Wouldn’t it be nice if we could peek into the future to reassure ourselves? That’s not actually possible, but there is a psychological technique for regulating emotions that employs this idea. It’s called “temporal distancing,” and you can think of it as mental time travel. If the concept sounds familiar More
A consensus has emerged in recent years that psychotherapies—in particular, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)—rate comparably to medications such as Prozac and Lexapro as treatments for depression. Either option, or the two together, may at times alleviate the mood disorder. In looking more closely at both treatments, CBT—which delves into dysfunctional More
Despite what many public health experts might advise, some colleges are set to open in person soon and with that comes a new round of mental health needs in an already taxed student population. Prior to the pandemic, college students had high and increasing rates of depression and suicidal ideation, and a More
“A number of kids are expressing that these are supposed to be the best years—high school and college—the most free years,” says Anne Marie Albano, a professor of medical psychology in psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. “The possibility that Covid is going to completely change More
APS Fellow Alan Leshner, who has held some of the most prestigious scientific leadership positions in the United States, calls on policymakers to support research into the real causes of mass shootings instead of scapegoating people who struggle with mental disorders. More
Some mental health patients report more symptoms than they actually experience and this is often attributed to malingering, when people intentionally inflate their symptoms for some benefit. The assumption that such patients are malingering tends to overshadow alternative explanations, even though research indicates that there are actually multiple pathways that could lead to overreporting. Researcher Harald Merckelbach of Maastricht University and colleagues review the available data and detail some of these alternative explanations in Current Directions in Psychological Science. More
