Depression and low self-esteem can be closely connected, and boosting your self-esteem when they both appear can be difficult. When you live with low self-esteem for a long time, you may come to believe that you are inherently worthless, and this deep sense of worthlessness is a common symptom of depression. Conversely, if you’ve lived with depression for a long time, your self-esteem can be impacted. Perhaps when the motivation and energy are drained out of you, you lose confidence in your abilities and value. Boosting your self-esteem then can be particularly challenging.

Learning how to care for someone with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be hard. As someone who has served as both a caretaker of someone with PTSD and a person in need of care, I intimately understand the difficulties interlaced in the care of people with trauma histories. For example, it can be hard for us to express joy and gratitude, even when we feel it. People with PTSD can be prone to anger, which may make us lash out verbally or even physically (though studies have shown that PTSD does not usually make people more violent than the general population). PTSD can be treatment resistant, meaning we feel so damaged, hopeless, or otherwise unworthy that we give up on getting better, or refuse to try in the first place. People with PTSD are sometimes drawn toward self-harming behaviors like cutting ourselves or misusing drugs. It is indescribably painful to sit and hold the hand of someone you care for when that someone doesn't appear to care about herself. But PTSD recovery relies on community support. Learning how to care for someone with PTSD means learning to keep holding our hands, even if we can't find the words to tell you how much it means to us.

Recovery from mental illness is possible, but it can be surprisingly more difficult than expected. Many may believe that the new year is an ideal time to recover from mental illness as it can be a time of reflection, goal setting, excitement and new beginnings, but it can also be a time of pressure to change, share what is going to be new and believe things you may not necessarily agree with. We hear, "What is your New Year’s resolution?" hundreds of times during the months of December and January and we may think it is going to motivate us to overcome our mental illness. But a time of year doesn’t determine if recovery from a mental illness is possible, a decision does.

I hate taking days off work and I most especially hate taking days off work because of bipolar disorder. This is because I'm a perfectionist and overachiever and workaholic -- oh, and I need the money. So it's really hard for me to fight these personality characteristics (and the money thing) and give myself permission for the day off work because of bipolar disorder.

I'm setting mental health goals because nothing is better than getting a fresh start and feeling confident about the new year. I love watching everyone push to find new resolutions that they're excited about. My mental health goals this year are to gain more self-control, work on overcoming paranoia in my relationship and get into therapy.

How we ask about a person's mental illness matters because language can stigmatize mental illness. At the core of stigmatizing mental health conversations, is the idea that mental illnesses are not real, legitimate illnesses. It’s one of the basics when talking about mental illness, and to some degree, it seems like we should be well past this statement by now. But we’re not. It’s not just naysayers of mental illness that make the mistake, either; in some cases, even those who have mental illness or know someone who does still don't know what to say to someone with a mental illness. They seem to want to think of mental illness as something other than a sickness and end up contributing to stigma in the questions they ask about a person's mental illness.

Resolving to learn self-help for verbal abuse in the new year can help you end next year in a better place. A New Year’s resolution is a personal promise we make with the intent to better ourselves, and New Year’s resolutions for those battling verbal abuse are just as important as any other resolutions we consider and commit to each year. If you’ve reflected on your year and thought you could really benefit from some positive change, implement solid New Year’s resolutions to improve the quality of your life: Promise to learn some self-help for the verbal abuse in your relationships.

There are mental health benefits of pets for children with mental illness. Pets can be great friends and teachers to children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD), or other mental health concerns. Plenty of research exists backing up the helpfulness of having animals in therapy, school, or at home. My son's mental health benefits from the animals in his life.

Schizoaffective disorder recovery helped me gain confidence, but first, recovery took away a gift I thought made me special.  Before my diagnosis in my early 20s, when I was really struggling, I thought that I was a medium and could communicate with spirits. I had both auditory and visual hallucinations that I thought were ghosts. Letting go of the belief I was psychic in early schizoaffective disorder recovery hurt my confidence.

Hearing voices in my head is something that happens to me often. I have schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. This means I experience mood swings and crippling anxiety along with hearing voices. I know the voices in my head aren’t real, but they’re scary anyway. I heard schizoaffective voices in my heaed today. They started while I was on a train platform, waiting to go home from the hospital where I meet with my therapist.