Our Latest Blogs

“I Have An Alternative Life in My Head… Am I Mentally Ill?”

daydreaming

Last year I joined Quora, a question-and-answer website where questions on every subject imaginable are posed and answered by its community of users. The community includes such notables as Barack Obama, Steve Case, and Justin Trudeau, who have answered questions on occasion. If you are curious about how celebrities choose the charitable causes they endorse […]

Evaluating Outcomes: 5 Signs Cognitive Therapy is Working for Someone with Schizophrenia or Other Mental Illness

happy-in-therapy

When someone has a serious mental health disorder such as schizophrenia we always seem to know when things aren’t going well. It can be much harder to tell when things are going right. This final installment in our series on cognitive therapy looks at the results of treatment and how to know whether it is working. […]

Cognitive Therapy for Treatment of Psychosis: Choosing the Right Provider

teen-in-therapy

  Often when young people and their families visit Laurel House, the top question on their minds is how a “psychiatric rehabilitation” program like ours can help people with serious mental illness have a better life. The concept of mental health rehabilitation can be hard to understand at first. But people usually get it when […]

7 Signs You or a Loved One Can Benefit from Cognitive Therapy

men in therapy

In my first article in this series on cognitive therapy, I explained Why Cognitive Therapy Works for People with Schizophrenia and Other Serious Mental Illnesses. In Part 2 of the series, I give some examples of problems cognitive therapy can help with and who can benefit. Key Points from last week’s post on Why It […]

Why Cognitive Therapy Works for People with Schizophrenia and Other Serious Mental Illnesses

female-student-struggles-to study

Part One in a four-part series on the benefits of cognitive therapy for people who experience psychosis. Forty years ago, there were two basic treatments for schizophrenia: medication and long-term hospitalization. Traditional psychotherapy was not usually offered because it did not help people with the most obvious and disturbing symptoms of psychosis: paranoia, delusions, and […]

Double Trouble & Beyond: Co-occurring Disorders in Our Favorite Characters from Movies, Novels and TV

Don draper

  In mental health, the term co-occurring disorders refers to the presence of two or more disorders in a person at the same time. In the past, co-occurring disorders were often confused with “dual diagnosis” (or “double trouble”), a term that was used to describe someone living with a mental illness and a substance use […]

Positive Quotes on Living with Schizophrenia

mental illness quote

  Schizophrenia is among the most misunderstand of mental health disorders. This may be partly due to the origins of the term schizophrenia, which are based on the ancient Greek skhizein (split) and phren (mind). The “split mind” label has led many people to confuse schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder (now referred to as Dissociative […]

Living Well with Schizophrenia

living well schizophrenia

  There was a time when a diagnosis of schizophrenia led to lifelong institutionalization. Improved treatments and a better understanding of this disorder have made it possible for people with schizophrenia to lead productive and highly satisfying lives in their communities. The following is a list of famous people diagnosed or otherwise thought to have […]

The DOs and DON’Ts of Helping a Family Member with Psychosis 

Man Helping a Family Member in Psychosis

*Updated 9/24/2024* Have you noticed a family member beginning to act strangely? Do they believe that someone is trying to hurt them when there’s no apparent danger? Or maybe they’ve started following a complex belief system you can’t understand? If so, your loved one might be experiencing psychosis. Understanding psychosis and the disorders that cause […]

Four Lessons to Learn from “The Center Cannot Hold”

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  I recently read The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks, an autobiography about the Yale-educated law professor’s life-long struggle with schizophrenia. It would be easy to write a book review, judging the work solely on its entertainment value and well-crafted prose. Yet, the core of the book contains serious messages about mental health, mental illness […]

“A Peer’s Recovery Ethic and Story” by Chris from Brooklyn

a peers recovery ethic and story

  The following story is written by Chris who is a Brooklyn, NY resident living with a mental health disorder. She shares her unique outlook on recovery as well as her hopeful message with us today. We are grateful that Chris is sharing her story on rtor.org. —Veronique Hoebeke, Associate Editor  Before I give the details of my recovery, I […]

‘Love & Mercy’ and Recovery: Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s Comeback from Mental Illness

brian-wilson-2015

  Rarely does a movie get beneath my skin the way that the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy did. As a child growing up in the 60s I preferred the American pop sound of the Beach Boys to the anglicized rock and roll of the Beatles. So I silently cheered when Paul Dano playing […]

Remembering John Nash, Jr., Nobel Prize Winner and “Beautiful Mind” with Schizophrenia

John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.

  On Saturday, May 23, mathematician and subject of the book and film “A Beautiful Mind” John Nash, Jr. died with his wife Alicia in a car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was 86 years old and had just received the prestigious Abel Prize from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, when […]

RtoR Family Resource Collection: Book Review of Diagnosis: Schizophrenia; A Comprehensive Resource

diagnosis schizophrenia book cover

A few years ago, I consulted with a colleague about a man I worked with who was having a hard time accepting that he might have schizophrenia. He was a deep thinker with a very rich and interesting past. His life had become increasingly restricted due to symptoms of his illness which he would not […]

RtoR Mental Health Awareness Month: Splitting the Child – A Dilemma Worthy of Solomon

The_Judgment_of_Solomon

  The story of the Judgement of Solomon from the Biblical Book of Kings is one of the first recorded cases of legal jurisprudence.  You have probably heard of King Solomon’s famous ruling to literally split a child in half to share him between the two women claiming to be his mother.  The wisdom of […]

RtoR Mental Health Awareness Month: Nothing to Declare?

toll booth

  Twenty-seven years ago in May, I began a career in mental health.  This did not happen by design or training.  I had just left the Peace Corps after more than five years of volunteer service working with the street children of Tela, Honduras in Central America.  I returned to the US with my idealism […]

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 […]

Overload, Not Apathy: Breaking Goals into Smaller Steps to Overcome the Motivation Gap in Schizophrenia

building blocks

For the most part, the medications people take for schizophrenia treat only one symptom of the illness: the psychosis associated with delusions and hallucinations. Some of the most harmful effects of schizophrenia are the “negative symptoms” of flat affect, inability to take interest or pleasure in everyday life, lack of ability to begin and sustain […]

Cognitive Remediation: A Mental Health Treatment that Really Works

puzzle pieces

It’s encouraging to see that someone has written about an important mental health treatment called “cognitive remediation” from the perspective of a family member: The Consequences of Mental Illness That Nobody Talks About   As this opinion piece makes clear, there is a growing body of scientific evidence pointing to the benefits of cognitive remediation, a […]

Environmental Triggers and Early Intervention for Schizophrenia: A Real Life Story of Recovery

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Yesterday, a reader of my blog, asked a question in the comments section about environmental triggers in schizophrenia. The short answer I wrote in reply was “Trauma, stress, use of marijuana and other psychoactive substances are thought to be common triggers of psychotic symptoms.” I did a little poking around today and found this story […]