Of all the difficulties that I plan on writing about in this blog, this may be the most common. Thinking is what humans do. It’s who we are. But sometimes, it gets the better of us. The official name for this is Generalized Anxiety Disorder. On a very fundamental level, we think because figuring things out improves our lives and our chances of survival. So natural selection has taken this to its pinnacle: homo sapiens, “humans, the thinkers.” Sometimes though, I think we sh

To our community, As mental health care providers, we are trained to listen. In the wake of the recent tragic deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, we have been listening more carefully. The providers and staff at Southeastern Psychiatric Associates have always strived to create a welcoming environment where all people feel comfortable seeking help. We serve a diverse community at our offices in Randolph and Dorchester. What we have learned in the past fe

Let’s first take a quick look at what anxiety is. Rather than define it, I will list some synonyms that spell out different flavors of anxiety. These include words like nervous, jittery, jiggy, worried, keyed up and dread. At one end it can blur into fear; at another, depression. But unlike depression, it is more of a state of arousal than one of depletion. Everyone alive has experienced anxiety. Some kinds of anxiety are part of the ordinary functioning of the mind and

Why does depression even exist? Many times I have asked myself this question. Because It doesn’t seem to make sense that nature would allow for such a disabling, apparently useless thing to happen, especially so frequently. I have come to believe that many of the things that we call mental illness occur because there is a mismatch between what our brains originally evolved for and the demands being placed on us by an increasingly complex human society. We share large parts o

Depression seems to have several roots, which may come in different proportions in different people. Many people with major depression have a genetic predisposition to it. It tends to run in families. There are psychological components, often beginning in childhood and family experiences which may cause thought patterns that increase the likelihood of depression. Then current stresses which may act as triggers, or serve to worsen the symptoms. Many people with major depres