Opinion Article – MGH Center of Excellence for Psychosocial and Systemic Research

A Social, Activity, Nutritional, and Emotional (SANE) Approach to Coping with Alcohol and Mental Health Risks During COVID

Few things in life have effects that are as immediate, potent, and predictable as the effects from psychoactive drugs. Of all commonly used drugs, alcohol is the world’s favorite. This is because it is legal in most societies, socially accepted and less stigmatized than other drugs, and when the alcohol molecule reaches the human brain, it is generally perceived as good news. In addition to producing…

The Wisdom of a Greek Slave and a Roman Emperor: Borrowing from Stoic Philosophy to Make it Through a Pandemic.

Living through a pandemic has forced me to take a new look at coping, particularly since my life has been spared many of the things fate can throw at you: wars, loss of a career, severe illness. I was not really prepared mentally for living through a pandemic, but I have always looked at philosophy to help me live better – by reading and extracting interesting ideas that I can try out. Let me introduce you to a few practical points that I gleaned from Stoicism as a way of coping with our current pandemic…

Opinion: Loneliness in serious mental illness – why does it matter?

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been academic interest in the study of loneliness, as an increasing number of Americans, at all ages, are living alone. It turns out that this “loneliness epidemic” exacts not only a psychological price but appears to be a risk factor for premature death, comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes per day (1). Why should loneliness literally kill people? One explanation…

Personal Account: Adapting to Therapy Outside the Office

Personal Account:Adapting to Therapy Outside the Office Sandra Whitney-Sarles is a Peer Consultant for the COE. “Facing each other, my therapist and I have shared 26 years of hard and intense therapy. The dynamic space between us has been powerful as

Per aspera ad astra – Through hardship to the stars: The role of psychiatry on the long and stony road towards recovery

“Recovery” is one of those tricky words in mental health. It carries a generally positive connotation to some, but not all, and means different things to different people. Some equate recovery with being “cured,” returning to a former state of wellness, or as synonymous with no longer needing psychiatric medications. Others conceptualize recovery as the development of self-acceptance, meaning and purpose in the face of adversity. In this opinion piece, I examine my own use of the term recovery…

Cancer Screening in Schizophrenia

Should the quality of one’s cancer care be worse if a person is diagnosed with schizophrenia (or any mental health condition for that matter) compared to people who are not diagnosed with this mental illness? Of course, it should not. This month I came across an article on rates of breast cancer screening in women with schizophrenia (1). In this meta-analysis (this is a way of combining studies to look at large samples) that included over 25,000 women…