Our Latest Blogs

Riding Backwards: Retraining Your Brain to Cope with Trauma

bike

  Remember how you learned to ride a bike?  What if you had to unlearn everything you knew about this basic task you probably learned in childhood? This video illustrates how hard it is to re-train the brain to think differently.  The narrator of this video speaks about his experiment riding a backwards-handled bike.  During […]

“Healing with Music and Getting Help when You Need It” – A Recovery Story

music notes

The following post is written by Drew Osbahr who uses his love of music as a way to recover from anxiety and depression. We are thankful that Drew has let us share his recovery story on rtor.org  -Veronique Hoebeke, Associate Editor  Hi, my name is Drew and I have been recovering one step at a time from […]

“Who Am I?”- A Recovery Story

pen and paper

 The following post is written by Bing Devine, a Connecticut resident who lives with mental illness. We are grateful to Bing for allowing us to share her story on rtor.org. -Veronique Hoebeke, Associate Editor Who Am I? I have been excited all day, for today I am going to meet all the tenants in my unit. We will assemble in […]

Thinking Well Activity Series: This Participant’s Poem Looks at Cognition from Within

word magnets

The following untitled poem was written by Betsi, a 54-year old participant in Laurel House’s Thinking Well program.  Thinking Well is a group activity that helps people with serious mental health conditions practice and improve their thinking skills for better functioning at home, work, school and the community. During her time in Thinking Well, Betsi […]

Three Little Known Facts About Persistence

typewriter close up

       .       Rtor.org is pleased to have disability advocate Michael De Rosa guest blogging on the site today. Michael is editor of the website dismantlingdisABILITIES.com and author of the soon to be published self-help workbook “Unlimited Potential: empowerment tools at your finger tips.” His lived experience with anxiety and other disabilities, […]

Trading Places: An Audio Simulation Sensitizes a Professional to Potential Challenges Faced by People Who Hear Voices

Laurel House Employment Specialist Elizabeth Fouracre, LMSW, writes this week about her experience with a training program that simulates the subjective experience of a person with schizophrenia hearing voices. CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper undergoes a comparable sensitivity exercise and afterwards describe in terms similar to Elizabeth’s how profoundly difficult and isolating this experience was for him. Watch […]

Mental Health Stigma in America

close-up of angry eye

While states continue to cut back on mental health services, many people living with mental illness are reluctant to use remaining services for fear of being stigmatized. Read more in this well-researched feature article in USA Today…      Cost of not caring: Stigma set in stone

Parenting Tips for Adolescents with Mental Illness

friends running on beach

Good article here… Tips for parents of children with mental illness entering adolescence from the Omamas blog of oregonlive.com. As a child with mental illness moves into adolescence: tips, resources for parents Many of the resources listed in the article are local to Oregon, but the tips are section offers some good general guidelines and […]

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