Resources to Reduce Holiday Stress

The holiday season can be especially stressful for those with disabilities, especially mental illness. Expectations for this time of year run high, especially when fed by images of perfect families and idyllic lives provided by the media. There are a number of resources with excellent ideas to help with stress reduction, provide reasonable expectations, and help you deal with psychological challenges.

You may choose to begin with tips to prevent difficulties you've faced in the past. Or, you may need to implement ideas to deal with problems in progress. Take a look at these lists, and chances are you'll find some useful suggestions:

Proactive Strategies

• Psych Central - 8 tips to make the most of your holidays
• Psych Central - Making happy changes for the holidays 
• Web MD - Preventing depression during the holidays
• Psych Central - Simplifying the holidays 
• Psych Central - Spiritual strategies 
• Psych Central - Stress busters 
• Psych Central - Therapist Traditions 

Reactive Strategies

• Psych Central - 8 ways to cope
• Psych Central - 8 ways to take the joy out of your holidays 
• Psych Central - 9 ways to cope with the holidays when you have a mental illness - 
• Web MD - Coping with depressing during the holidays 
• Mayo Clinic - Coping with stress and depression during the holidays 
• Psych Central - Coping with loneliness 
• Psych Central - Enjoying the season 
• American Medical Resource Institute - Overcoming holiday depression for elderly and caregivers 
• Cleveland Clinic - Managing Holiday Stress 
• Psych Central - What not to do 

What are your best tips for managing holiday stress and depression?

Mind Games

by S.Z. Berg and Jonathan Berg

Paperback: 286 pages

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 29, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1479184594
• ISBN-13: 978-1479184590

FCC Disclaimer: I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Savannah Bloom is trying to claw her way up into the challenging world of journalism. She has a boyfriend and a bright future. It all starts to unravel when symptoms of OCD begin to appear. She thinks she can control the situation as she has most difficulties in her life, but becomes overwhelmed by "IT". Was this malady caused by an infection? Can she learn to manage, or will she lose everything?

I at first found the premise that mental illness could be caused by an infection to be ridiculous, until I did more research and actually had to deal with someone who began to show characteristics following a prolonged infection. This interesting novel allows you to care about Savannah while taking a peek into her difficult world. This work will be useful for teens and young adults to begin to understand mental illness while creating a beginning for a dialogue. Few novels featuring a character with a disability are as compelling as this.