Send us your mental health questions for our Group Therapy newsletter

This story was originally published on Group Therapy, a weekly newsletter that answers questions submitted by readers about what has been weighing on their hearts and minds. sign up here to receive it in your inbox.

Dear readers,

Last August, we launched our first Group Therapy newsletter into cyberspace, like an eager little rocket full of excitement and hope, not knowing what kind of response we would get, or if this concept, a reader-driven newsletter focused on mental health, would land.

Six months later, I can say that I am humbled again and again by the way everyone responded, from their thoughtful questions to their candid and personal emails outlining their own mental health challenges and triumphs.

What makes this newsletter special is all of you. By sending us your questions, you open a window into what people really care about. You help us focus on serving our community in a way that the media often fails. Thanks for trusting us.

There are so many narratives going around right now about mental health and mental illness, and all of you have helped us dig into many of them. We answered your questions about how antidepressants work (or don’t work, for many people), How to support a couple who has lost a loved one and yourself when you’re nursing a broken heartand why it seems that we are “waiting for the other shoe to drop” Three years of pandemic. We provide perspectives on how deal with weather anxietywhat the latest science tells us about how our brains and guts are connectedand therapies that focus the mind-body connection.

To keep wandering down this path of research, we need more fuel for the engine of this newsletter: your questions. So my question to you is, what are we missing? Your questions may be intimate and personal, such as how to deal with loneliness of being immunocompromised in the age of COVID-19either find a therapist who understands and respects their culture and identities.

You could ask about issues and policies that affect your community, like why our mental health system keeps failing our most vulnerable neighbors, or the world in general (one of my favorites in this regard was our article on The role of hope in social change.). Or your practices can look to the future of mental health care, like our three parts series in psychedelic-assisted therapy.

I also want to invite you to tell us how we can improve this newsletter: like the type of experts we’re interviewing, the multicultural perspectives we’re leaving out, or the resources we need to highlight (including books, websites, organizations, and people).

Simply put, we’d love to hear more about what’s on your hearts and minds.

There are two easy ways to contact us: You can send us an email at grouptherapy@WhatsNewDay.comor you can fill out this form on our website. As always, you can remain anonymous.

Thank you for learning and growing with us, and for making this newsletter possible. We look forward to hearing from you.

Until next week,

laura

If you’re convinced by what you learned from these experts today, or if you’d like to tell us about your own experiences, drop us an email and let us know if it’s okay to share your thoughts with the broader group therapy community. The email GroupTherapy@WhatsNewDay.com comes directly to our team. As always, find us on Instagram at @latimesforyourmindwhere we will continue this conversation.

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other cool stuff

For the past decade, a group of Japanese mothers have come together to discuss their children’s mental health challenges. The South Bay group has served as a space for members to learn from each other’s experiences, find community, and feel less alone, my colleague Phi Do writes.

There isn’t a lot of research showing that beauty filters in apps like TikTok to damage adult mental healthbut there is cause for concern. AND experts say we need to take action — not by boycotting filters or pushing to make them illegal, but by developing mental health tools that will fortify us against their potential effects.

A company that provides online therapy services acknowledged last week that its clients’ sensitive health information had been sent to third-party firms., illustrate the risks to mental health data and call attention to problematic privacy practices. Telehealth provider Cerebral shared user data with Google, TikTok, Meta, Facebook parent, and others. Privacy lawyers say exposing mental health data to third-party companies could harm users, including those with substance use disorders.