Suicide Risk Rises Sharply. 6 Steps to Help Prevent Suicide

The Covid-19 pandemic has put mental health for so many people at great risk.  Here are a few quick steps to get yourself on firmer footing.

  1. Get off social media.  The correlation between depression and anxiety and heavy social media usage is well documented.
  2. Explore nature.  Get out and enjoy God’s good earth.
  3. Walk every day.   Just a 30 minute walk goes a long way towards good health, physically and mentally.
  4. Socialize.  Make real social connections… in person.
  5. Read every day.  If you’re a Christian, start your morning each day by reading’s God’s Word.
  6. Start a Gratitude Journal.  If you’re reading this, you’re likely better off than 99% of the world’s population.  You have many blessings.  It helps to write them down and review them each morning or at bed time.

“A startling report released Thursday by the CDC found that 10.7% of Americans reported seriously contemplating suicide in the 30 days before the survey, issued over the last week of June, was conducted.

Grief Help logoThat’s in contrast to the 4.3% who reported the same thing over the course of 2018. The percentages were far higher in certain populations, including ethnic and racial minorities, and essential workers.

The report, which surveyed 5,412 Americans, also found that about a quarter had symptoms of anxiety and about the same percentage had symptoms of depression.”

Read the rest about the rising suicide risk due to Covid-19 pandemic decisions.

Can Snapchat ‘Hear for you’ help troubled teens?

Snapchat has announced a new feature called “Here For You” that promises to “provide proactive in-app support to Snapchatters who may be experiencing a mental health or emotional crisis”. The popular youth-oriented app is the latest to join a wave of social media platforms setting out to monitor and …

On Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, users can block or report material, and Facebook also provides resources for users to engage directly with other users about their posts. These platforms, along with Pinterest, also deploy artificial intelligence to identify and ban content that may be viewed as harmful.

Facebook and Pinterest have also introduced more proactive measures, attempting to provide resources to users they view as being at risk for mental health concerns.

A Neuroscientist used his Research to Heal from Grief using This

Our brain on gratitude

Neuroscientist Glenn Fox has dedicated his life to studying gratitude — how it improves our resilience, lowers stress, and boosts overall health. He’s an expert on the ability of gratitude to help us through tough times.

But on Thanksgiving in 2013, Fox was feeling anything but grateful. That’s because, just a few days before, he’d lost his mother to ovarian cancer.

Your brain on gratitude: How a neuroscientist used his research to heal from griefThe day after, going down to Starbucks for coffee and some pastries, “it was like the most intense experience ever. And I just thought, how am I even going to get through this? How am I even going to order?”

Fox was just months away from completing his Ph.D. on the neural bases of gratitude. He knew from his research how therapeutic gratitude can be — and how it could help him in his long journey recovering from grief. What he didn’t know was how to make that happen on a practical level.

“I thought, you know, I really need to put this into action,” he said. “I don’t want to be flattened by this forever. I don’t want this to define me.”

Jealous of the Angels – read this beautiful poem

Fox’s personal journey into the power of gratitude began after his mother’s diagnosis with stage 4 ovarian cancer. She was interested in his work, but also interested in how it could help her…

“Gratitude fits into a category of what we would call pro-social emotions, and these are emotions that orient us towards the welfare of others,” Simon-Thomas said. “It creates this kind of bond, this enduring sense of connection, with another person or another organism who we’re poised to cooperate with.”

That cooperation, Simon-Thomas said, has been key to our survival as a species.

Learn more about healing with gratitude: