wellbeing

The Unique Body Image Problem Posed By Social Media

iStock Images Social media is a strange beast. Consider the app, Facetune, which makes the application of Valencia seem like child's play. Facetune is the Photoshop of selfies; it allows you to retouch your skin, add make-up, whiten your teeth, widen your mouth, change your eye colour, change your hair and basically make [...]

The ‘Tyranny’ Of Positive Thinking Can Threaten Your Health And Happiness

Images: MichaelBlann/Getty Everyone has heard “Just look on the bright side!” or “Happiness is a choice—so choose to be happy!” Countless self-help books on choosing happiness line the shelves of bookstores; You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero has been on the New York Times best-seller list for 32 weeks; and The Power of [...]

Can Apps Improve Your Mental Wellbeing?

Pixabay Images To the smartphone-addled among us, advising the use of apps to fix mental health problems might seem like telling someone who needs to get fit to live on jam and fags. But it’s happening all the same. While gadget and social media addiction are lampooned for increasing teenage depression, and complaints [...]

Mental Health At Work A Challenge

Pixabay Images Reported mental health issues in the workplace have risen 56 per cent in the past year, and almost half of companies in a major survey say at least one employee has committed suicide or been at risk of doing so, according to a new report. Eighty-one per cent of the company [...]

When A Bully Targets Your Child

Flickr Images Of all the challenges that school brings for students and their parents, one of the most unwelcome and worrying is bullying. Bullying starts as early as first grade and peaks in middle school. About 1 in 5 students report being bullied each year, and figuring out how to respond is difficult. [...]

Wide Awake At 3am? Meet The Insomniacs Who Learnt To Sleep Better

Flickr Images Anyone who has ever experienced insomnia will know how hellish it can be. Lying in bed and willing yourself to drift off, while your mind refuses to shut down, is frustrating but also incredibly anxiety-inducing. It’s a catch-22: the more you can’t sleep, the more you worry about it and the [...]

15 Habits That Are Costing You Happiness

Flickr Images 1. Comparing yourself to others. Comparison has been called the thief of joy and for good reason — every minute you spend wishing you were someone else is a minute of your own life wasted. Comparing yourself to others also misses the whole point of your life — to be you, [...]

The Power Within Vulnerability

Pixabay Images So many of us have been raised to believe we can’t show any weaknesses; so many of us have learned to hide any and all of our shortcomings believing that if they were known to and seen by others we’d be judged negatively. Yet we all have them (i.e., weaknesses and [...]

How Artificial Intelligence Could Help Diagnose Mental Disorders

Flickr Images People convey meaning by what they say as well as how they say it: Tone, word choice, and the length of a phrase are all crucial cues to understanding what’s going on in someone’s mind. When a psychiatrist or psychologist examines a person, they listen for these signals to get a [...]

Don’t Try To Be Happy. We’re Programmed To Be Dissatisfied.

Flickr Images In the 1990s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman led the positive psychology movement, which placed the study of human happiness squarely at the centre of psychology research and theory. It continued a trend that began in the 1960s with humanistic and existential psychology, which emphasized the importance of reaching one’s innate [...]

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