NHK World Japan: Japanese scale measures stress of COVID-19 workers. “A group of researchers in Japan has developed a tool to detect mental distress in medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Medical workers are said to be at high risk of developing mental health problems due to fears of coronavirus infection and social stigma.”
Washington Post: Japan and South Korea see surge of suicides among young women, raising new questions about pandemic stress. “Suicide rates among young women have increased notably in Japan and South Korea, raising possible links to the prolonged coronavirus pandemic as it amplifies stress levels, worsens economic woes and aggravates feelings of loneliness and isolation.”
San Francisco Chronicle: How to handle holiday stress during the pandemic. Bay Area experts have the answers. “The holidays can be a perilous time for our mental health even without a deadly pandemic. The weeks ahead are fraught with stress, including managing difficult family conversations, dealing with finances, and contemplating travel plans. But as coronavirus […]
Washington Post: She fell into QAnon and went viral for destroying a Target mask display. Now she’s rebuilding her life.. “The night before she almost ruined her life, Melissa Rein Lively couldn’t sleep. She had gotten into a fight with her husband, Jared, and though they had never spent more than a few nights apart […]
New York Times: In a Stressful Time, Knitting for Calm and Connection. “If you Google the two words ‘knitting’ and ‘pandemic’ together, you will get about 23 million hits. You’ll also do very well with ‘knitting through the pandemic,’ and ‘knitting’ with ‘Covid’ will get you 266 million options, the very first of which, at […]
Prevention: How to Tell if Your Constant Anxiety Symptoms Are Actually a Sign of COVID-19. “Anxiety can feel a lot like the symptoms of COVID-19, which unfortunately makes the anxiety feel worse, feeding a vicious cycle. So how can you figure out what’s going on with your body, especially if the symptoms are a bit […]
IEEE Spectrum: This Startup Spots Stress in Real-Time to Help Prevent Depression and Other Conditions. “What if there was a way to measure in real time when a person was becoming stressed, so the condition could be managed immediately using evidence-based methods? That’s the idea behind Philia Labs, a startup in Melbourne, Australia, that has […]
Good Housekeeping: Can’t Stop Doomscrolling? These Apps Actually Get You to Unplug Before Bedtime. “These free apps can be installed on your phone (and in some cases, as a web extension) to either forcefully block access to social media sites, or provide un-ignorable notifications that it’s time to put the phone down. If you’re finding […]
Elemental: What Doomscrolling Does to the Brain. “We’re taking in more media than ever. And often, that means reading or watching gloomy story after gloomier story, or, as New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose called it back in March, ‘doomsurfing.’ Taken together, this is a dangerous formula. Consuming too much bad news on your […]
Irish Times: How to fight the psychological fatigue of Covid-19’s second wave. “We are facing into a challenging winter with no end in sight. It is easier to experience a sense of camaraderie queuing outside the supermarket in the summer than during a cold, dark wet winter’s evening. In addition, the normal social events that […]
New York Times: Mother’s Little Helper Is Back, and Daddy’s Partaking Too. “I have a yearslong WhatsApp message group with a handful of fellow mothers of small children from across the United States and Canada. Since the pandemic began, what I refer to as ‘mom chats after dark’ start at around 7:30 p.m., Eastern Standard […]
Tulane University: Google search data reveals major panic attack issue, Tulane study shows. “The team used Google Trends to analyze an extensive list of mental health-related terms that people searched for before and after the World Health Organization issued a pandemic declaration on March 11, 2020. They found a major jump in searches related to […]
Michigan Health: Feeling Stressed or Down in a World with COVID? Try This Writing Tool. “The University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center created a new expressive writing tool called Making Meaning that allows people to put their thoughts and feelings into words to help relieve stress and anxiety.”
Stuff New Zealand: Taranaki man launches world’s largest database of mental health helplines. “Live For Tomorrow, founded by Taranaki man Elliot Taylor, offers the world’s largest database of more than 1600 mental health helplines instantly through the charity’s Find A Helpline website.” It looks like the new database just covers the United States and New […]
Mic: How to focus during a pandemic, according to someone with ADHD. “Do you think you’re likely to finish reading this entire article in one sitting? Or is it, maybe, going to be opened in a new tab to save for later, when you feel better able to focus? If that’s the case, maybe just […]