The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is the United States’ largest grassroots mental health organization. NAMI is dedicated to building better lives for millions of American’s affected by mental illness through education, advocacy, listening, and awareness.
Category: RESOURCES
Taking a Break
Though people are constantly on their computers, sometimes they need to have a brief distraction from whatever task that they’re currently focusing on, whether to jump start their motivation or calm any stress that the assignment is causing. The reasons we’re working or need a distraction may vary, and just like needing distractions for different reasons, the things people seek out to relax and ease their anxiety differ from person to person.
New Music Friday
Music can help people in many ways. As several posts here have discussed, it can be particularly helpful when it comes to calming anxiety, providing an escape, or even helping people feel justified in moments when emotions can feel too overwhelming. Music players allow people to create their own playlists depending on their mood, or create ones for them depending on what we like. YouTube allows people to get creative, featuring not just songs, but remixes, mashups, and strange combinations that you can’t find anywhere else.
Do You Hold a Stigma on Mental Health?
The stigma that people can hold isn’t a new topic by any means when discussing mental health, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the stigma is still harmful. Though the conversation about mental health has become more open, whether it be from celebrities opening up about their experiences or the variety of apps to use as an outlet, it can still be terrifying for people to be honest about their own mental health. Continue reading Do You Hold a Stigma on Mental Health?
Making Opening a New Tab an Activity
Realistically, people spend a lot of time on the internet. While part of that time is spent on the phone, people usually glued to our computers and laptops in some way. Whether that be for doing research for school, googling something for work, or just having a place to watch videos, taking quizzes, or talking to friends online, the internet is as present in everyday life as breathing, and it’s easy to end up spending hours on it.
Listening to Ambient Noise
Sitting in silence can be mortifying, but sometimes, listening to music isn’t that much of a help either – even though it can improve how we feel, sometimes it’s too loud and distracting. White noise can be the best options in this kind of situation; it’s an ever-present noise, but nowhere near loud to the point that it becomes overwhelming.
I’m Listening
(Trigger warning: suicide)
Last Sunday morning, radios across the country devoted two hours to a candid discussion about mental health and suicide for Suicide Prevention Week.
Mental Health Podcasts
The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.
Lately, I’ve become a bit of a podcast fiend. My first podcast was the popular fictional radio show Welcome to Night Vale, and over the years – particularly in the last few months – I’ve subscribed to all kinds of podcast feeds, including serial fiction, news shows, and writing advice. Continue reading Mental Health Podcasts
A “Self-Evaluator” Site Designed Especially For College Students
Anxiety is skyrocketing among college students, but they often don’t know how to figure out how much the anxiety is interfering with their lives, or where to go on campus for help.
The Self Evaluator website is designed to help college students solve these problems. The Duke University School of Medicine developed the Self-Evaluator for Jed’s college-student-support site, ULifeline.
It screens for thirteen of the most common mental health conditions that college students face. This screening does not give a diagnosis, but it asks detailed questions that can identify mental health challenges that might be interfering with students’ thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
Continue reading A “Self-Evaluator” Site Designed Especially For College Students
Stop Anxiety with Hypnosis
Can an app for hypnosis help treat your adolescent’s anxiety?
Apps are available for everything these days, including your mental health and well-being. One app available is Anxiety Relief Hypnosis.
The idea behind the app is it helps reduce anxiety and fear by improving relaxation skills. The developers of the app state that hypnosis can decrease anxious thoughts and enhance your response to relaxation, which, in turn, resets your behavior and enables an improved response to stress. The app provides an audio session read by a certified hypnotherapist together with calming music and sounds from nature to aid relaxation. The “awaken at end” feature can be disabled to allow you to fall into restful sleep at bedtime.