If a person feels emotional distress - anger, anxiety or depression - she or he may be experiencing acute stress. That's only one kind of stress, probably the most manageable. Other physical symptoms can include headache, heart palpitations and bowel problems. Chronic stress is worse. It happens when a person never sees a way out of a miserable situation. This can wear people down and even kill them through suicide, violence, heart attack, stroke and, perhaps, even cancer, the American Psychological Association says.
Kevin Benton had every reason to feel bitter.
Many people who experience chronic feelings of anxiety about social situations, work and relationships, or other aspects of everyday life often reach for a beer or a glass of wine to quell their unease.
History shows that the suicide rate tends to rise as the economy falls, but due to a lack of solid data, researchers haven't been able to confirm whether that pattern has held during the most recent economic crisis, the worst since the Great Depression.
Gillian Aldrich started growing vegetables in her backyard three years ago, and she's now working on planting a bed of hydrangeas, butterfly bushes, rose campion, and -- her favorite -- pale-pink hardy geraniums along one side of her property.
Paula Calzetta was driving to dinner with Diane Keim last month when she made a wrong turn that put the women in front of a Bank of America building in Cheshire, Connecticut.
It seems like there's therapy for everything these days, including sending photos of yourself in various states of undress to members of the opposite sex on the Internet.
"I'm edging towards being a recluse, but choose daily to fight for release from this crippling prison."
You may be relieved or even ecstatic about the end of a symbol of terror, or maybe it seems like the pain is just beginning all over again.
After the shooting that left six dead in Tucson, Arizona, last Saturday, a portrait emerged of alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner as an angry, disturbed young man.
She was a mother of three living in a small apartment and working four jobs. And then, as if in a fairy tale, she won her state's lottery last year. But the story doesn't have the happy ending you might expect.
Freezing temps? Check. Gray skies? Check. Crabby mood? Check again. But not for long!
The Badger family holidays are filled with medical catastrophes.
Women with very demanding jobs are nearly twice as likely to have a heart attack as their peers in more easygoing occupations, a new study suggests.
Children who have a parent deployed for military service are more likely to seek out treatment for mental and behavioral health issues, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
As the rescue capsule brought each Chilean miner to the surface, they sprang from obscurity into the global spotlight -- a type of attention that they never sought.
"I hate him. I'm so mad. I love him. I miss him. I want him back," Christine Lopez's thoughts twisted and churned.
Children in Grades 3 through 6 who are obese are more likely to be bullied than their normal-weight peers, a new study has found.
A gunman critically injured a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and later killed himself and his mother, police say -- the latest violent incident in a health care setting.
I want to address a spate of criticism I received for my suggestion several weeks back that family therapy might be a first intervention for a 6-year-old boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder who was demonstrating problematic behavior at home but not at school.
Unemployment. Single parenthood. Taking care of multiple young children. Millions of people deal with these challenges every day, but in some cases, they add up to something unthinkable: turning against one's own child.
There was nothing but excitement for Keila Pena-Hernandez when she first stepped onto the grounds of the University of Missouri.
The sensation began in Melanie Thernstrom's neck the same day she went for a long swim. It flowed down through her right shoulder to her hand, as if she had a blistering sunburn underneath her skin.
Rescue workers drilled a hole in the roof of a suburban Chicago home to extract an 82-year-old woman's body this month.
You're speeding along on the highway and someone cuts you off out of nowhere. Your heart starts racing, and you pound your wrists on the horn, screaming obscenities only you can hear.
Jim Dailakis still remembers how he stood below his then-girlfriend's balcony, held up a tape player and blasted a George Michael song that the two of them loved.
Driving south from Ohio with his wife and two children on Thursday, Steve Daly stopped in Tennessee for what's advertised as the world's best ice cream. After ordering, he briefly switched out of vacation mode to check his e-mail on his phone.
A woman who'd lived two years after Hurricane Katrina in a 30-foot-long FEMA camper cried, calling herself "a survivor" and pleading with the audience to look out for one another. An official with a faith-based relief agency flew in from Washington, seeking jobs for the flood of volunteers who keep calling. An advocate for children reminded people not to overlook the oil disaster's youngest victims.
You eat right. You exercise. You get an annual physical. You probably think you're doing everything you can to stay healthy.
Young men with low IQs are much more likely than their peers to attempt suicide later in life, a new study has found. In fact, men with the lowest IQs are about four times more likely to attempt suicide as those with the highest, and the risk tends to go up as IQ drops.
As medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness as well as a child psychiatrist, I appreciate this opportunity to address some of the issues raised on May 11 by the California mother who asked, "Who can help my bipolar 6-year-old?"
Soon after Paul Coskie's bicycle collided with a car, it became clear to his mother that her son would be sick for a very long time, and indeed he was. The 13-year-old boy went into a coma for a month and spent six months total in the hospital.
People who experience serious head injuries often require days -- if not weeks -- of medical care to get back on their feet. For most of them, the mental aftershocks will last long after they've checked out of the hospital.
Twinkies. Fat slob. Gordita.
It's a situation every mother has been through: Your child is stressed out or upset, but she's at school or summer camp--too far away for you to give her a hug.
Laughter can do more than just put a smile on your face.
The former beauty queen stared into the camera, but this was no pageant or performance. She looked frail and thin, and her hair was rumpled. But Eva Markvoort smiled weakly.
Poet John Berryman. Sylvia Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes. These are prominent examples of people who whose parents died by suicide when they were children and also took their own lives as adults.
Melissa Fay Greene woke up at night crying and wondering if she had "ruined our life."
Melissa Fay Greene woke up at night crying and wondering if she had "ruined our life."
Annoyed by a French competitor's bragging, U.S. Olympic swimmer Don Schollander stalked him into the men's bathroom, then planted himself inches behind his rival -- at the urinal.
Poets, novelists and songwriters have described it in countless turns of phrase, but at the level of biology, love is all about chemicals.
In her memoir, "High on Arrival," actress Mackenzie Phillips revealed details of her incestuous relationship with her father, which she called "consensual."
Some people check their appearance in any mirror, window or computer screen they can find, but not out of vanity. It's because they hate the way they look so much.
Adolescent children of frequently deployed soldiers are less stressed than conventional wisdom might indicate, according to a recent study.
On Wednesday, Dr. Toni Eyssallenne was walking the aisle of a small makeshift hospital in Haiti run by the University of Miami when a patient beckoned to her. "I assumed she was in pain, so I walked over and asked her what was wrong," Eyssallenne told me. "But she said she wasn't in pain. She said she just wanted to tell me what happened to her. For the next thirty minutes, I listened to her story."
For people in the business of coming to the rescue, it's easy to lose sight of their own mental health as they work around the clock to help those desperately in need.
As Haitians struggle to recover from the devastation of Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake, mental health experts caution that the most severe psychological effects won't take form until individuals' situations stabilize.
Athena Champneys, 37, has been in near-constant pain since 2003, when she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic condition characterized by widespread pain and tenderness. Her husband hasn't always been 100 percent sympathetic, however.
Ah, the holidays. 'Tis the season to move into the relationship danger zone. We get so stressed out about buying the right presents, staying within our holiday budget, or trying to please impossible in-laws that the tension inevitably spills over into our love lives.
Psychological trauma may leave a visible trace in a child's brain, scientists say.
Jordan Pittard, 14, remembers feeling anxious about his father being deployed with the U.S. Army in Iraq from 2006 to 2007. His mother, Lucille, a teacher, admits struggling to have enough time to work, take care of the house and talk enough to her kids.
Have you ever felt cut off from other people, even if there are plenty around you? Maybe you felt all alone in the world, but you were making other people feel lonely without even realizing it.
When Melinda Roberts is watching animated movies with her kids -- 7, 9, and 11 -- she'll help them recognize voice actors and talk about the creation process so they won't get scared.
Shortly before last Mother's Day, 28-year-old Lauren Meehan-Machos broke down in front of her startled husband. "This is more than I can handle," she sobbed.
They listen to tales of life's worst moments, but they can't go home and tell their spouses about what they've heard. Sometimes no amount of schooling is enough to shield them from taking on some of their patients' suffering.
The 12-year-old girl plucked cold, slimy potato peels out of the garbage containers in a village in eastern Poland. When those trash scraps became scarce, she ate clover.
The meal you ate the first day you started working. The first exam you aced in high school. The shoes you wore to the prom.
Whether they blame it on the kids, stress, or the lure of the Internet, most Americans feel like they're not getting enough sleep.
By the time you hear your child's early-morning stirrings, you've probably already worked out for 90 minutes, meditated for 30, and enjoyed a healthy, balanced breakfast, which of course included a low-fat pomegranate smoothie. Why, there's nothing left to do besides jog happily over to your beloved offspring's room, sweep him out of bed, and shower him with all the joyous light, wonder, and oneness you're feeling with the universe.
Schizophrenia drugs, increasingly prescribed to children with bipolar disorder and other conditions, can cause youngsters to experience rapid weight gain, according to a new study.
As a large silver balloon floated its way over Colorado, millions of Americans spent hours glued to their televisions wondering if 6-year-old Falcon Heene, assumed to be inside the contraption, was alive.
Post-traumatic stress disorder may be a condition of the mind, but research has implicated it in the ills of the body. Now, a new study suggests it may be associated with death after surgery.
Amid the highest unemployment rate in recent decades and massive job losses around the country, most workers feel happy to at least be employed. What they aren't feeling, however, is healthy.
Amid the highest unemployment rate in recent decades and massive job losses around the country, most workers feel happy to at least be employed. What they aren't feeling, however, is healthy.
If you didn't catch the white coat and the stethoscope, you might take Dr. Mike Miller for a middle-aged rocker, roaming the halls of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
When a marriage is rocky, it can make both partners feel depressed.
When you get angry, the stress isn't restricted to your head. New research shows that anger actually triggers electrical changes in the heart, which can predict future arrhythmias in some patients.
Some children and teens are more likely than their peers to become addicted to the Internet, and a new study suggests it's more likely to happen if kids are depressed, hostile, or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or social phobia.
Think a little spanking won't do much harm to kids? New research says the effects can be long-lasting.
Facing the world after an isolating and traumatic experience is often stressful, especially for those who have been away for a long time.
A third of military children surveyed who have a parent deployed in a war zone are at "high risk" for psychological problems, according to a new study by military doctors and researchers.
Your therapist's name is ELIZA, and she interacts with you through text on a computer screen. However embarrassing or difficult your problem may be, ELIZA will not hesitate to ask you a question about it, or respond graciously, "That is very interesting. Why do you say that?"
As the storm raged outside her hospital room four years ago, an equally consuming force hijacked Alesia Crockett's mind: deep depression.
Space. Sound. Smell. Humans constantly process a slew of variables in their surroundings. According to new research, the wiring of the brain may be even more complex than we knew.
If you're working in a stressful environment, you and your colleagues may be communicating tension to one another without even realizing it.
Richard Rose used to challenge his wife, Joyce, if he thought she was misstating something, but these days he lets it go.
The American Psychological Association concluded Wednesday that there is little evidence that efforts to change a person's sexual orientation from gay or lesbian to heterosexual are effective.
About 1 in 7, or 13.5 percent of adults who encountered intense dust clouds after the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11 were later found to have asthma, compared with just 8.4 percent who had no dust cloud exposure, researchers in Atlanta and New York City reported on Tuesday.
Kim Mickens, 49, has always been the caregiver among her eight brothers and sisters. So when her mother, Delphine Mickens, was told she had Alzheimer's disease, Mickens took care of all the arrangements for her mother's care -- among them, she chose a nursing home not far from her place in Baltimore.
When Holly Betten, 28, came home from the hospital after a rough delivery, she had one day to adjust to her new life as a mom before her husband went back to working 12-hour days as a computer-software architect.
Divorce causes more than bitterness and broken hearts. The trauma of a split can leave long-lasting effects on mental and physical health that remarriage might not repair, according to research released this week.
There may be a reason that children's asthma rates are so high in urban areas. Youngsters with stressed-out parents and exposure to air pollution have a higher risk of asthma, according to a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Christina Pearson was half-bald at age 13. She just couldn't stop pulling her hair, and ended up taking out every lock from the tops of her ears to the crown of her head.
Two popular anti-smoking drugs will now carry warnings about the risk of severe mental health problems, the Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday.
Amir was a salesman before being arrested and taken to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003. During his time there, he says, he was forced to lay down in urine and feces, stay naked in his cell for days, and "howl like dogs do" while being pulled by a dog leash. According to his accounts, he was also sodomized with a broomstick and had his genitals stepped on.
Ken Gehle first noticed something was wrong about a year ago: He'd sit down to dinner and the first bite of food seemed to get stuck in his throat.
Henry Joseph Madden was a good student and track team member in high school, but he had a secret: He sometimes wore his mother's pantyhose and underwear under his clothes.
A University of Georgia professor shot and killed his wife and two other adults in Athens, Georgia, in late April, according to police. A U.S. soldier fired on fellow troops in early May at a counseling center at a base outside Baghdad, Iraq, killing five comrades, according to authorities.
Although it may have been Jon and Kate Gosselin's unusual family that landed them a reality show, it is their marital problems-- to which much of their audience can likely relate-- that have made them a household name in recent weeks.
"Just the facts" has always been Lillian Waugh's motto. A historian and former professor of women's studies at West Virginia University, Waugh is a stickler for facts and details. And because she was always the "go to" person at WVU, she was constantly in demand -- and busy.
A five-eyed monster under the bed isn't what worries most kids. Experts say young people fear a lot of what's in the news -- from kidnappings to murders to salmonella.
The state you live in may affect your state of mind, according to new report that shows that rates of stress, depression, and emotional problems vary by geographic region.
A middle-of-the-night fight, a surprise pullout from the Grammy Awards, leaked photos, a police investigation -- new pieces of the puzzle of the alleged assault of pop singer Rihanna by her boyfriend Chris Brown have been emerging since early February.
If you're lying awake at night, feeling angry or fatigued, because of stress, you're in the majority, according to a nationwide report released Tuesday.
Just days after giving birth to her second child, Dr. Jane Dimer drove herself home from the hospital to find her then-husband in bed with another woman. He threw Dimer down the stairs, and she never saw him again until court.
Yes, Americans are stressed over the economy.
Erin Krebs, M.D., once had a patient who spent the first eight minutes of his appointment telling her everything that was wrong with the past four primary care doctors he'd seen -- including one she knew personally and considers a "lovely person." "We know that doctors are not perfect," said Krebs, an assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine. "But it's not a good start to spend a lot of time complaining about the past."
When she heard news of the Continental Airlines plane that plunged into a house in suburban Buffalo, New York, on Thursday night, killing 50 people, Jenny Gomez experienced a familiar feeling creep deep within her psyche. "It definitely sparked those old feelings of anxiety," she said.
Christina McMenemy's husband called her on a Monday afternoon last June to say he was coming home early. She was overjoyed -- some extra, unexpected time with her husband on a lovely summer day.
Until recently, the Bilson household was under siege. Thirteen-year-old daughter Marissa, who has autism, ruled the roost, screaming shrilly until she got her way and enjoying special privileges that didn't extend to her siblings, Brittany, 15, and Brendan, 6.