A man's career path can significantly affect his risk of substance abuse. The entertainment industry is well-known for its high rate of drug addiction, but it's not the only one. The primary factor these careers have in common is generally some type of stress, whether it's a physical or psychological cause. Each ... Read More
Search Results for: anxiety
Self-medicating PTSD with Drug Use
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUD) often co-occur, meaning someone has both disorders at the same time. These people require a more complex course of treatment and have a less favorable outcomes than those with only one disorder. Researchers are actively developing treatments for ... Read More
Social Media and the Rise of Mental Illness
Updated March 16, 2022 The question of how social media use affects health continues to spur research. It's also a source of some controversy. To be sure, social media has positive and negative effects on our behavior, but is social media to blame for a reported rise in mental illness? The Big Picture of Social ... Read More
Medicaid Changes May Allow Mental Health Care
It's difficult to quantify exactly how much the prevalence of mental health disorders has grown in the last 50 or more years. Mental health issues have long been misunderstood, leading to underdiagnosis, and as a result, the lack of many trustworthy records being kept. Nonetheless, however, research has concluded ... Read More
Holidays Exacerbate Depression in LGBTQ+ Community
The holidays can be stressful for almost anyone. Hosting family, buying gifts, and preparing for festivities starting in late November and lasting until early January can put a strain on anyone, regardless of the specifics of their identity, but it's undeniable that the LGBTQ+ community bears the brunt of this stress ... Read More
“That’s Insane”: How Our Language Stigmatizes Mental Illness
Updated on December 9, 2024 Words matter. The language that we use to talk about a particular topic can have a profound effect on how we think about and relate to it. Think for a moment about mental illness. It could be the only disease in which people who have it feel guilty for doing so or, in some cases, are ... Read More
Treating Trauma: What Therapies and Treatments Work
Are you among the 223.4 million Americans who have has experienced some sort of traumatic event at least once in their lives? Do you live with the after-effects of a traumatic event, experience, or years of abuse? Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) impacts an estimated five percent of all adults in the United ... Read More
Measuring the Severity of an Addiction
Addiction is a disease, and as with many other diseases like diabetes and cancer, the severity of addiction varies widely depending on a number of factors that substance abuse experts can measure using the addiction severity index, or ASI. Just like how some people with diabetes can manage their condition by making ... Read More