Sports and Their Effects on Mental Health

You’ve probably heard it before: exercise and moving around can do a lot for your mental health. It’s a great form of stress relief, helps get your mind off of things, and of course, has benefits for your physical health too.

One way of getting physically active are through school and club sports. Organized teams like football, soccer, volleyball (the list can go on and on and on) are an easy way to do this. There’s a social aspect as well, because it gives you the opportunity to interact with peers who share an interest in that sport too. Continue reading Sports and Their Effects on Mental Health

What Exactly is CBT?

Depression is considered one of the most commonly diagnosed mental disorders in children. In 2016, 3.2% of children aged 3-17 years (approximately 1.9 million) had diagnosed depression. Depression is also the most common health problem for college students. In 2017, out of all adults with a major depressive episode, the age group with the highest prevalence of 13.1% was young adults aged 18-25. Continue reading What Exactly is CBT?

How to Use Free Time to Fuel Positivity

As the school year winds down (or you may have very recently finished), you may find your child thinking about how much free time they have coming up. Of course, this can be a great thing: they have some time where they’re not burdened by homework and assignments and for possibly the first time in a while, aren’t restricted to a Monday-Friday schedule. It can also be stressful, and a lack of structure and schedule can actually increase symptoms of anxiety, especially for students on summer vacation. Continue reading How to Use Free Time to Fuel Positivity

Creative Arts Therapy Feature: Poetry Therapy

Do you enjoy the arts? Have you ever wanted to see how getting creative can help you mentally? This feature is just one in a series of entries exploring the different types of creative arts therapy. You can learn more about other outlets here!

Sometimes it can be hard to discuss how you are feeling out loud. There can be a sense of pressure to try to find the exact words to fully describe how you’re feeling and the worry your words won’t come out how you want them to, leading the other person to misunderstand how you are feeling. One way to express your emotions without having to talk about them is to write about them in a poem. Continue reading Creative Arts Therapy Feature: Poetry Therapy

Embracing Failure

“If you’re not failing, it probably means you’re not taking enough risks.”

Those are the words of Peter Forkner, director of the counseling center at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, at a recent event in which Bentley, staff, faculty, and alumni recount their stories of failure and lessons learned from them. Bentley University is one of many US colleges making the move to ease students’ anxieties around failure and teaching them to cope with it. Continue reading Embracing Failure