Mental Healthiness

08/28/2025

What if lifestyle wasn’t just prevention—but treatment?
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We’re taught that health is a personal responsibility, a matter of making the “right” choices. But what if that framing is incomplete—or even harmful? What if food, movement, rest, and relationships weren’t just wellness buzzwords, but clinically validated interventions for conditions like heart disease, depression, and even early-stage Alzheimer’s?
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I recently read a study confirming that lifestyle interventions can reverse cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s. And while some may find that revolutionary, it reflects something many cultures have long known: how we live shapes how we heal.
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But here’s the catch—none of it works in isolation.
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You can’t eat well if you live in a food desert. You can’t manage stress if you’re working two jobs while caregiving. You can’t “just exercise” without time, safety, or support. And you can’t build strong relationships in a culture that rewards productivity over presence.
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In this essay, I explore four pillars of health—Eat Well, Move More, Stress Less, Love More—and then widen the lens to show what really drives sustainable change: community scaffolding, cultural context, and structural support.
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Health is not a virtue. It’s not just about willpower. It’s the outcome of systems designed to either support or erode it.
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We treat healthiness like a side dish when it should be the main course.
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If we’re serious about medicine, we must be serious about collective care.
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Discover how lifestyle changes can combat early Alzheimer’s and improve overall health through communal well-being and relational care.

08/18/2025

I don’t like the way I’ve been feeling lately. Manipulated. Forced into decisions I’m not comfortable making. Unsure who to trust. I’ve developed tools and habits that feel necessary just to decide whether something is true or false, real or fake. And I also know that feeling this way doesn’t feel like me.

Which is what made me realize: maybe it isn’t just about me at all. Maybe it’s about my environment.

In my Impact of Environment series, I’ve explored how wealth and culture shape what we believe is possible, normal, or personal. This time, I’ve turned to something subtler—but maybe more insidious: bias.

Bias isn’t a character flaw. It’s a feature of how the brain works. As Daniel Kahneman explains in Thinking, Fast and Slow, our minds run on two systems: one fast and intuitive, the other slow and analytical. The fast system is efficient, but it relies on shortcuts—availability, confirmation, anchoring, narrative—that keep us moving, but often lead us astray.

That wasn’t such a problem when “the news” meant a few nightly anchors and a shared set of facts. But today, politics, media, and algorithms are designed to take advantage of our biases.

👉 Politicians like Newt Gingrich learned to weaponize language, turning opponents into “enemies” and framing compromise as weakness.
👉 Social media algorithms learned to amplify outrage and confirmation, feeding us more of what we already believe—and less of what challenges us.
👉 Billionaire-owned media outlets learned to shape not just how events are covered, but whether they are covered at all.
👉 And now, generative AI is learning to mirror us, to be “helpful,” often reinforcing what we already assume rather than nudging us toward harder truths.

Each of these forces plays on the same architecture: the invisible shortcuts of human cognition. The result isn’t just misinformation—it’s the erosion of trust, the hardening of certainty, and the loss of a shared reality.

So what do we do? We can’t erase bias, but we can recognize it. We can resist the comfort of only hearing what flatters us. We can value honesty over agreement, and expertise over charisma. We can practice tolerating discomfort and ambiguity, because clarity often requires friction.

Bias has always been with us.

But never before has it been so precisely engineered, so deliberately shaped. Knowing that doesn’t free us—but it does give us a fighting chance.

That’s what this essay is about: how politics, platforms, billionaires, and AI are no longer just reflecting our divisions—they’re designing for them. And how honesty might be the last act of resistance we have.

Explore how bias shapes our perceptions and choices, influenced by media systems, technology, and cultural dynamics in today's world.

07/29/2025

ADHD: Ten Years Later
✨ What’s changed, what’s held true, and why the conversation is finally catching up.

In 2015, I published a two-part series on ADHD: what it is, what it isn’t, and how environment and expectation shape how symptoms show up. Ten years later, I’ve revised both essays—and added a new third installment reflecting what the past decade has taught us.

🔹 Neurodiversity has reshaped how we frame ADHD—not just as a disorder, but as a cognitive difference deserving support, not shame.
🔹 New research confirms stimulant medications remain safe and effective, with some evidence of small height impact—but no support for the idea that they fuel addiction.
🔹 Hormonal shifts matter, especially for women and girls. Medications may work differently across the menstrual cycle, and ADHD care needs to reflect that.
🔹 More adults are being diagnosed—not because ADHD is “spreading,” but because people are finally being seen.
🔹 The online prescribing boom had flaws, but it didn’t create an addiction epidemic. If anything, well-managed treatment reduces long-term substance risk.

This isn’t a retraction of what I once said—it’s a reflection built on 20+ years in practice, updated science, and a more human understanding of what support should look like.

Updated in 2025, this third installment explores how our understanding of ADHD has evolved over the past decade—highlighting neurodiversity, new research on medication safety, s*x differences in treatment response, and why more adults are being diagnosed than ever before

07/28/2025

What 3 Body Problem Teaches Us About the Moral Cost of Conviction

Minor spoilers for Season 1 of the Netflix series.

We often assume that when the stakes are high, the right path becomes clear. But 3 Body Problem challenges that belief at every turn.

Based on Liu Cixin’s visionary trilogy, the show introduces an unsolvable crisis—a centuries-long countdown to alien contact—and forces its characters (and us) to grapple with what doing the right thing even means.

Some respond with cold calculation. Some with idealism. Some with despair.

None of them are entirely wrong. And that’s what makes the story so unsettling.

In this essay, I reflect on three central characters—Ye Wenjie, Thomas Wade, and Jin Cheng—and how each one represents a different survival psychology:

The Strategist
The Witness
The Empath

It’s not just a sci-fi thought experiment. It’s a mirror.
Because we, too, are living through an age of unsolvable problems:
🌍 A climate crisis we struggle to emotionally register
🤖 The rapid rise of AI we can’t fully comprehend
🏛 The erosion of democratic norms many still deny

We’re not just being tested by events—we’re being tested by what kind of people we become under pressure.

What do we hold onto when the future is uncertain?
What values survive when the clean solutions run out?

I don’t pretend to know. But like Jin, I believe holding onto care—even when it’s not the most efficient or effective path—is still worth something.

If this resonates, I’d love to hear your thoughts or have you share.

https://mentalhealthiness.com/2025/07/28/facing-the-unsolvable-moral-choices-in-3-body-problem/

07/21/2025

We’re not thinking beings who happen to feel. We’re feeling beings who sometimes think—and not always well.

That idea might sound provocative. But it’s also backed by neuroscience, psychology, and an honest look at how most of us actually make decisions.

Too often, we imagine that human progress is a story of increasing rationality. Thinkers like Steven Pinker argue that reason and Enlightenment values are what have pulled civilization forward. It’s an appealing narrative—one that celebrates logic, science, and the power of clear thinking.

And yet, when we examine that story more closely, something feels off.

Because thinking does matter—but it’s not always as clean or noble as we imagine.

In my latest essay, “How to Think Better: The Difference Between Analytical and Critical Thinking,” I explore the crucial distinction between two kinds of thought:

🧠 Analytical thinking breaks things down. It’s about structure, pattern, logic, and problem-solving. It’s what we do when we analyze symptoms, debug code, or map a timeline.

🧭 Critical thinking questions assumptions. It asks whether something is fair, ethical, valid, or missing something important. It’s what we use to challenge systems, interrogate bias, or decide whether a “logical” plan is also a just one.

Both are essential. But too often, especially in public discourse, we reward sharp analysis without deeper critique. We celebrate tidy graphs, linear progress, and clever arguments—without asking whose story is being told and what’s missing.

And when our information is incomplete or emotionally skewed, even precise thinking can lead us astray.

That’s why I use Steven Pinker’s work as a case study. His arguments are cleanly constructed and data-rich—but they often rest on narrow assumptions about history, culture, and what counts as “progress.” His optimism isn’t wrong because it’s hopeful. It’s problematic because it’s selective.

Ultimately, the essay isn’t about criticism of public intellectuals. It’s about reclaiming what it really means to think well and why it's important to do so.

To be a good analytical thinker, we need humility, precision, and openness to revision.

To be a good critical thinker, we need courage—to surface discomfort, examine power, and question even the most elegant narratives.

Clear thinking helps us solve problems. Honest thinking helps us live with them.

And in a world flooded with misinformation, confident half-truths, and emotionally charged “logic,” both are more essential than ever.

Explore the critical difference between analytical and critical thinking, and learn how each informs our understanding and decision-making.

07/14/2025

Most of us don’t think about culture unless we’re outside of it.

But culture doesn’t just shape what we wear or celebrate. It shapes what we believe counts as normal. It shapes how we understand emotion, personality, morality—even mental health.

When I was a kid growing up bilingual and bicultural, I learned early that the same behavior could mean different things in different contexts. At school, it was good to speak up and be independent. At home, it was good to listen and contribute.

That wasn’t confusing. It was clarifying. It taught me that behavior only makes sense inside a frame—and that frame is culture.

As a psychiatrist, I see this everywhere. Culture shapes how symptoms get described, which emotions get validated, and whose distress gets pathologized. Most of the time, that influence is invisible. But it’s always there.

We often assume psychology is about universal truths. But much of the research behind it comes from WEIRD samples—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic populations. That’s about 10% of the world. And yet, we’ve treated those norms as the human default.

The consequences are real. From how we interpret anger in different racial contexts, to how we assess personality, to which syndromes get fully recognized in the DSM and which ones are relegated to the appendix—culture quietly determines the frame. And that frame decides what we see as legitimate.

In my latest essay, I argue that culture isn’t an overlay on top of psychology—it’s the infrastructure underneath it. From the rise of eating disorders in reductionist food cultures, to the different national responses to COVID, to the way emotional expression is rewarded or punished based on race, class, or geography—we are all shaped by an environment we rarely see.

This piece is part of my series on The Impact of Environment, but in some ways, it’s the core of the whole project. Because culture is the one environment we inherit before anything else. It defines our defaults—often before we even know we have them.

If you've ever felt misread, mislabeled, or misunderstood—not because something was wrong with you, but because the lens wasn’t made for you—this essay is for you.

Explore how culture influences mental health, shaping emotions, personality, and societal norms beyond WEIRD biases.

06/30/2025

Built for the Wild, Born in Captivity

What if the modern human condition isn’t defined by stress or speed—but by misalignment?

We’ve evolved for connection, rhythm, reciprocity. But we now live in environments designed for productivity, performance, and constant stimulation. Like zoo animals in carefully constructed enclosures, we’re fed, housed, and entertained—yet often restless, anxious, and emotionally adrift. Not because we’re weak, but because the world we’ve built no longer fits the nervous systems we inherited.

We didn’t get here overnight. In a new essay, I trace the major adaptations that brought us to this moment:

- Agriculture, which turned relationships into roles and introduced inequality.
- Industrialization, which severed us from natural rhythms and treated time like currency.
- Capitalism, which commodified labor, care, and even rest.
- Digital life, which overwhelms our social brains with constant stimuli and disembodied communication.

Each breakthrough solved problems—but also created new ones. We’ve survived. But are we thriving?

This isn’t a call to escape or romanticize the past. It’s a call to adapt with wisdom. To remember what kinds of environments allow us to feel fully human—and begin redesigning the ones we live in.

If you've ever felt like you're doing everything "right" but still feel off, disconnected, or inexplicably tired—this piece is for you.

We’ve adapted to modern life—but at what cost? Explore how comfort, capitalism, and digital life have reshaped our minds, bodies, and sense of meaning.

06/23/2025

🔍 How to “C” Clearly: 5 Habits for Thinking, Learning, and Living with Depth

In a world that often rewards quick takes and loud certainty, it’s easy to fall into the trap of acting like we already know everything.

But real clarity doesn’t come from having the right answer—it comes from being open.

I've been thinking a lot about how we learn, unlearn, and make sense of new experiences. Especially when those experiences surprise us, shake our assumptions, or challenge our sense of what’s true.

That’s where this framework came from.

“How to ‘C’ Clearly” is a reflection on five habits that help us stay grounded, thoughtful, and open to growth:

🌱 Complexity – Assume nuance, not simplicity. The world is rarely black-and-white.
🔍 Curiosity – Stay humble. “I don’t know” is where real learning begins.
🤯 Confusion – Surprise is your brain’s signal that something new is happening. Listen to it.
🤝 Consultation – Don’t go it alone. Ask for help from people who know more.
🧠 Consolidation – Make time to reflect, revise your maps, and integrate what you’ve learned.

When practiced together, these habits can help us think more clearly, grow more wisely, and live more authentically.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by information, unsure what to believe, or caught between complexity and clarity… this is for you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What helps you “C” clearly?

Discover five essential mental habits—complexity, curiosity, confusion, consultation, and consolidation—to think clearly, grow wisely, and keep learning deeply.

06/19/2025

I’ll be at the Ripple Effect 2025: Walk for Su***de Prevention this Saturday June 21 with colleagues, supporting the incredible work of Changing Tides. Come say hi at our booth!

I’ll be sharing more about my practice and blog at Mental Healthiness, where I write about emotions, how environment impacts our wellbeing, and what it means to be human in a complex world. If you’re curious about the deeper “why” behind mental health, stop by—I’d love to connect.

The Ripple Effect: Walk for Su***de Prevention will raise funds to support Changing Tides efforts in supporting mental health in the AAPI community and build bridges in su***de prevention.

06/16/2025

New Essay: “How Money Shapes Our Emotional Environment"

We talk about money all the time—but rarely about what it actually buys in a psychological sense.

Not just things, but breathing room.
Not just comfort, but recovery time.
Not just convenience, but permission to fail and try again.

This essay is the long-delayed continuation of my Impact of Environment series. Parts 1 and 2 explored how context shapes behavior—why willpower isn’t just a matter of character, and why personal choice is never fully separate from structural constraint.

Part 3 picks up that thread and goes deeper:
What does money do to a person’s environment? What does it shield us from? What does its absence expose us to?

More importantly—why do we believe that those with money are somehow more deserving of it?

We’re told rich people are just good with money.
That they’re harder working.
That they earned everything they have.
That they deserve it.

But what if they’re not navigating the system more wisely—just navigating a different system entirely?

This essay looks at four myths about money and merit—and then examines four systems that reinforce them:

A tax structure that protects ownership while taxing labor.

College admissions that reward legacy over merit.

Housing laws that preserve exclusion under the guise of neighborhood character.

A justice system that punishes poverty while excusing large-scale financial harm.

In each case, we aren’t just dealing with inequality of income. We’re dealing with inequality of environment—and with it, inequality of perception, judgment, and margin.

This is the first in a new arc within the series. Upcoming essays will explore how culture, religion, media, and schooling shape what we believe is normal, human, or moral.

If you’ve ever felt like money determines more than it should—or that we blame people for failing in systems designed to fail them—this piece is for you.

What money really buys: margin, security, and access. This essay exposes how wealth shapes environment, belief, and opportunity in unseen ways.

06/09/2025

🧠🤖 New Essay: Why AI 2027 Won’t Happen (At Least Not Like That)

The AI 2027 project outlines two stark futures: one where AGI is rushed and humanity is annihilated by a misaligned intelligence — and another where development slows to allow time for safety and alignment.

I don’t challenge the technical plausibility of either path. What I question is the speed and uniformity of human response. This essay explores why belief, power, confusion, and social inertia will play a much larger role than the scenarios assume — not just in preventing catastrophe, but in shaping how AGI is used, trusted, or resisted in the real world.



https://mentalhealthiness.com/2025/06/09/why-ai-2027-wont-happen-at-least-not-like-that/

06/02/2025

What if the love that saves you also breaks the world?

In The Last of Us Season 2, the most brutal acts aren’t driven by hatred—they’re driven by love. Joel’s love for Ellie. Ellie’s love for Joel. Abby’s love for her father. And that’s what makes the violence in this story so emotionally devastating: it’s not random, not monstrous. It’s human.

I’ve been sitting with this season—replaying scenes in my head—not the big spectacles, but the ones built around grief, loyalty, and moral ambiguity. This isn't just a show about the apocalypse. It's a meditation on what we do for “our people,” and how far we’ll go to make their memory mean something.

This essay explores three core ideas the show brings to life—ideas also supported by psychology and research:

Empathy, and how it’s easier to feel when we’ve lived something similar.

Violence, and how personal exposure (not media or games) shapes our behavior far more than people realize.

Belonging, and how loyalty to our in-group can justify almost anything—even actions we’d normally see as unforgivable.

What makes The Last of Us so brilliant isn’t just the storytelling. It’s the emotional realism. Everyone is someone’s villain. And everyone believes they’re doing the right thing. That tension isn’t just narratively compelling—it’s psychologically accurate.

This is a story where even a Pearl Jam lyric—“If I were to ever lose you”—can become both a love letter and a justification for vengeance. The line blurs between tenderness and rage, healing and harm.

Because in the end, The Last of Us doesn’t ask us to pick a side. It asks us to look in the mirror.

Explore how love and violence intertwine in Season 2 of The Last of Us, revealing the emotional complexity behind each character's choices.