mental health

The Fight Against Suicide: World Suicide Prevention Day

Nathan Smith3 Comments

TW: This post discusses suicide, suicide rates statistics and suicide prevention.

When I write about suicide prevention on this blog, it’s usually within the context of the current state of mental health in the United States. But today, I want to look at suicide prevention from a global perspective by talking about an extremely important day in the mental health community: World Suicide Prevention Day. Because make no mistake – suicide prevention is a global public health issue, and too many people still don’t really know what we’re up against.

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How Are We Talking About Suicide Prevention?

Nathan Smith8 Comments

TW: This post discusses suicide and suicide prevention-related topics.

Contrary to how it seems on this blog, writing about suicide prevention, and talking about the topic of suicide isn’t easy for me. It brings up difficult memories and has a tendency to take me back to times in my life that were extremely painful. But I’m now in a place where I feel more comfortable sharing what I’ve learned, which is why I continue doing it. It’s helped me find a voice as a mental health advocate, and helped me form my own mindset and opinion on how to approach suicide prevention. And that’s what I’d like to share today.

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Suicide Prevention Lifelines and Other Resources

Nathan Smith5 Comments

TW: This post discusses suicide.

As I wrote earlier this week, September is National Suicide Prevention Month in the United States. This month is extremely important to me for many reasons, and I’m not alone in feeling that. There are so many more people than you may realize who are going through difficult moments, and so many people that have dealt with – or are continuously dealing with – these struggles on a daily basis. Last year, I wrote about some of the resources to turn to for suicide prevention, but I thought I would update that list this year because of the current state of the world. I believe education and awareness are still lacking when it comes to discussing the topic of suicide, which is why we need to continue sharing these resources as far and wide as possible.

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Suicide Prevention Awareness Month 2020

Nathan Smith12 Comments

TW: This post discusses suicide. 

Every September while I’ve been writing this blog, I post about Suicide Prevention Month. Since this is a mental health blog, I believe it’s important to see the connection between mental health and suicide prevention, and my own research and experience has shown me ways to advocate and talk about suicide prevention. One of those ways is through education and awareness. Suicide is a public health issue, and we need to understand how important suicide prevention is to fighting against it.

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Intrusive Thoughts, Part Two: How to Deal With Them

Nathan Smith3 Comments

This post is the second of a two-part series on intrusive thoughts. You can find the first post, where we broke down intrusive thoughts and talked about what they look like, here.

Having intrusive thoughts tends to feel like an everyday struggle. By their very nature, these types of thoughts can work their way into our subconscious and fool us into thinking we put those thoughts there ourselves. But even though this might be something we deal with on a daily basis, there are ways to manage intrusive thoughts with how we acknowledge and deal with them internally. Here are some of the most effective ways to deal with intrusive thoughts.

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Intrusive Thoughts, Part One: An Overview

Nathan Smith3 Comments

One aspect of my life with anxiety and depression is constantly dealing with intrusive thoughts. It doesn’t matter the time or place, and it doesn’t depend on the activity I’m doing, but every so often, I have unwanted thoughts that become stuck in my brain. And I’m not alone – more than 6 million people are estimated to deal with intrusive thoughts in the U.S. every year, and those are just the people who feel comfortable telling their doctor about it. But what exactly are intrusive thoughts, and how can we recognize when we have them? Let’s break it down.

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Five Ways to Channel Your Nervous Energy

Nathan Smith4 Comments

After acknowledging that managing my mental health during a pandemic hasn’t been easy, I noticed some other things as I continued to reflect on this topic. While it’s good to know that we need to make mental wellness a priority during this difficult and strange time, that doesn’t mean much without a few ideas and strategies for how that looks in real life. That’s when I realized that one way to make mental wellness a priority is to figure out what to do with the nervous energy we’ve created this year. How can we get rid of this nervous energy, and how can we do it in a way that makes us feel better?

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Managing Mental Health in a Pandemic

Nathan Smith6 Comments

Back in March, I wrote my first post about the coronavirus pandemic. Like most of us, I had some naievete about the situation (to be fair, what’s happened in the United States isn’t very surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing). Regardless, my first post about mental health during this pandemic was focused on how you define success at this point in time. I hadn’t thought about it in awhile but after hearing a friend recently bring up feeling like she was in a COVID slump, it clicked. Those questions still remained. What does it mean to be successful during a pandemic? How do we define what it means to be productive? I didn’t know much at the time, but there’s one thing I knew then that remains to be true: finding those moments during a pandemic continue to matter, especially when it comes to our mental health.

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Dating With Depression: To Love and Be Loved

Nathan Smith2 Comments

This post is the last part in this “Dating With Depression” series. You can read the first post about putting yourself out there here, the second post about talking about mental health with your partner here, and the third post about what your partner should know about your mental health here.

As I’ve gone through this series, I’ve been looking at different stages of a relationship in chronological order, and that was done for a specific reason. Every part of a relationship requires different advice, knowledge and tips, and having romantic interests while living with mental illness can make those parts even more complicated. But to wrap the series up, I want reflect on something for the readers, and it’s this (potential hot take coming up): for people living with mental illness, it’s possible to give and receive love in a romantic relationship. Not only is it possible, but being who you are can actually improve the relationship.

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Dating With Depression: What Your Partner Should Know

Nathan Smith8 Comments

This post is the third part in my “Dating With Depression” series. You can read the first post about putting yourself out there here, and the second post about talking about mental health with your partner here.

Dating someone while dealing with mental health issues, or living with a chronic mental illness, isn’t easy. It’s not easy for the people who are living with these issues (obviously), but it can also be very difficult for the other person, the other half of the relationship. It’s great that people want to help care and support their partners who live with mental illness, and it’s beautiful to see relationships thrive even though one (or both) people are dealing with mental health issues. But if someone wants to be as helpful and supportive as possible, what am I supposed to tell them? Even though my experience is specific, there are a few things you could tell your partner that might help them understand what you’re dealing with.

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