Mental Health

I am a contributing editor at Scientific American and write the Brain Waves blog for Psychology Today (you can find those posts here). My work has also appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Vogue and many other publications. Earlier in my career, I was on staff at Newsweek, and People, among other places and I’ve included a few of my old favorites from those days.

People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties

A growing mortality gap between Republican and Democrat areas may largely stem from policy choices During the COVID-19 pandemic, the link between politics and health became glaringly obvious. Democrat-leaning “blue” states were more likely to enact mask requirements and vaccine and social distancing mandates. Republican-leaning “red” states were much more…

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A Single, Quick ‘Mindset’ Exercise Protects against Adolescent Stress

Intriguingly, the intervention did not work for everyone in the same way. “The most vulnerable people in the most stressful time benefit the most,” says David Yeager, a developmental psychologist at U.T. Austin and a co-author of the paper. He emphasizes that the intervention is not intended to be used for survivors of trauma and abuse, but administering it broadly does no harm. In addition to addressing mental health issues, a goal of the intervention is to help adolescents engage with challenging courses and projects. In a charter school in one of the experiments, 63 percent of participants passed their math and science classes, compared with 47 percent of students in a control group.

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The Biggest Psychological Experiment in History Is Running Now

What can the pandemic teach us about how people respond to adversity?

What can the pandemic teach us about how people respond to adversity?

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Overcoming Psychological Biases Is the Best Treatment against COVID-19 Yet

In responding to the pandemic, society may be hampered by cognitive and political beliefs that distort judgments and lead to irrational decisions In March, as COVID-19 was spreading rapidly, and the lives of Americans were turned upside down, the country was deeply worried about ventilators. There did not seem to…

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New Insights into Self-Insight: More May Not Be Better

An innovative study technique yields surprising results that counter the popular idea that knowing yourself is good for you

How useful is it, really, to know thyself? The idea that self-insight is good for us dates all the way back to the inscriptions on ancient Greece’s Temple of Apollo in Delphi. It is still popularly assumed that people with a clear view of themself and their abilities are better…

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Scientists Start Building a Parts List for the Brain

A new study provides an extraordinary close-up of the menagerie of neural cell types, yielding possible leads for neurological and psychiatric treatments

About five years ago, preeminent neuroscientist Eric Kandel of Columbia University was asked by a radio interviewer what mysteries remained about the brain. “Almost everything,” Kandel responded. Such a statement does not diminish the considerable progress neuroscience has made in the more than a century since Italian physician Camillo Golgi…

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