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Stress Isn’t All Bad. Here’s When It Can Help
No one gets a free pass when it comes to stress. We all experience it, and though chronic stress can take its toll on our health, there are situations when stress can be beneficial. ... Your stress response can be your body’s way of preparing to rise to a challenge, explains Jeremy Jamieson, a psychologist at the University of Rochester. He studies how stress responses can be “optimized.” ... When it comes to stress, “context matters,” says researcher Wendy Berry Mendes, a professor of psychology at Yale University. There are different types of stress responses and different types of stress.
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Kids with ADHD May Still Have Symptoms as Adults
I know of someone who was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as a child in the 1990s. When he turned 18, his insurance company notified him that his medication—a kind that gives kids with ADHD a better chance to succeed in school and can be quite pricey—was no longer covered. ADHD, the insurer said in effect, was a childhood disorder. What an unfortunate choice: to either struggle financially to pay for your medication or head into college or the workforce without the treatment that helps you. The idea that ADHD was restricted to kids was deeply ingrained at the time.
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How GPS Tracking of Teens 24/7 Impacts Parent-Child Relationships
Phone apps can tell whether your kid is playing hooky. But remotely surveilling your child might not be great for navigating the trials of the teen years. ... With so many things for parents to worry about, from school shooters to fentanyl overdoses and child trafficking, it’s no surprise that they look to location monitoring apps such as Find My iPhone and Life360, which use GPS, as well as the location of nearby Wi-Fi networks and cellular towers, to track and keep their children safe, says Sophia Choukas-Bradley, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, whose research focuses on the mental health and well-being of adolescents and emerging adults.
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A Psychic and a Skeptic Walk Into a Vortex
On a trip to Sedona, Ariz., a writer tries to understand her mystically inclined mother’s beliefs with the help of crystals, meditation and visits to the area’s supposed celestial portals. ... In his 2023 book “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life,” Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, defines the feeling as “being in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world.” Although awe is an emotion, it can also act as the connective tissue that stitches together the everyday enigmas that inform — or challenge — our philosophies. In this way, it’s not unlike empathy. ...
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You Don’t Need Words to Think
Scholars have long contemplated the connection between language and thought—and to what degree the two are intertwined—by asking whether language is somehow an essential prerequisite for thinking. British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell answered the question with a flat yes, asserting that language’s very purpose is “to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.” But even a cursory glance around the natural world suggests why Russell may be wrong: No words are needed for animals to perform all sorts of problem-solving challenges that demonstrate high-level cognition.
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A New Approach to Understanding Psychopathology: Insights from the HiTOP Model
Podcast: APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum and Miri Forbes of Macquarie University address how traditional models like the DSM categorize mental health disorders and explore Forbes’ recent study, which highlights the more nuanced and dimensional approach that the emerging HiTOP offers.
