Most people have a view of what they think mental illness is. Most of us have seen, at one time or another, someone walking on the street muttering to him or herself, perhaps gesturing, or picking through trash cans but pulling out peculiar things, or exhibiting other behaviors we think are \"off\"...

Anxiety It is the end of the quarter of your basketball game with 0 seconds left on the clock, your team is down by only one point, and you got fouled. It is up to you to make either the first free throw to tie it, and the second to win. The pressure is on, and a screaming crowd doesn't mak...

Anxiety disorders are mental health conditions, which adversely affect social life and the quality of life itself. Of all the types of psychiatric disorders, little attention has been given the fourth most common in the United States. This is obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD, a treatable disease...

Depression: The Sadness Disease In our never-ending quest for happiness in our life, is some of the joy taken away? Have our thoughts for what we always want turned astray? Why has the quest for happiness left us more vulnerable and sad? Are we a society of melancholy people that are all lo...

When people deal with finding a treatment for depression many just think of anti-depressants like Zoloft or Prozac. But, due to the negative side effects of anti-depressant pills, depressed people are turning toward other alternative treatments. A few alternative treatments include the herb St. John...

Have you ever witnessed someone being badly injured or even killed? Have you ever been involved in a fire, flood, or any other natural disaster? The estimated lifetime prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among adult Americans is 7.8%, with men calculating at 5% and women at 10.4%, twice...

The Origins of Cognitive Behavior Therapy Cognitive behavior therapy was devised in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Albert Ellis, Ph.D. in New York and by Aaron Beck, M.D. in Philadelphia. Although they worked independently of each other, both Ellis and Beck had grown dissatisfied with the tradit...

The accounts from soldiers describing combat in general present images are of hellish nightmares where all decency and humanity could be lost. For men who fought under these conditions, coming home was a very difficult switch. Over all, these men wanted to return to "normalcy", to come back ...

Introduction to book and authors Written by the \"creators\" of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CT) and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Albert Ellis, Ph.D. and Robert A. Harper, Ph.D., A Guide to Rational Living, serves as a tool for self-therapy for those who are willing to work using ...

Rape & Rape Trauma Syndrome Dictionaries most commonly define rape as a sexual act committed by force especially on a woman. (The American Heritage College Dictionary. 1997 pg. 740) Until a few years ago it was limited to penial penetration of the vagina. Penal Code 261 defines rape as "an act ...

A variety of treatments for Obsessive-Compulsive (OC) behaviors through the years has resulted in a number of effective ways to treat those individuals affected by OC. Three treatments currently in use are the Danger Ideation Reduction Therapy (DIRT), the Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)...

Eating Disorders Imagine a day in which your life was dictated by the food that you ate. Imagine standing on a scale while you ate or purging after eating large amounts of food. Those with eating disorders may engage in some of these activities. Eating disorders are serious conditions that affect mi...

There are many different types of humanistic counselling and while they have in common concerns for the conscious and the here-and-now, the differences in technique within the humanistic therapies are vast. For the purpose of this paper, I am going to focus on Carl Rogers, the 'father' o...

Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eating DisordersFairburn et al. argue that an extreme need to control eating is a central feature of Anorexia nervosa, and that in Western societies a tendency to judge self worth in terms of shape and weight is superimposed on this need for self control, (1999). The ...