Mental Health
The Newport Folk Festival: Making Mental Health A Priority
On July 16th, a new three-digit helpline, ‘988’, began a service for Americans to call if they were experiencing a mental health emergency. Those three numbers may prove to be the first small step for recovering a healthy mind during a period marked by back-to-back catastrophic traumas. While the pandemic caused layoffs, or gave employees the choice to work from home, it also brought with it a drastic, and barely reported, existential halt to the lives of performing artists. Broadway theaters went dark, every kind of live performance was cancelled or put on hold, opera commissions were stalled, and life was uniquely complicated for musicians. Some production houses and recording studios folded, of course, but more immediately, the pandemic marked the end of income for musicians who lived i...
Going There with Taylor Bennett: The Chicago Rapper’s Uplifting Individuality
Listen via: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Stitcher | Google | Pocket Casts | Radio Public | RSS Musician, rapper, entrepreneur, and all around positive guy Taylor Bennett brings his “be yourself” mentality to the Going There with Dr. Mike podcast. Advertisement The Chicago native discusses how “uplifting individuality” is his guiding philosophy in his mental health and well-being journey. Bennett explains that in order to discover our best self, we must be able to focus on how we as individuals can constantly grow and develop. That allows us to figure out what we want in the world and how to attain optimal mental, physical, and social health. In an ideal world, we would have the freedom to always be growing a...
Bloom Vol 22: Trust
Thirty-two years it took for me to trust myself. A sliding glass door to an inherent truth–value in my existence. “Stepping into my first dance-music concert was the beginning of opening that door,” I thought to myself, as I walked the grounds of Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. Standing amongst countless variations of flora and trees, my dad seemed to recite their names by memory. Hundreds of acres of meticulously designed gardens represented their natural surroundings while defining their uniqueness. It was the vision of someone who built an enterprise in timber, trusting themselves to give the community a treasure of reverence. The reserve was a place outside normalcy that ratified reality, like a music festival. I stood still for a second and closed my eyes. Inside of me was both ...
Constance Wu Details Suicide Attempt in Return to Social Media
Constance Wu has returned to Twitter after a three-year mental health hiatus, revealing that the backlash to her series of “careless” tweets in 2019 led to a suicide attempt. She also announced a book called Making a Scene, which she wrote to “help people talk about the uncomfortable stuff in order to understand it, reckon with it, and open pathways to healing.” “I haven’t been on social media in almost 3 years,” Wu wrote in a note posted to Twitter. “Tbh, I’m a little scared, but I’m dipping my toe back in to say I’m here and while I was gone I wrote a book called Making a Scene. This next part is hard to talk about… but I was afraid of coming back on social media because I almost lost my life from it: 3 years ago when I made careless tweets about the renewal of my TV show, it ignited out...
Going There with Pom Pom Squad: Mia Berrin’s Galaxy Brain and the Stigma of Mental Health
Listen via: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Stitcher | Google | Pocket Casts | Radio Public | RSS Mia Berrin — leader of former Artists of the Month Pom Pom Squad — joins the Going There podcast to discuss the bias that “mental health” means always feeling and acting happy, calm, and confident. Advertisement The world would have us believe that being “normal” involves continuous positive and optimistic thinking, and being accepted or popular socially. If we don’t behave this way, our mental health and well-being can be questioned. This bias can create a stigma whereby people are unduly judged or criticized. Berrin explains that she took on these societal standards by evoking the image of a cheerleader in h...
Gabriel & Dresden’s Josh Gabriel Opens Up About Heart Attack: “It Came as Quite a Shock, But It Made a Lot of Sense”
Dave Dresden will continue to tour while Gabriel takes time to recover. Josh Gabriel of famed dance music duo Gabriel & Dresden has announced he’s stepping away from touring in the wake of a recent heart attack. Gabriel took to the duo’s verified Instagram account to open up about the experience, which he said stems from “burnout, exhaustion and overall being pushed to my limit.” The renowned trance and progressive house music producer told fans he was in the hospital for two days, but is now home recovering. “It came as quite a shock, but it made a lot of sense,” Gabriel wrote. “The past year I have been struggling with feelings of burnout, exhaustion and overall being pushed to my limit. I now have an understanding of what was really goi...
Gabriel & Dresden’s Josh Gabriel Opens Up About Heart Attack: “It Came as Quite a Shock, But It Made a Lot of Sense”
Dave Dresden will continue to tour while Gabriel takes time to recover. Josh Gabriel of famed dance music duo Gabriel & Dresden has announced he’s stepping away from touring in the wake of a recent heart attack. Gabriel took to the duo’s verified Instagram account to open up about the experience, which he said stems from “burnout, exhaustion and overall being pushed to my limit.” The renowned trance and progressive house music producer told fans he was in the hospital for two days, but is now home recovering. “It came as quite a shock, but it made a lot of sense,” Gabriel wrote. “The past year I have been struggling with feelings of burnout, exhaustion and overall being pushed to my limit. I now have an understanding of what was really goi...
Shawn Mendes Taking 3 Weeks Off Tour to Focus on Mental Health: ‘I’ve Hit a Breaking Point’
Shawn Mendes announced Friday (July 8) that he’ll be taking the next three weeks of his Wonder: The World Tour off to focus on his mental health. “This breaks my heart to have to say this, but unfortunately I’m going to have to postpone the next three weeks of shows through Uncasville, CT until further notice,” Mendes wrote on Instagram and Twitter. “I’ve been touring since I was 15 and to be honest it’s always been difficult to be on the road away from friends and family. After a few years off the road, I felt like I was ready to dive back in, but that decision was premature and unfortunately the toll of the road and the pressure has caught up to me and I’ve hit a breaking point. “After speaking with my team and health professionals, I need to take some time to heal and take care of mysel...
Shawn Mendes Taking 3 Weeks Off Tour to Focus on Mental Health: ‘I’ve Hit a Breaking Point’
Shawn Mendes announced Friday (July 8) that he’ll be taking the next three weeks of his Wonder: The World Tour off to focus on his mental health. “This breaks my heart to have to say this, but unfortunately I’m going to have to postpone the next three weeks of shows through Uncasville, CT until further notice,” Mendes wrote on Instagram and Twitter. “I’ve been touring since I was 15 and to be honest it’s always been difficult to be on the road away from friends and family. After a few years off the road, I felt like I was ready to dive back in, but that decision was premature and unfortunately the toll of the road and the pressure has caught up to me and I’ve hit a breaking point. “After speaking with my team and health professionals, I need to take some time to heal and take care of mysel...
Ask Dr. Mike: Coping with the Mental Health Effects of Anti-LGBTQ+ Discrimination
Spinning out of the Going There with Dr. Mike podcast presented by Consequence and Sound Mind Live, the monthly “Ask Dr. Mike” column is here to answer listeners’ questions. As we wrap up Pride Month, Dr. Mike is here to guide us through the mental health effects of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. Over the last month of Pride, members of the queer community and allies alike have celebrated how wonderful and life-affirming it can be when people can freely explore, embrace, and express their authentic sexuality and gender identity. Being able to live openly as an LGBTQ+ person can radically bolster an individual’s sense of mental health and well-being. The spirit of Pride is to build a world in which everyone can live in a free and open way to embrace who they are and love wh...
Bloom Vol 21: Music and Emotional Intelligence
Previously, I discussed how making time to “date” ourselves can pave the way for increasing our emotional intelligence. It is a key to understanding “you” as a human. Humans are driven by emotion. Heightening your emotional intelligence improves your ability to respond to different situations optimally. To know why you feel the way you do, without mystery; meaningful action to better your well-being can take place with clarity. Once you’ve been dating yourself for a while, you begin to understand the tiny nuances and narratives in your mind that cause subsects of the emotion you are feeling. Suddenly, you identify the core reasons why you feel the way you are from a trauma-informed perspective that sees the origins of the moment you are in. You understand your triggers, the characters in y...
New Study Suggests Dance Music Is Good For Your Cognitive Health
Sad boi emo songs ain’t got nothin’ on dance music. A recent study published in Scientific Reports suggests that dance music can be beneficial to your cognitive health. They studied 51 young adults with an average age of 20, examining the effect of “groove rhythms” on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for the executive function that dictates our everyday movements and decisions. Conducted by a group of Japanese researchers, the study added that the music doesn’t necessarily have to be electronic dance music, but rather a song with a simple groove that makes you want to get up and dance. “The results were surprising,” Dr. Hideaki Soya, the study’s lead author, told ScienceDaily. “We found tha...
