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ISTSS COVID-19 Resources

In lieu of our blog, I am instead linking to the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies COVID-19 Resource page. This will be continually updated; please bookmark and return for future updates. Stay safe, stay home, stay healthy! Melanie ISTSS COVID-19 Resource Page Photo credit: Ella Riggin

How to Not Let COVID-19 Steal Your Mental Health While You’re At Home

We are fortunate to be going through this pandemic in the age of electronic communication that provides us with information, connection, productivity and entertainment. We are equally fortunate that we have decades of psychological research to guide us in getting through an experience of isolation in a way that will stave off depression and anxiety while helping us grow and thrive. As a mental health professional, I would like to share some tips about how to be physically isolated without letting it take a mental toll. Create Structure. Make a schedule each day and keep to it. You may want to change it on the weekends or different days for variety. If you don’t consciously fill your time, yo

Coronavirus (COVID-19): Fact finding, preventing stigma, coping, and talking to your kids about it.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), COVID-19, often referred to as the coronavirus, is a respiratory illness that can spread from person to person. The virus that causes COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus that was first identified during an investigation into an outbreak in Wuhan, China. Symptoms of COVID-19 include mild to severe respiratory illness with symptoms of fever, cough, and shortness of breath. The virus is thought to spread mainly between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet) through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. It also may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or o

It Takes an Inner Village to Survive Dissociate Identity Disorder and Complex, Traumatic, Stress-Ind

In the 21st century, dissociative identity disorder is one of the most controversial DSM-V diagnosis, especially in comparison to diagnoses like anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, even somatic and sleep disorders. When I worked on my Masters’ degree at Edinboro University and internship at St. Vincent Hospital, it was the end of the 20th century. My abnormal psychology professor lectured on the dissociative disorders, claiming that if we drew a line down the medical and psychological community, there are an equal number of people on one side of the fence that believe DID (then called multiple personality disorder) is a “real” disorder while the other side of the fence see it as all fabricat

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Erie County
Pennsylvania