathing problems you may have, and one study found that houseplants can reduce fatigue and headaches by 20-25%. They can also reduce blood pressure and can even increase pain tolerance (as reported by patients in hospital rooms).

Aside from the pleasing visuals that can improve your mood, houseplants have other effects on people mentally, too. This goes beyond feeling inspired to be more productive and potentially increase the attention span. In one study, young adult men who completed both a computer task and transplanting a houseplant were more likely to feel soothed and comfortable when interacting with the plant. Being around plants can reduce stress and can provide a sense of calmness.

Keeping a plant alive also requires effort, which can have their own set of benefits. Knowing that you’re doing a good job in taking care of a plant can improve your mood, and knowing that you’re the one responsible for the plants growing and thriving can bring joy as well. However, the benefits in keeping a plant are not exclusive to real ones – if you don’t have the time or feel pressured in taking care of something, artificial plants can provide similar, if not the same effects, so long as they look relatively real.

Do you have any (real or fake) plants? Why do you think they’re so popular with young adults now? Do you think that they help your mood?

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Cultural Competency in Mental Health Care

September 9, 2024 in Educate Yourself

We are all influenced by our culture; the languages we speak, our beliefs, values, practices and goals. Our cultural background affects the way we express our feelings and emotions, and how we cope with challenging situations. Our culture is what makes us who we are as humans, making it important to find mental healthcare professionals who are relatable to us, providers who are culturally competent. What is cultural competence anyway?

The American Psychological Association defines cultural competency as the ability to recognize the diversity between different cultures and apply that understanding when working together with a diverse group of people. Thinking about cultural competency helps mental healthcare clinicians provide the same quality of care to a diverse group of people. Although important, the APA found that less than half of working psychologists were confident with their knowledge of the cultures their Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and Indigenous clients identified with. Research has shown that cultural competency makes a big difference in how well therapy works for an individual, however finding a therapist who is culturally competent is not always easy.

You might be asking yourself how do I know if my therapist, or a therapist I am looking to work with in the future is culturally competent? Ask one or a few of the following questions the next time you meet with your therapist:

  • Have you worked with people from my community/culture?
  • Have you had any cultural competency training?
  • Are you familiar with the way my community/culture views mental health and mental health treatment?
  • What steps are you taking to educate yourself on different cultures?

Do you think it is important for therapists to be culturally competent? Have you found a therapist who understands and respects your culture? Let us know!

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