Category: RESOURCES

Online Diagnosis Tools: Helpful or Harmful?

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.

Screen Shot 2018-08-05 at 10.57.50 PMSomething I’ve been thinking about recently is the role the internet plays in diagnosis of mental health issues. There are plenty of self tests for mental illnesses on a variety of websites. But are they accurate? People often joke about WebMD saying they have cancer no matter what they enter into the surveys, and that just checking the site causes more anxiety. Such websites can be harmful for people with mental illnesses like OCD who worry excessively about health, but can they also be helpful? In this blog I will lay out the pros and cons of online diagnosis tools for mental illness, along with some tips for those who decide to use these resources.

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Prioritizing Yourself

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 for us to share.

One of the most important things I have learned on my mental health journey is that it’s okay to be self-centered. In fact, you NEED to be self-centered to some degree. It’s so easy to get caught up in the lives of everyone around you and lose sight of your own path.

At the beginning of 2018, I decided to make myself the focus of this year. While this doesn’t mean I neglect my friends and family, it does mean that I stop breaking my back doing things that don’t bring me joy. Here are some of the important steps I’ve taken to accomplish this goal:

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Ted Talk: The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage

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.

Research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored,they get stronger. Psychologists call this amplification.

In this talk, Susan David discusses the concept of emotional agility—allowing ourselves to really feel our negative emotions, like sadness and anger, instead of pushing aside those feelings. She argues that brooding, bottling and false positivity always are unsustainable—internal pain always comes out.

Here are some ideas for the next time you are unsure how to label your feelings.

Continue reading Ted Talk: The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage

Keep Calm and Listen to White Noise

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I grew up in the country in a two-story house that had no air conditioning. When June rolled around and the steamy weather arrived, my dad would go down to the cellar and bring up our huge standing fan, set it in the upstairs hallway, and turn it onto the highest setting to try to pull the cool evening air into the hot house. I was a pretty anxious kid, and resistant to changes, so for the first couple of nights after the fan came upstairs, I’d have trouble sleeping—and then I’d sleep like a baby. And when September came and he took the fan back to the basement, it would take me a couple weeks to learn to fall asleep without that “white noise,” because it was—and is—so relaxing.

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Nutrition and Mental Health

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.

Have you ever eaten a load of sugar like a huge ice cream bar and felt kind of crummy? Have you noticed that when you eat lots of fruits and vegetables you feel better overall? That’s because what you put in your body and you brain and very connected. After all you’re all connected. Just as the the thoughts you think will affect how you feel, so too what you eat will affect how you feel.

Gaining control of what you put in your body will not only make you more aware of your health, but it will also help you gain control of your life.

Here are some apps that may help!

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The Healing Power of Music

Summertime is the time to relax! But some of us have real trouble relaxing and putting down our worries. We might pop on a pair of earbuds and find some music to help us.

Music releases dopamine, the reward chemical, which makes us feel good. People who listen to music they like have dopamine levels up to 9 percent higher than others—one of the first scientific indications of how helpful music can be.

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Behavioral Methods to Manage Depression

Oftentimes when a person is depressed they may feel tired, as well as have a lack of motivation and energy. These changes in mood can lead a person who is depressed not to carry out their daily tasks, activities, and responsibilities. All of these responsibilities at home, school, or work can begin to pile up. This can cause the person to feel overwhelmed, creating an increased feeling of guilt, uselessness, and failure. In turn, this can become a cycle that increases the depressed mood and further lowers motivation. 

squatsIncreasing your activity levels—simply getting exercise, for example, can help you to feel better, be less tired, and think more clearly. Positive experiences can help alleviate some of the depressed feelings and mood. 

The Behavioral Strategies for Managing Depression Module provides a list of 185 ideas about pleasurable activities that someone could do such as thinking about planning a day’s activities, exercising, or going ice skating, roller skating/blading. When you are feeling depressed, you have to make an effort to plan fun and enjoyable activities into your life.  The module has a worksheet for you to follow to help you track your activities and rate your depression, pleasant feelings, and sense of achievement before and after the activity. It also has a weekly schedule to help plan out daily responsibilities and pleasurable activities.

It’s best to start slow by adding just a few small activities a week. (For example, the squats in the photo above are part of a simple seven-exercise routine that starts small and builds—check it out here.) Then, over time, slowly increase the number of activities. It might seem hard in the beginning, but setting reasonable goals for yourself is important so it won’t feel like too much too soon.

Choosing to perform tasks that give you a sense of achievement or mastery will help you feel like you are starting to regain control over your life. Once you gain a sense of achievement, that sense may encourage you to do more and thus improve your mood.

What are some fun and pleasurable activities you have suggested to your adolescent to help fight depression and increase your mood? Share with us in the comments!

Summer Reading List 2018

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The New York Public Library has iconic statues of lions on its steps.

Summer is finally here, and for many young people this may mean months of sleeping late, hanging out with friends, vacationing, and continuous streaming of movies and television shows. However, it can also mean finding a good book (or two) to read!

Did you know there are some good reasons why reading paper books is nicer than reading anything electronically? One important reason: if you read a paper book, you’ll probably remember more. One study found that people who read stories in paper books are more likely to remember the events in the story than they are if they read an e-book. Continue reading Summer Reading List 2018

Say It Out Loud

We at SOVA are mental-health and communications professionals, and we use those skills to design blogs that give young people and their families information about mental illness in manageable portions that you can grasp. For example, here are just a few facts about the reality of living with mental illness as an American teen:

  • one in five teens lives with a mental health condition
  • more than half of those are not getting the help they need
  • stigma remains a huge barrier to teens who are seeking that help
  • teens who don’t seek help say they are afraid of peers perceiving them negatively

Statistics and facts like these can help put mental health issues in perspective. But the parts of our blogs to which many readers relate most closely are people’s stories.

Our hope is that SOVA will make it easier and less scary for you as the parent or caregiver of a teen with mental illness to share your experiences with others, and that together we can form a network of peers who can provide support for each other as you negotiate your challenges.

Continue reading Say It Out Loud