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Fear is one of the six basic human emotions, with a clear evolutionary purpose: to help us respond to danger and survive. In Exposure Therapy, providers create a safe environment to intentionally “expose” their clients to objects, activities, or situations they fear.

In conjunction with the recent webinar "Holiday Parenting Q&A: Coping with Stress and Anxiety", psychologists Colleen Cummings, PhD, Susan Wilson, PhD, and Nina Shiffrin Starin, PhD, provide their top 3 tips for parents to help cope with stress and anxiety during the holidays.

Disastrous news gets delivered in a highly emotional way – often on purpose – and while having strong feelings for the victims of war, floods, earthquakes, mass shootings or horrific accidents is justified, we also have to be logical and in tune with our own emotional processes when interpreting the news.

Limit the depth of exposure to details. People can consume news in limited ways. In other words, learn what’s happening, then stop there. Avoid the urge for disaster voyeurism. If you have heard the story, you might not need to search for the images or the videos; if you have seen them, there is no need to revisit them over and over.

Check out our ADAA members' new books - CBT for social anxiety, an action mindset for teens and thriving with anxiety. Helpful resources to support your mental health journey.

Many years of research (much of which has been conducted by the authors of this post) have shown that people who try to avoid memories and reminders of difficult experiences have more symptoms of PTSD and depression, and other problems over time.

The growing mental health crisis is indisputably affecting our youth. In fact, the pediatric mental health crisis has been called the “top patient safety threat” of 2023.

What happens in PTSD, is that the brain goes into the fight and flight mode and is constantly on alert to protect the person from recurrence of the highly dangerous experience. But the problem is that it cannot come down from that state of heightened arousal, even after leaving the dangerous situation, and coming back to the safe life environment. 

Therapy can vary from patient to patient, clinician to clinician, but two ADAA members who presented at the 2023 Annual Conference believe therapy for SAD and other related disorders can benefit from an additional tool. Their conference session, Me Talk Funny One Day: Teaching Social Skills for Social Anxiety and Other Disorders, not only confirmed that belief but explained it.

The headlines and the CDC report are indeed alarming, but they should serve as a wakeup call to all of us. Yes, we should think seriously about why we are seeing a steep decline in the mental health of teenage girls, but we have to come together now as parents, family, friends, educators, clinicians, providers, and as a society to support, enhance and establish more preventive measures for our youth.

Working with Black churches to create a better today and a much better tomorrow in the field (literally) of mental health care for African Americans are three Black leaders in mental health who will present at the 2023 ADAA Conference. ADAA is excited to have Bernadine Waller, PhD, Atasha Jordan, MBA, MD and Kimberly Arnold, MPH, PhD discuss their work, research and findings in a presentation titled Implementing Evidence-Based Mental Health Interventions in Black Churches.

OCD often manifests as intrusive, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) that lead to repetitive behaviors (compulsions) in an attempt to try and 'fix' or neutralize the thoughts. One form of OCD that is important to discuss and highlight is Relationship OCD.