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Do We Need Hugs to Be Happy? I Don’t.
Recently published reports in Discover and Psychology Today assert that hugs are essential for human happiness. According to Suzanne Deggs-White, a professor at Northern Illinois University who studies social relationships, our need to be hugged goes back to our earliest days in the primeval morass, and a nice warm hug releases bonding hormones that not only make us happy but help make us successful human beings. “When we can’t hug, we don’t get that jolt of good hormones,” the professor says.
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The War Is Taking a Toll on Ukraine’s Kids. Psychologists Share How Parents Can Help
Hanna Usatenko's 10-year-old daughter, Kate, is afraid the war in Ukraine is making her lose her memory. She's heard the deafening sound of rocket attacks. She had to flee her home in Kyiv with her father and 12-year-old sister – while her mother, a psychologist, psychotherapist and nurse, stayed behind to volunteer at local hospitals. About a week after the war started, Kate called her mom and told her that she had a hard time concentrating when she was reading her books. She even "downloaded an IQ test to check whether she's less clever than she used to be," says Usatenko, 40.
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Good News: People Can Recover and Thrive After Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders
People who have suffered from mental illness can go on to develop a long-lasting sense of well-being and achieve a “high-functioning” life.
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For Some Teens, as Masks Come Off, Anxiety Sets In
For Belle Lapos, high school has been weird. Her freshman year started in 2020 with a mix of learning from home and in-person school in Stillwater, Minn. Now a sophomore, she has been full-time at school for months, with everyone in masks. So when her school lifted its Covid-19 mask mandate a few weeks ago, she and her friends had a lot of processing to do. They worried they may be deemed less attractive. They worried about acne that had been exacerbated by face coverings. They worried about getting sick or getting family members sick. And they worried about whether wearing, or not wearing, masks might align them with certain political beliefs.
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Scientists Aren’t Sure How the Inner Voice Works
Many of us have a consistent dialogue running in our heads that we use for a variety of mental tasks, such as working memory — reciting phone numbers or new friends’ names — and reading. Despite its important presence in most people’s daily lives, we know surprisingly little about how it works — or how many of us actually have one. Investigating Inner Speech Everyone knows we can’t read other people’s minds. But as anyone who has tried meditation can tell you, it’s surprisingly difficult to figure out what’s going on even in our own heads. Russell Hurlburt, a psychologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, wants to change that.
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Traffic Stops and Race: Police Conduct May Bend to Local Biases
Pierce Ekstrom discusses new research on the relationship between countywide attitudes toward race and local policing.
