Tag: mental health
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Empowering Depressed Adolescents: The Transformative Role of Exercise
While there are well-established treatment options for depressed adolescents, these treatments often come with significant costs or drawbacks. Anti-depressants have side effects, including “weight gain, sleep disturbance, and reproductive dysfunction” whereas psychotherapy “is associated with perceived stigma for attending the therapist” (p. 2). By comparison, exercise has been proven to reduce depression in adults in…
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Robots to the Rescue! Will Social Robots Replace Therapists?
A new study assesses human-robot interactions for mental health In a previous post, I reviewed research on social robots and how people feel about interacting with them. Social robots are currently being deployed to work with the elderly, as there are not enough human companions available to service all the elderly. As robotic technology rapidly…
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FOMO and Social Media Addiction: Is the Platform to Blame?
In a previous post, I referenced the explosive growth in Tik Tok, a social media platform popular with adolescents and young adults, which is expected to grow to 900 million users by 2024. WeChat, a popular messaging app in China, now boasts 1.2 billion users (statista.com). Social media apps show no signs of slowing down…
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Get Your Tics on Tik-Tok: How Tics Went Viral During the Pandemic
Tik-Tok is a popular social media platform that experienced exponential growth during the pandemic, especially among young people. According to Oberlo statistics (oberlo.com), Tik Tok users grew from half a million in 2020 to 755 million in 2022 and is projected to reach 900 million in 2024. “Going viral” took on a whole new meaning…
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Does Religion Improve Mental and Physical Health?
So far, many studies have been published on the impact of religion, spirituality, and prayer in helping people recover from illness or injury. These studies have been ongoing since the 1980s and have become more advanced, using scientific methods to understand how religion affects health. However, because of variations in study quality and small sample…
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Are You Burned Out from Social Media?
Social media exhaustion or fatigue is a growing issue among social media users. It happens when people use social media too much and feel overwhelmed. Many experts from different fields, like psychology, communication, and information science, have studied this problem. Social media fatigue can harm a person’s work and academic performance and even their mental…