Mental health
54 articles
How to Cope With Feelings of Chaos at Home
Some days parenting feels genuinely chaotic. The house is a mess, your child is overwhelmed, you're overwhelmed, nothing is going to plan, and everyth...
Comparison Culture and Parenting Anxiety
Your child isn't talking as much as the neighbor's toddler. Another parent seems infinitely patient while you lose it. Someone else's preschooler is r...
When Aggression in a Young Child Needs Professional Assessment
The hard part isn't knowing that your toddler hits. The hard part is knowing whether the hitting is on the typical trajectory of declining aggression...
Parenting After a Traumatic Birth
The birth was supposed to be the start of something joyful. For around one in twenty women — and many more after specific complications — it instead b...
Why Parental Wellbeing Is a Family Priority
The line you'll hear from grandparents, social media, and (occasionally) clinicians: "look after yourself, you can't pour from an empty cup." It's tru...
Support Systems for Single-Parent Families
A persistent and unhelpful idea among single parents is that asking for help is a sign of failure. The data says nearly the opposite. Mavis Hetheringt...
Psychological Support in Early Childhood
A common worry holds parents back from seeking help for a young child: she's too little, she'll grow out of it, real therapy is for older kids. None o...
Postpartum Depression: What Parents Should Know
Postpartum depression affects about 1 in 7 mothers, and it can affect fathers and non-birthing partners too. It is not the "baby blues" — the weepy, h...
Postpartum Adjustment: What Happens to a Mother's Mental Health
Most postpartum mental health conversations focus on depression. That focus is necessary, but it leaves a gap: the majority of new mothers don't devel...
How Parental Guilt Affects Mental Health
"Good parents feel guilty" is a piece of cultural advice that has done enormous harm. The implication is that guilt is a virtue, evidence of caring. T...
Family Support During Postpartum Mental Health Disorders
When a parent has postpartum depression or anxiety, the family's response is part of the treatment. Not because family can fix it — they can't — but b...
How Expectations of Motherhood Shape a Woman's Emotional State
The version of motherhood you absorbed before becoming a mother — from movies, your own mother, social media, friends who only posted highlights — alm...
How to Tell Fatigue From Depression
"I'm just tired" is the explanation many new parents give themselves for months. Sometimes it's accurate. Sometimes it isn't. Postpartum depression of...
When to Consult a Child Psychologist
A lot of parents wait too long to talk to a child psychologist because they're worried it means admitting something is wrong with their child. Most ev...
The Emotional Strain of Chronic Sleep Deprivation
The first year of a baby's life often runs on 4-hour fragmented stretches of sleep, and many parents stay there for two or three years. The tiredness...
How Daycare Affects Working Parents' Stress Levels
The first time you leave your child in someone else's care, your stress doesn't end at the dropoff door — it follows you to your desk and sits there a...
When a Child's Behavior Requires Professional Attention
Starting nursery shakes most children up a bit — clingier evenings, broken sleep, a few accidents in the recently potty-trained, a quieter child for a...
How to Build a Support Network as a Parent
Parenting is the only major life undertaking most people attempt without a team. We expect new parents to assemble one, on their own, while sleep-depr...
How to Ask for Help Without Feeling Guilty
A lot of parents struggle to ask for help, feeling they should manage everything on their own. But asking for help is one of the most useful skills yo...
Social Media and Children's Mental Health: What the Evidence Shows
Social media and adolescent mental health has become one of the most contested empirical questions of the decade. The public narrative -- that smartph...
Social Anxiety in Teenagers: More Than Shyness
Most teenagers feel some degree of nervousness about social situations -- about fitting in, about being judged, about saying the wrong thing. Adolesce...
Parental Sleep Deprivation: Effects, Coping, and When to Seek Help
Sleep deprivation is so universal in new parenthood that it is often treated as a rite of passage rather than a health concern. The cultural tendency...
Self-Harm in Teenagers: Understanding It and How to Help
Discovering that a teenager is self-harming is one of the most frightening experiences a parent can face. The instinct is often to react with alarm, t...
Parental Anxiety After Having a Baby: What's Normal and What to Do
Some level of anxiety after having a baby is universal — your brain has been handed responsibility for keeping a small, fragile, completely dependent...