This week, we wanted to share a few resources from professional mental health websites and practitioners to learn some coping mechanisms and suggestions specifically for the holiday season. We feel an obligation to be happy and cheery this time of year, but the reality is, it’s just as easy to feel depressed during the holidays as happy. No matter the reason for whatever may be making this holiday season difficult, we hope some of the following links may be of some help: Continue reading Mental Health Support this Holiday Season
Category: RESOURCES
Getting Through the Holidays with Difficult Family Dynamics
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. We hope you can use their post to start a conversation with your adolescent.
‘Tis the season. Even though a lot of us have been spending so much “quality time” at home with our families, there is a special something about the holidays (mostly Thanksgiving and Christmas, but all the holidays in this season) that brings out traits in people that may lay dormant during the rest of the year. Continue reading Getting Through the Holidays with Difficult Family Dynamics
Weekend Reads: Support for Your and Your Child’s Mental Health this Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a tricky holiday to navigate. Although it’s meant to be, well, a thankful time of year, it can still be painful for many. The history behind the holiday, the emphasis of being around family, and the potential of being around all kinds of triggers can make the upcoming week mentally taxing. Others might be anxious about the expectation of cooking for hours, while many might be grieving this year due to losses of those close to them or not being able to hold a “traditional” Thanksgiving due to the pandemic. Continue reading Weekend Reads: Support for Your and Your Child’s Mental Health this Thanksgiving
Video Games about Mental Health
More often than not, people have a negative view of video games and its relationship with mental health. Video games are often associated with addiction and seen as a poor coping mechanism. Those who play violent video games tend to be more likely to show depressive symptoms too. Continue reading Video Games about Mental Health
My Experience with Telehealth Medicine
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. We hope you can use their post to start a conversation with your adolescent.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to start using telehealth services in order to better look after my health. My workplace has a partnership with an application (which also has a website version) called Doctor on Demand. On top of being able to connect you with general physicians, there are also options for psychiatrists and therapists. Given that the next psychiatrist I could see would be in months and that I was going through a lot of things that needed help sooner rather than later, I decided to give the app a try. Continue reading My Experience with Telehealth Medicine
An App to Consider: Mango Health
Although we mentioned it in our list of medication reminders recently, we wanted to use this week to specifically focus on the free app, Mango Health. You can check out more about why apps can be useful for taking medication and developing other habits for your help here, but we specifically wanted to focus on Mango Health because of its simplicity and how easy it is to use and understand. Continue reading An App to Consider: Mango Health
Well Beings
This week, we wanted to highlight a website that uses videos and storytelling as a way for teens and young adults to be open about their mental health and well-being and how a variety of things can affect them. Well Beings uses both traditional news-style reporting and vlogs to talk about topics such as controlling one’s thoughts, using positive psychology in class, and how things like reading and music are useful coping tools. Going beyond these videos, Well Beings is also planning to virtually tour across the country, paring with local communities and public media stations to help address stigma and talk about mental health in 24 cities. Continue reading Well Beings
Writing Letters for Mental Health
Letters to Strangers is a youth-led, youth-based organization that aims to help break down the stigma regarding youth mental health and make treatment and information about it that much more accessible. Continue reading Writing Letters for Mental Health
Medication Reminders
Let’s be honest: we’ve all missed taking a daily medication. It might be because you were too busy, in a rush, or simply forgot. If your child is on medication, they may have also missed taking them because they didn’t have the energy to do so due to their depression, or their brain might have been too foggy to remember because of other mental health issues getting in the way. Continue reading Medication Reminders
Easy Recipes to Increase Serotonin
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. We hope you can use their post to start a conversation with your adolescent.
I don’t know about you guys, but I am in constant need of some serotonin. If you don’t know what serotonin is, it is the chemical in your body that helps regulate mood, social behavior, appetite, sleep, memory, and sexual desire. Depression can be the result of having an imbalance and a lack of serotonin in your body. Obviously, increasing serotonin levels is just one part of coping with depression, a practice that requires a variety of different techniques (all of which are different for everyone) but I thought sharing some quick (college-kid-feasible) recipes would be a fun easy method that many could incorporate into their lives to be healthier both physically and mentally. Continue reading Easy Recipes to Increase Serotonin