Health Research Guide

A compassionate approach to understanding and supporting loved ones with bipolar disorder If your loved one was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you probably have a lot of questions and concerns about how to help them live the healthiest life possible. Understanding Bipolar Disorder answers those questions and offers helpful guidance with essential information, practical strategies, and support for families of people suffering from bipolar disorder. Learn about what bipolar is, how it's diagnosed, the science behind it, and the treatments available, including medication, therapies, and community support. You'll find effective tools for dealing with a diagnosis as a family, advice for exploring therapy options as a team, and simple techniques for managing your family's stress levels to prevent emotional burnout. Understanding Bipolar Disorder includes: Relatable anecdotes--Read about what it's like to have bipolar disorder and to live with someone who has it. Family friendly activities--Explore exercises and questions you can work through together so you can learn how to best support your loved one with bipolar. Tools for thriving together--Discover tools that help you flourish as a family, including advice for getting ahead of moods, setting boundaries, maintaining healthy relationships, self-care, and more. Take the first step toward understanding and managing bipolar disorder--together.

Break free from social anxiety, one step at a time Feeling anxious around people? Not sure where to start? Then this user-friendly, practical resource might be exactly what you're looking for. This workbook helps you tackle your fear of judgment and worry about what others think of you. You'll find simple step-by-step instructions, worksheets and real-world examples to help you gain insight and control over your social anxiety. Social Anxiety For Dummies is a solution-focused guide to creating a new mindset about social anxiety and your ability to cope with it. This book has easy-to-understand information and effective strategies to help you make positive changes in your life. Packed with tips and tools to conquer your social anxiety Create positive self-talk, reduce avoidance and face your fears Discover how to deal with social situations, dating, public speaking, kids with social anxiety and workplace anxiety Explore how positive psychology can help you live a life of meaning, with or without social anxiety A complete guide with proven ideas, this is a jargon-free and a fun approach to gaining mastery over your social anxiety. Social Anxiety For Dummies puts you on the fast track to building your self-esteem and confidence.

Depression affects approximately 280 million people around the world, and it's only becoming more common. As of 2021, 1 in 5 American adolescents had experienced a major depressive episode in the year prior alone. Depression can occur in anyone, and a variety of factors, from genetics to specific experiences, play a role in its development. With depression becoming increasingly prevalent, it is important to understand the disorder and the causes and symptoms related to it. This helps people identify it and support others or themselves. Not Just a Bad Day highlights what depression is, how it occurs, what treatments are available, and related conditions that may accompany it. Discover more about this widespread disorder.

It is an extraordinary time for adolescents. Social media has a profound positive and negative influence on adolescents, drugs of abuse are readily available, social and sexual mores are changing, discussion about many aspects of racism is more prominent than ever, and surveys indicate that the prevalence of mental illness in teens is higher than any previous time. How Technology, Social Media, and Current Events Profoundly Affect Adolescents examines eighteen contemporary issues and their impact on the biological, psychological, and social domains in adolescents. Using research and clinical studies, this book reviews a host of issues that includes sleep, obesity, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use, suicidality/self-harm, cyberbullying, racism/discrimination, LGBTQ, gender dysphoria, poverty, divorce, bereavement, mortality, and more. In addition to these issues, the book provides an analysis of current events and their impact on adolescents, including the COVID pandemic and war in Ukraine. With over 750 references cited, the book delivers a contemporary overview of major adolescent issues and how they relate to one another, including the impacts of war, technology, and the pandemic on youth. In addition, a broad overview of the major biopsychosocial issues facing adolescents is offered. There are multiple themes that include the importance of role modeling, monitoring, and talking with teens as well as the strong influence of parents, peers, and schools on adolescents.

Psychology of Black Womanhood is the first textbook to provide an authoritative, jargon-free, affordable, and holistic exploration of the sociohistorical and psychological experiences of Black girls and women in the United States, while discussing the intersection of their identities. The authors include research on young, middle-aged, and maturing women; LGBTQ+ women and non-binary individuals; women with disabilities; and women across social classes. This textbook is firmly rooted in Black feminist, womanist, and psychological frameworks that incorporate literature from related disciplines, such as sociology, Black/African American studies, women's studies, and public health. Psychology of Black Womanhood speaks to the psychological study of experiences of girls and women of African descent in the United States and their experiences in the context of identity development, education, religion, body image, physical and mental health, racialized gendered violence, sex and sexuality, work, relationships, aging, motherhood, and activism. This textbook has implications for practice in counseling, social work, health care, education, advocacy, and policy.

This light-hearted and entertaining book, authored by top psychologist David Cohen, explores the influences and impacts on our perception of body image, examining the power of appearance and the psychology behind how we think and feel about ourselves physically. Packed with scientific findings alongside historical anecdotes and humorous insights, the book first looks at the history of body image and appearance, and how ideals of beauty have changed over time. It goes on to note the rise of the beauty and fashion industries, looking at how society, culture and the media can affect body image. The final section deals with issues of body dissatisfaction and the treatments and therapy available for those struggling with body image and mental health. Along the way, readers will meet a cast of characters from Elizabeth I, a daring, medieval Welsh poet, an Egyptian mummy with the first known tattoo, Paul F. Schilder who pioneered the study of body image, and the brave recipients of the first face transplants, among many more. In his trademark engaging style, Cohen offers a rich account of the psychology of body image through the ages and through the lifespan. It is valuable reading for students of psychology and professionals and therapists aiming to promote body positivity.

Social media has been fully integrated into the lives of most adolescents in the U.S., raising concerns among parents, physicians, public health officials, and others about its effect on mental and physical health. Over the past year, an ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examined the research and produced this detailed report exploring that effect and laying out recommendations for policymakers, regulators, industry, and others in an effort to maximize the good and minimize the bad. Focus areas include platform design, transparency and accountability, digital media literacy among young people and adults, online harassment, and supporting researchers.

Social Media and your Mental Health is a wide-ranging volume that explains today's social media landscape and examines its ramifications for users. An even-handed selection of essays that neither vilify technology nor ignore the fact that it can have dire repercussions if misused, Social Media and your Mental Health includes general background material and profiles of social media's major players, a close look at how being online excessively can affect your physical and mental well-being, digital relationship-building, and much more. With timely pieces on unrealistic beauty standards, how digital content is skewing our political discourse, and scammers who prey on the elderly, Social Media and your Mental Health will be of interest to anyone who has ever shared a post or clicked a ""like"" button.

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the "play-based childhood" began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the "phone-based childhood" in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this "great rewiring of childhood" has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies. Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the "collective action problems" that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood. Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes--communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children--and ourselves--from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.

A compelling and growing body of research has shown music and arts therapies to be effective tools for addressing a widening array of conditions, from providing pain relief, to enhancing speech recovery after stroke or traumatic brain injury through singing, to improving mobility of individuals with Parkinson's disease using rhythm. In Music and Mind Renee Fleming draws upon her own experience as an advocate to showcase the breadth of this booming field, inviting leading experts to share their discoveries. In addition to describing therapeutic benefits, the book explores evolution, brain function, childhood development, and technology as applied to arts and health. Much of this area of study is relatively new, made possible by recent advances in brain imaging, supported by the National Institutes of Health, major hospitals, and universities. This work is sparking an explosion of public interest in the arts and health sector. Fleming comes to the project having presented on this material in over fifty cities across North America, Europe, and Asia, collaborating with leading researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners. With Fleming's public profile and continuing advocacy, Music and Mind promises to be a groundbreaking book, the perfect introduction and overview of this exciting new field.