The holiday season is often portrayed as a time of joy, togetherness, and celebration, but for many, it can bring feelings of stress, anxiety, and even sadness. Let’s talk about some reasons why the holidays aren’t always as happy as they seem, and how you can take care of your mental health during this challenging time.

Anxiety can be a challenging and overwhelming experience, but there are strategies you can use to manage it more effectively. Whether it’s the general stress of everyday life or more persistent anxiety disorders, finding ways to cope can make a big difference in how you feel day-to-day.

By acknowledging the challenges and implementing practical strategies for stress reduction, parents can enhance their own well-being and that of their children.

Stress is our body’s natural response to challenging situations. While a certain level of stress can be motivating, chronic stress can lead to a host of mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and burnout. Understanding how stress affects us is the first step in managing it effectively.

Social connection plays a pivotal role in lifestyle medicine for psychiatry. By recognizing and harnessing the power of relationships, mental health professionals can enhance their treatment approaches, leading to better outcomes for patients. Whether through community engagement, therapeutic interventions, or technology, fostering social connections is essential in nurturing mental well-being.

In our fast-paced world, it's easy to overlook the importance of mental health. Yet, just like physical health, it plays a crucial role in our overall well-being. One of the most effective—and often overlooked—ways to boost your mental health is through regular exercise. Let’s explore how breaking a sweat can help you feel better mentally and emotionally.

Just like sleep, nutrition is another lifestyle factor that impacts both physical and mental health. Over the last several years, more and more data has proven our common sense knowledge on a healthy diet as an important part of our overall wellness not just for things like cardiovascular health but also mental health.

Sleep greatly impacts both physical and mental health. Optimizing sleep is one way you can improve your mental health without medication OR improve how you feel on medications. There are numerous barriers to good sleep in modern life. Learn more about how some small changes can improve your sleep and your health.

While psychiatry definitely utilizes some medications to help patients deal with mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and OCD, there are other options that can be used instead of or in addition to medication. Things like nutrition, exercise, sleep, social connections, and stress reduction are the five pillars of lifestyle medicine which we apply in our practice to help patients get the best outcome.

Depression, anxiety, and sex aren’t things most people usually think of together, but I don’t think anybody is really surprised that there’s a relationship once they stop to think about it. The relationship between sexual health and mental health is both multifaceted and multidirectional.

Today as I watched my kids at the beach playing with mollusks, I experienced a moment of mindfulness. Mindfulness is “open, active attention to the present” and is a great tool for managing everything from daily stress to more serious mental health concerns like depression, anxiety, and OCD.

Summer and stress aren’t words we usually think of together. Summer is stereotypically thought of as a time to relax and play, with long days and a slower pace.

And for many it is, but more and more I’m hearing summer as a source of stress, anxiety, and even depression from patients, friends and myself. So what gives?!?