Top of Mind

OK Boomers! Increasing Rates of Substance Use Among Older Adults

Anyone born between 1946 and 1964 is a part of the Baby Boomer Generation. This generation is often defined as people born during the post–World War II baby boom, consisting of approximately of 76 million Americans. During the 1950s, 8% of the population was over the age of 65. By 2019, this number grew to […]

DOs and DONTs of Emotional regulation for kids and families

Anna I. Guerdjikova, PhD, LISW, CCRC Director of Administrative Services, Harold C. Schott Foundation Eating Disorders Program Lindner Center of HOPE         Emotion regulation refers to the process of generating and maintaining an emotion, as well as the ability to modulate its’ intensity and frequency in order to achieve socioemotional competence and […]

Parenting Anxious Children

For many families, the start of the school year means the start of activities, socialization, and helpful structure. For others, it signals the start of anxiety – anxiety about grades, socializing, separation from loved ones, and the like. Anxiety is very common in childhood and adolescence and often does not require mental health intervention. Common […]

Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy for Trauma and other Mental Health Disorders

              By: Laurie Little, PsyD  Lindner Center of HOPE, Staff Psychologist Plants that have psychedelic properties have been used across all continents for centuries to aid in rituals, recreation and in healing. Over time, researchers have found that psychedelic medicines can also be profoundly effective in treating mental illnesses […]

“Help! The sun is shining, but it is also dark!”

                The sun is shining; the days are longer. Summer is approaching. For some, summer is a break from study or work. For others, it may be an opportunity to take a week of vacation to relax and rejuvenate. Whether it is a two-to-three-month break, or simply more […]

Compulsive Hoarding: How to Know When Enough is Enough

By: Jennifer B. Wilcox, PsyD Staff Psychologist, OCD and Anxiety Disorders Program         What is compulsive hoarding? Hoarding Disorder is a psychiatric illness and is considered to be a subtype of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – 5th Edition (DSM-5) defines Hoarding Disorder (HD) as: Persistent difficulty discarding […]

CBT VS DBT

The Difference Between CBT and DBT (Cognitive and Dialectical Behavioral Therapies) Stacey L. Spencer, Ed.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist, Lindner Center of HOPE EMDR Trained therapist Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience   There are many, many possible types of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is an optimal treatment method for mental illnesses.  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and […]

Eating Habits: Why You Should Listen to Your Body Instead of Shame

By: Annie Ward, MSN, PMHNP-BC Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, Lindner Center of HOPE When we think of eating disorders, our society tends to think of individuals in emaciated bodies. Disordered eating is more common than not, and does not discriminate against body size, gender or race. The line between dieting and disordered eating is blurred in […]

Feeling the winter blues?

By: Jessica Kraft, APRN, PMHNP-BC Lindner Center of HOPE, Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that is more isolated to the changing of the seasons. It can happen in the spring and summer but occurs most commonly in the fall and winter months. We know that everyone is going […]

Smarter Screen Usage for Families

By Tracy S. Cummings, MD, Associate Chief Medical Officer for Clinical Excellence and Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Lindner Center of HOPE Medical school was an intense experience filled with mass information consumption regarding physiological health, followed by residency and fellowship focused on mental health care amounting to nine years of training to be […]

Identifying School Struggles

Nicole Jederlinic, DO Lindner Center of HOPE Staff Psychiatrist and Medical Director for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Acute Unit at Lindner Center of HOPE As an inpatient and outpatient child / adolescent psychiatrist, I see children and teens, and, consequently, their families facing a wide range of mental health conditions. In the wake of the […]

How Does Exercise Help Me, and How Do I Get Started When I Don’t Have The Motivation?

By: Angela Couch, RN, MSN, PMHNP-BC, Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner The research is in, and it’s clear. Exercise can help with depression, anxiety and cognitive decline, not to mention the physical benefits which we are all probably familiar with already. Physical inactivity can also be a risk factor for depression and anxiety. What are the ways […]

PANS & Autoimmune Encephalitis: When Infection and Immune Dysfunction Present as Psychiatric Illness

When I started my career as a nurse practitioner in 2017, I couldn’t have guessed that I’d end up where I am today – a psychiatric provider treating children, adolescents, and adults with a largely misunderstood and relatively controversial diagnosis that causes severe neuropsychiatric symptoms due to a misdirected immune response. Pediatric Acute-Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome […]

OCD’s 10 Biggest Tricks

OCD is a common disorder and affects 1 in 40 people, it is also the 3rd most common psychiatric condition. This disorder can be very tricky and tries to tell lies to keep people trapped in anxiety. Below are the 10 common tricks it tries to use to keep the anxiety lingering as well as […]

A Holistic Approach: Yoga for Trauma Recovery

Understanding Trauma The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is responsible for our “fight, flight or freeze” response and has been essential to our survival since the beginning of our existence. In the case of traumatic, threatening emotional, mental and physical experiences, this fear response can become altered. Connection between the amygdala and hypothalamus causes change to […]

Caught in the weeds: The impact of cannabis on mental health

By: Christine Collins, MD, Lindner Center of HOPE Addiction Psychiatrist       Legalization of cannabis is rapidly expanding across the world. To date, 17 states (and DC) in the US have legalized marijuana for all uses, and another 19 states have legalized it for medical purposes only. The media tends to portray cannabis and […]

Transitioning to Young (and not quite) “Adult”hood

Jennifer L. Farley, PsyD Lindner Center of HOPE, Associate Chief of Psychological Services Congratulations! Your child graduated from high school!  And now…   what? Many are busy selecting their fall semester college courses and buying necessities for their dorm room. Others have chosen to delay college and work instead, using time to consider their future. Some opted […]

Is our biological clock leading us to gain weight?

The role of the circadian system in obesity and disordered eating By Nicole Mori Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner The circadian system is the body’s endogenous timekeeper, a network of hierarchically-organized structures (“clocks” or “oscillators”) in nucleated cells, which regulates a variety of biological processes (including the cell cycle, metabolism, growth, development and sleep/activity cycles) by generating outputs […]