The Loka Initiative - Center for Healthy Minds Partnerships and Public Outreach Ongoing Loka works to engage, inspire, and involve the general public by hosting talks and events that showcase dialogue between senior scientists and senior faith leaders.
Mental Health and Public Libraries- An on-demand webinar to learn strategies on making an impact in your community According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) in 2018, 1 in 5 adults experienced mental illness in some form. Accurate information and resources are not always available and can be hard to find. San Diego Public Library saw a need in their community to be this resource and decided to act on it. Their goal was to train their staff in Mental Health First Aid and provide other resources and training to members of their community. These efforts have benefited their community and have better equipped their staff with the tools they need to effectively work with individuals who are living with mental health issues. Join us for this webinar as Joseph Miesner discusses:
4 simple exercises to strengthen your attention and reduce distractibility Our attention gets hijacked by everything from the stress in our lives to the ding of our phones. Neuroscientist Amishi Jha shows how we can cultivate the ability to focus on what really matters. “I think, therefore I am distracted.” If Descartes were writing today, this is what his famous aphorism might have become. We’re living in an age of distraction, battered by our own customized waterfall of notifications, alerts, texts, videos, bingeable TV, and more. It’s not surprising our minds often feel like a jumble.
Article- Library Burnout: Causes, Symptoms, Solutions This article is from the December 2009 issue. By Christine Martin Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, defines “burnout” as “exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation, usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.” But I didn’t need to tell you that. Chances are, you have developed your own definition of burnout, which tends to be high among those who work in helping professions like library science. See the end of this article for a questionnaire you can take to determine if you are headed for burnout. Ten work–life balance tips for researchers based at home during the pandemic I find it really hard to work from home. I have tried it on numerous occasions over the years, including when writing up my master’s thesis and, more recently, in my postdoctoral work, but I am still not great at it. There’s always something else I could be doing: eating snacks, watching television or even rearranging my room.
Library Journal- Supporting patrons and the staff who serve them. Libraries across the country are finding new ways to support patrons experiencing mental health challenges—as well as the staff who serve them For many, public libraries are safe, nonjudgmental spaces to escape into a book, program, or quiet room. For regular visitors, library staff can be reassuring, familiar faces. How to practice emotional first aid - Guy Winch The difference between mental health and emotional health is that mental health is about diagnosable conditions such as anxiety disorders, clinical depression, attention deficit, schizophrenia, and others. Emotional health is about the non-diagnosable stuff – the kind of emotionally distressing experiences we all go through at some point in our lives, such as loneliness, low self-esteem, grief, guilt, rejection, failure, heartbreak and others. By learning how we’re affected by these kinds of emotional wounds and knowing which science-based techniques we could use to treat them we can develop our own personal ‘medicine cabinet’ for emotional wounds. One of the reasons it is so important to be aware of these kinds of ‘unofficial’ emotional injures is we have a finite amount of emotional and intellectual resources – a limited amount of brainpower – and emotional distress takes up a big chunk of it leaving us left with which to focus, concentrate on our schoolwork or projects or hobbies.
The 36 Questions That Lead to Love In Mandy Len Catron’s Modern Love essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” she refers to a study by the psychologist Arthur Aron (and others) that explores whether intimacy between two strangers can be accelerated by having them ask each other a specific series of personal questions. The 36 questions in the study are broken up into three sets, with each set intended to be more probing than the previous one. The idea is that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. To quote the study’s authors, “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.”