Category: Mental Health

The Pandemic Is Gone, So Why Do I Still Feel Anxious and Depressed?

Available for Interviews: John Rodriguez, MD

Dr. John Rodriguez is a Chief Medical Officer of Healthcare2U, and he is passionate about the care that is provided to their patients. He manages all the care providers in Healthcare2U’s network of clinics and oversees care protocols and training.

What Dr. Rodriguez can say in an interview about
the Reasons Why We Delay Medical Care:

The COVID-19 Pandemic led to a huge jump in rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, more than tripling the previous rates. One study out of The Lancet showed current rates of depression in 2021 at 32.8% of the general population.* The concern was that from 2020 to 2021 the rates were climbing, despite the loosening of pandemic lockdown rules. Unfortunately, once anxiety and depression are ‘let out of the bag’ they are hard to control.

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How We Can Support Teachers, Our Local Heroes This Year

Available for Interviews:  Nadine Levitt

Nadine Levitt is an education advocate, speaker, and the CEO & Founder of WURRLYedu, an educational technology platform. Nadine specializes in the social-emotional curriculum (SEL), and she is also the author of the children’s book, My Mama Says Inside Me Lives a Village. New for 2022, Levitt has launched a new professional development resource for teachers called PD Reimagined.

What Nadine Levitt can say in an interview about
Supporting Our Teachers This School Year:

What if we celebrated teachers, inspired them, and continued to fuel that inspiration throughout the year? Nadine can talk about what people can do in their hometown. She created online inspiration / learning that schools can provide to teachers. Parents can also chip in and gift it to teachers… so they’ll. have a gift that lasts all year long.

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8 Mental Health Activities to Best Support Kids and Teens

Available for Interviews: Dr. Pete Loper

Dr. Pete Loper, MD, MSEd, FAAP, is a triple board-certified physician in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child psychiatry. He is also a professor and executive coach and is dedicated to mental health and wellness advocacy.

What Dr. Loper could say on
Mental Health Support of Our Children:

    • It is important to teach our children about mental health early in life because mental health is health. Human behavior is a manifestation of feelings and thoughts that then elicit specific actions and activities. The epidemic of chronic physical diseases that ail us as a society can be prevented, cured, or managed by lifestyle modification, or by simply changing our behaviors. Therefore, good mental health is a necessity for the consistent and sustained behaviors required for lifelong physical health and overall well-being.
    • It’s often challenging to identify a child’s specific mental health needs. Unlike physical health needs, mental health needs are difficult to target because they are often invisible, and hidden inside the individual until disclosed through direct communication or maladaptive behaviors.

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Supporting Your Kids’ Mental Health This School Year

Available for Interviews: Dr. Pete Loper

Dr. Pete Loper, MD, MSEd, FAAP, is a triple board-certified physician in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child psychiatry. He is also a professor and executive coach and is dedicated to mental health and wellness advocacy.

What Dr. Loper could say on
Back-to-School Anxiety:

    • Not all anxiety is bad. It can be very helpful in supporting healthy adaptations for kids. In times of change, it is normal and expected, but alternatively, there are behaviors that can be more concerning.
    • There is an increase in the number of patients needing mental health services since the pandemic. We have seen an uptick in the Adolescents age group.

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4 Simple Strategies to Support your Child’s Mental Health

Available for Interviews: Dr. Pete Loper

Dr. Pete Loper, MD, MSEd, FAAP, is a triple board-certified physician in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child psychiatry. He is also a professor and executive coach and is dedicated to mental health and wellness advocacy.

What Dr. Loper could say on
How to Support Your Child’s Mental Health:

On the acute crisis stabilization unit where Dr. Loper works as a pediatrician and a child and adolescent psychiatrist, they have witnessed first-hand the pediatric mental health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Consistent with national trends, over the course of the pandemic their unit has experienced an unrelenting surge in admissions for kids as young as 5 with suicidal ideations, often with accompanying attempts.  The demographic most impacted have been adolescents.  

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8 Family Solutions to Better Regulate Screen Time

Available for Interviews: Dr. Pete Loper

Dr. Pete Loper, MD, MSEd, FAAP, is a triple board-certified physician in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child psychiatry. He is also a professor and executive coach and is dedicated to mental health and wellness advocacy.

What Dr. Loper could say on
Screen Time Effects and Regulation:

Recommended Screen Time Duration for Most Age Groups, Including Adults
    • The most consistent guidelines have been for children one year of age or younger, where the standard recommendation remains no screen time. Children between the ages of 2-4 according to the World Health Organization, or 2-5 according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, generally should have no more than one hour of screen time daily.
    • The absence of consensus regarding screen time duration for older children and adults is due to a so-called lack of data. Particularly in the context of the pandemic, screens have become even more ubiquitous, making it that much harder to study this issue.
    • However, consistent with our era of quantitative bias, where it’s not true unless you can prove it and big data is confounded with truth, the fear regarding screen time is that we are once again attempting to substitute data for common sense.

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Grades and Self-Esteem in School-Aged Children

Available for Interviews: Dr. Pete Loper

Dr. Pete Loper, MD, MSEd, FAAP, is a triple board-certified physician in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child psychiatry. He is also a professor and executive coach and is dedicated to mental health and wellness advocacy.

What Dr. Loper could say on
Grades and Self-Esteem:

Consistent with Carol Dweck’s research on “growth mindset,” struggle is a normal part of development. According to John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, struggle in the context of the approach and exploration of new experiences is the rate-limiting step to healthy human development. Further, both Bowlby and his successor in Attachment research, Mary Ainsworth, identified the relationship between a child and their “experienced others” (parents, teachers) as the fundamental ingredient required to support continued approach and exploration in the context of struggle. Put simply, outcomes such as grades are a manifestation of the process, and your child’s willingness and motivation to engage in the process, i.e. to try, try again (growth mindset) is informed by a child’s interactions with parents and teachers. 

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How Recharging Our Teachers Can Supercharge Our Students

Available for Interviews:  Nadine Levitt

Nadine Levitt is an education advocate, speaker, and the CEO & Founder of WURRLYedu, an educational technology platform. Nadine specializes in the social-emotional curriculum (SEL), and she is also the author of the children’s book, My Mama Says Inside Me Lives a Village. New for 2022, Levitt has launched a new professional development resource for teachers called PD Reimagined.

What Nadine Levitt can say in an interview about
A New Professional Development Resource:

    • Teachers are exhausted and feeling overwhelmed. The added pressures that Covid brought only exacerbated the reality that most teachers are stressed, feel unsupported, and under-appreciated (2021 State of the U.S. Teacher Survey published by RAND).
    • If the goal of schools is to inspire kids to be lifelong learners then we have to start by inspiring teachers!

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6 Research-Based Ways to Boost Your Mood Quickly

Available for Interviews: Dr. Pete Loper

Dr. Pete Loper, MD, MSEd, FAAP, is a triple board-certified physician in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child psychiatry. He is also a professor and executive coach and is dedicated to mental health and wellness advocacy.

What Dr. Loper could say on
Boosting Your Mood:

1) Take a cold shower.

Intentionally taking a cold shower can promote the release of specific neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine, as well as certain endorphins implicated in boosting your mood. 

2) Get early morning sunlight exposure.

Studies indicate that exposure to early morning sunlight increases serotonin and can thereby help boost your mood.

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Uvalde: A Cultural Tipping Point

Available for Interviews: Dr. Hope Umansky

Dr. Hope Umansky is an American Culture College Professor with a PhD in Clinical Psychology. She is also an author on educational reform, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

What Dr. Hope can say in an interview on
Uvalde, an educator and mother’s point of view:

“. . . I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it from happening again.” –Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank, 1947)

    • Seeing the truth of the Uvalde failure of grown officers to save kids with over an hour to do so—as an educator, and a mother, I cannot help but think of this quote of Anne Franks.
    • At the Uvalde board meeting last night, the parents who will be grieving for the rest of their lives, whose hearts are forever shattered said to the board and the politicians, the same question Anne Frank asks: When will enough be enough?

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