In an ironic turn, the recent controversy surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica eclipsed another controversy brewing months before. As 2017 came to close, the million-dollar question surrounding the company was, Does Facebook make us depressed? Back in December, even Facebook itself posted an article on its official blog, titled, Hard Questions: Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad For Us? The post cites a number of studies that prove spending time on Facebook can threaten well-being. One study from the University of San Diego and Yale found that people who clicked on four times as many ..read more

We’re living in an age of hyper-connectivity where social media is being widely used by almost every age group in the world. It’s connected people from all corners of the planet and given us the opportunity to have global conversations about practically any subject, event, or news piece. However, many mental health and behavioral experts believe that social media has had a negative impact on the psychological well-being of those who use it because it gives people the illusion of being popular based solely on how many “likes” and “friends” they have on their profiles. Psychologists have also ob ..read more

In an increasingly globalized and mediatized world, in which mental illness is one of society’s most discussed cultural artifacts, Colleen Patrick Goudreau’s words ring out: “If we don’t have time to be sick, then we have to make time to be healthy”. With the prevalence of mental health problems, it is clear why. Mental health issues are one of the leading causes of the overall disease burden globally, according to the World Health Organisation. One study reported that mental health is the primary source of disability worldwide, causing over 40 million years of disability in 20 to 29-year-olds ..read more

Our world is getting smaller and we are all getting farther apart. No, this isn’t a prelude to a discussion on how technology has turned us into antisocial zombies. On the contrary, in an increasingly connected world each of us has more opportunities to work in, travel to, and meet people from different places around the globe than ever before. This means there are that many more of us falling in love with people who live far away from us—in different cities, countries, continents and, maybe one day, planets? Alternatively, some of us have fallen in love with the girl/boy next door only to fin ..read more

The title—The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage—intrigued me. According to the publisher, Mel Robbins’s self-help book is “based on a simple psychological tool that the author developed to motivate herself. Using a technique that involves counting down backwards from five to one, she gave herself the extra push she needed to complete dreaded tasks, become more productive.” Could this technique help solve my task-initiation problem? I am a brain injury survivor. I have clusters of thin-walled blood vessels in my brain. Two of them bled. To prevent ad ..read more

Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin—what unites these three exceptional individuals? It is widely accepted that all three were geniuses, but there is something else. These days, neuroscientists believe that all three suffered from a specific neurological disorder called Asperger’s syndrome. The whole definition of the term “neurological disorder” implies that something is going wrong in the brain. However, there is a growing recognition of the fact that when it comes to the processes in our brain, “going wrong” does not necessarily mean “going bad”. Our brain is too complicated a mec ..read more

Color vision is the ability to distinguish different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Color vision relies on a brain perception mechanism that treats light with different wavelengths as different visual stimuli (e.g., colors). Usual color insensitive photoreceptors (the rods in human eyes) only react to the presence or absence of light and do not distinguish between specific wavelengths. We can argue that colors are not real—they are “synthesized” by our brain to distinguish light with different wavelengths. While rods give us the ability to detect the presence and intensity of light ..read more

Falling Through the Cracks in Pain Management Pain and Opioids Chronic pain is debilitating, and it can cause patients to “fall through the cracks”. Health care institutions struggle to find ways to create “nets” and catch these patients. Pain medications include opioids which are used to treat chronic pain. Opioids often fail to treat the patient’s primary medical condition. As time goes by, patients tend to be unsatisfied with the results. Also, there is a good chance that some of these types of pain medications will be abused. In fact, pain medicines such as opioids are part of the United S ..read more

In the age of social media, networking and global never-ending communication, introverts are often viewed as rather inefficient. They are considered as people who would not happily express their opinion during the staff meetings or actively participate in brainstorming sessions. They are often considered to not be good at multitasking or be particularly charismatic. They are rarely at the center of attention at a party, and they often ignore their smartphones for hours in a row. These days, when we believe that big tasks require the active participation of large groups of people working togeth ..read more

This particular article is inspired by my perusal of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society” and “Shooting Ghosts” by Thomas J. Brennan and Finbarr O’Reilly. I am a retired clinical psychologist and psychology professor. I also served as an Air Force medic during the Vietnam Conflict. I did not serve “in country”. I served as a medic at Andrews AFB in the emergency room of Malcolm Grow Medical Center. There I witnessed considerable physical trauma. I witnessed death on a number of occasions, some violent, some peaceful. I remember th ..read more