Adding a used hot tub to my backyard design was the best choice I made this year. There ... Read More
The post Hydrotherapy at Home: Using a Hot Tub for Chronic Pain appeared first on Garden Therapy.
It’s time to design a morning routine that supports clarity, calm, and reconnection with the real world. The ... Read More
The post Renovate Your Day With a Peaceful Morning Routine Outside appeared first on Garden Therapy.
The houseplant surge continues to climb, and I couldn’t be happier to see it. Houseplants are a wonderful ... Read More
The post Winter Houseplant Care: How Nurturing Plants Takes Care of YOU appeared first on Garden Therapy.
The app, which requires users to check in regularly to confirm they are alive, has become the country’s most downloaded paid application in recent weeks.
The post ‘Are You Dead?’: New App Captures Anxieties of Young Chinese Living Alone appeared first on TechRepublic.
The app, which requires users to check in regularly to confirm they are alive, has become the country’s most downloaded paid application in recent weeks.
The post ‘Are You Dead?’: New App Captures Anxieties of Young Chinese Living Alone appeared first on TechRepublic.
With the lack of sunlight, many people suffer from SAD. To say the least, the winter months can ... Read More
The post How Gardening for Seasonal Affective Disorder Can Chase the Blues appeared first on Garden Therapy.
Interview transcript
Terry Gerton It’s been a tough year for federal employees. There’s been lot of uncertainty about jobs and missions. We’ve had shutdown. They got paid, they didn’t get paid. What kind of a toll does that accumulation have on mental health?
Roz Beroza You know, it may look very differently for every person, but generally, it has been a traumatic year, which trauma is very specific. It has a long shelf life, but initially, it feels like you’ve been run over by a truck. You’re disoriented. You could be in freeze. This is not just a financial loss, it’s a multi-faceted loss, almost as though a tsunami took everything and internally you lose your identity, you lose your future as you always assumed it would be. The toll for this is huge.
Terry Gerton How does it manifest itself for folks on a day-to-day basis?
Roz Beroza As I said, Terry, It’s really different for people. Some people don’t feel it. They just start doing what they need to do. Other people cannot get out of bed. Many people feel panicky. We saw that in the Washington Post article in March. There was an article about the effects on the federal employees, and they talked about suicide in that report.
Terry Gerton So we’re taking all of that, and now we’re coming into a holiday period, which is always stressful in some way, shape or form. But for folks who’ve lived through these last nine or 10 months, and now maybe coming into the holidays with financial uncertainty, job uncertainty, how does that compound the situation?
Roz Beroza It compounds it a great deal because you come into this time of year when you had particular traditions that might have not felt like a financial cost, but this year cannot be — you can’t do the same things you’ve always done. It’s very painful. You can’t buy your kids everything you wanted to buy them. It’s a reminder, not just your thinking brain, but your whole nervous system. So it takes a lot of energy and people feel very, can feel very exhausted.
Terry Gerton Well tell us about therapy for feds and why you launched this initiative for former federal employees.
Roz Beroza Well, I launched it around May of last year, and, you know, I grew up around Washington, D.C., the government, everybody worked for the government, everybody’s parents worked for the government. That’s our industry here. And it felt like this can’t be happening. The numbers that were predicted, but they started to happen, these huge, massive layoffs. And honestly, Terry, it was an effort to deal with my own despair. I needed to do something, and I looked for a while to see, is there another organization who’s doing something that’s really focused on the mental health of these government employees? And nothing was there. So I just started posting on websites.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Roz Beroza. She’s the founder of Therapy4Feds. Roz, tell us about the programs that you offer and how it makes mental health therapy accessible, maybe for people who’ve lost their jobs or who might be struggling financially.
Roz Beroza Therapy4Feds is sort of like a clearinghouse where somebody who has lost their job because of this administration’s policies, so that’s in 2025, can seek help from a licensed mental health therapist at either no cost or maximum cost of $35 per hour. [There are] Five sessions and at the end of those five sessions they can either continue, they can use their insurance if they have it, it’s up to the therapist and the person that is seeking the service. We also have partnered with an organization called Give an Hour, which also has been in existence since after 9-11. And so they’re longstanding, and their mission is to give affordable, well-known, free health care to those in the military, people who have been victims of fraud, financial fraud, and people with rare illnesses. So we are working together to promote, and also if any of our people can draw from their pool of therapists, we’re using the same pool.
Terry Gerton Do you find with the former federal employees any resistance to seek mental health therapy?
Roz Beroza You know, I don’t really have a handle on that. I have a handle on the huge numbers that want it, that are at some time during this year, like after the CDC in Georgia, I received huge numbers of people who need it and they would email me about being desperate to get some help, and at that time, I had two therapists in Georgia. You have to have somebody who is licensed in your state. So I have a huge effort out to get licensed therapists to join our network.
Terry Gerton Tell us about how therapists who are interested can partner with you.
Roz Beroza Well, they can go to my site, which is Therapy4Feds.org and they can register on the site, and it’s very quick to register. You have to, as I say, be licensed, have malpractice insurance. And what happens then is those who are seeking therapy go to their state and they can choose somebody who’s licensed in their state.
Terry Gerton And for someone who’s listening who might feel overwhelmed themselves right now, what’s the first step they can take to get help? Same.
Roz Beroza Same. Go to Therapy4feds.org and there’s a section there that says “seeking a therapist.”
The post Therapy4Feds offers a lifeline for former federal employees facing tough times first appeared on Federal News Network.
© Getty Images/fizkes
The holidays can be a very difficult time for those who are grieving a loss. In my own ... Read More
The post Healing Through Holiday Grief: Finding Peace in Winter Gardening appeared first on Garden Therapy.
Seattle-based mental health startup Joon Care has been acquired by Handspring Health, a New York-based health tech company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“The acquisition is a major step toward building the most clinically rigorous and digitally engaging platform for youth and family mental healthcare in the country,” said Sahil Choudhry, co-founder and CEO of New York-based Handspring, in a LinkedIn post.
Joon launched in 2019 to provide online care for teens and young adults, pairing digital tools with virtual therapy sessions. The company serves patients 13- to 26-years-old who need help with anxiety, depression, disordered eating, sexual and gender identity, academic problems and other challenges. The course of therapy typically runs 16 weeks. The company’s program emphasizes its use of evidence-based care strategies and patient assessments to track progress.
Joon spun out of Seattle’s Pioneer Square Labs (PSL) and raised an initial $3.5 million round in 2020. Two years ago, it announced an additional $6 million investment, which would provide two to three years of operations, CEO Emily Pesce said at the time.
Handspring said in a press release that it would be integrating the companies’ “expert teams,” but did not say if all of Joon’s employees would be retained. The company has roughly 50 employees, based on information on LinkedIn.
GeekWire reached out to Pesce and will update the story if we hear back.
Handspring launched in 2021 and has raised $18.2 million, according to PitchBook. It also provides virtual therapy and online support, serving a slightly larger demographic with patients from 8- to 29-years-old.
Both companies operate multi-state platforms. Joon is licensed to provide care in Washington, Oregon, California, Texas, New York, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Its treatment is covered by 16 insurance companies, according to its website, and includes national giants Aetna and UnitedHealthcare.
Joon also launched a partnership in 2023 with the City of Seattle to provide free care to clients who are referred to the startup through the city’s human services programs. The collaboration appears to be ongoing, and Handspring said it would continue serving families under Joon’s existing contracts with government agencies, as well as treatment covered by insurance companies.
Pesce was a finalist for Startup CEO of the Year at the 2023 GeekWire Awards.
Despite the festive lights and trees, the holidays aren’t all presents and laughter. Maybe it’s stress, financial pressure, ... Read More
The post Sowing Seeds of Self-Love: A Garden Meditation for the Holiday Blues appeared first on Garden Therapy.
With the right balance of nutrients and proper care, the gut can help regulate mood, reduce stress, and even improve cognitive function.
The post How Gut Health Influences Mental Wellness: Recipes That Support a Healthy Digestive System appeared first on F and B Recipes.
Legislation proposed in Arizona would provide millions of dollars in grant funding to expand research into psilocybin––the primary psychoactive component in magic mushrooms––as a potential treatment for certain mental health conditions.
The bill, introduced by a Republican lawmaker and backed by Democrats, “would put $30 million in grants over three years toward clinical trials using whole-mushroom psilocybin to treat mental health conditions like depression and PTSD,” the Arizona Mirror reports.
The outlet reports that one of the bill’s biggest backers is Dr. Sue Sisely, an internal medicine physician who believes that psilocybin treatment could be a boon for ailing military veterans.
“It’s curbed their suicidality, it’s put their PTSD into remission, it’s even mitigated their pain syndromes,” Sisely said of patients she has seen benefit from psilocybin, as quoted by the Arizona Mirror. “It’s shown evidence of promoting neurogenesis (the growth and development of nerve tissue). There’s all kinds of great things that are being uncovered, but they’re not in controlled trials—they’re anecdotes from veterans and other trauma sufferers.”
According to the Mirror, “so far the only controlled trials on psilocybin to treat medical conditions have used a synthetic, one-molecule version of the substance, which is vastly different from a whole mushroom, which contains hundreds of compounds.”
“These agricultural products are very complex, and that is what people are reporting benefit from,” Sisley told the Arizona Mirror. “Nobody in the world has access to synthetic psilocybin unless you’re in one of these big pharma trials.”
In the last decade, psilocybin has gone from the fringes to the mainstream, as researchers and policymakers have grown more amenable to mushrooms as an effective treatment for a variety of different disorders.
It has also become the next frontier for drug legalization advocates, as states like Arizona consider measures that would expand its usage.
To the north of the Grand Canyon State, advocates in Utah have launched a campaign to push legislators to legalize psilocybin for clinical and academic purposes.
“Numerous robust studies have shown that psilocybin therapy is beneficial in reducing treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, addiction, trauma, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other mental health disorders. It is more effective than synthetic pharmaceuticals by a large margin. Psilocybin has also shown effectiveness in easing fear and anxiety in people with terminal cancer. For instance, a groundbreaking study performed by John Hopkins Medicine found that psilocybin reported better moods and greater mental health after participating in a single clinical dose,” Utah Mushroom Therapy, the group behind the campaign, says in a statement.
The group is looking to gin up public support for the treatment after the state’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, signed a bill last year establishing a task force that will study psilocybin as a mental health treatment.
Utah Mushroom Therapy says that, in the wake of the task force, “legalizing and decriminalizing Psilocybin in Utah is now very likely but still needs public support.”
“The use of mushrooms has been documented in 15 indigenous groups in America and various religious communities in Utah. This petition supports those groups who wish to use psilocybin safely, sincerely, and as a necessary part of their religion. The use of psilocybin does not contradict other Utah cultures and is protected by the first amendment as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This petition is to advocate Utah law to protect the religious rights of Utahns,” the group says.
“Psilocybin is a natural, non-toxic substance. Despite this, it is currently a Schedule I substance. Scientists have demonstrated it has profound medicinal value and believe serotonergic hallucinogens assist cognitive processes and should be decriminalized. Psychedelics can change perception and mood, help people soften their perspective and outlook, and process events that may otherwise lead to substance abuse, trauma, and criminal behavior,” it continues.
The post Arizona Bill Would Provide Grants for Magic Mushroom Trials appeared first on High Times.
Mental health is health. A common refrain during Mental Health Awareness Month, and one that strikes true when embarking on a journey to improve your emotional wellbeing. Health is an ongoing journey, funnily, with many parallels to cybersecurity. So, in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, here are a few lessons I’ve learned from working in cybersecurity that resonate with my own mental health journey.
At Synack, we often talk about how attack surfaces are dynamic — changing and evolving daily because of the continuous updates and improvements. The same is certainly true for mental health.
Just as an attack surface should be continuously assessed, so too should your mental health. Checking in with yourself and others routinely only makes sense given the dynamic nature of mental wellbeing. Some of my best months or days come right after some of my worst. Don’t make assumptions about your own or others’ mental states, and keep in mind that change is crucial and expected.
In 2017, my therapist diagnosed me with depression. Today, my mental health and my ability to manage it are leaps and bounds better, and I credit that mostly to a routine of mindfulness meditation and using other mental health tools. Because I know mental health is dynamic, I know that meditation isn’t just for when I’m feeling down but rather a practice I continue through good and bad times to find balance. The same can be said of other tools like therapy or journaling.
These tools work because they build habits and defenses that can stand up to the next challenge you face, just like protecting an organization with cybersecurity principles. If you’ve stopped your daily meditation, therapy appointments or journaling about your day, you might not have the habits and responses you want in place the next time a challenge presents itself. But if you treat your mental health daily, instead of only in a crisis, you can be prepared for anything. Like when an organization responds confidently to a security challenge, such as log4j.
One of my favorite security messages that I’ve heard says that security should be treated as an essential business function. It’s not a side project you are burdened to fund, it’s an integral part of doing business and should be “baked in” to your budget.
Similarly, investing your time into your mental health should be normalized. Take time to see your therapist or for daily habits that contribute to your emotional wellbeing. When seeing a therapist, I was fortunate enough to have supportive managers to take time off in the afternoon. I also had friends that supported me on my journey that I could turn to.
You can start your mental health journey at any time. You don’t have to wait for a low point to make positive changes. Just like you shouldn’t wait for a crisis to start enacting effective cybersecurity measures, you shouldn’t wait to tackle your mental health. Recognizing that it’s a dynamic challenge you need to prepare for, and invest in, is the first step in making a positive change for yourself.
The post Mental Health and Cybersecurity: Two Continuous Journeys appeared first on Synack.
Login