LifeStance Insights
Our team of expert clinicians give their perspectives across a range of subjects, touching on current topics, family and loved one issues, mental health struggles and the comprehensive services that can help you live a better life.
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My 4 Favorite Aromatherapy Products to Help Boost Your Mood Naturally
There's something almost primal about the way certain scents can affect us. Just-squeezed orange juice, your favorite shampoo, summer rain, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, a toasty campfire, your grandmother's perfume… One deep inhale is enough to evoke a certain feeling, a moment of mindfulness, a specific memory, or a somatic response – a slight smile, a sudden drop in your shoulders.
That's why I love using scents as a self-care tool to boost my mood and promote relaxation, also known as aromatherapy. Plus, this underrated form of self-care is science-backed, too.
Here are a few of my favorite aromatherapy products that I incorporate throughout my day to take advantage of the power of smell.
What the Research Says About Aromatherapy and Mood
So how does aromatherapy work, and does it actually change how you feel? While the connection between smell and how we feel is pretty intuitive, there's also some interesting s...
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Women
4 Things I Did to Support My Mental Health Postpartum
When I had my son two and a half years ago, I dealt with postpartum depression (PPD) and anxiety. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. The kind of hard that’s difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t been in the thick of it. So when I found out I was pregnant with my second, I knew something had to be different. Not just a little different. Intentionally, structurally different.
And honestly? It has been. I’m in a completely different headspace this time around. I’m able to be more present, to actually soak in those early moments, without that heavy cloud of PPD crushing me with overwhelm. I’m not just white-knuckling my way through the newborn season. I’m genuinely enjoying it.
If you’re expecting or newly postpartum, I want to share what made the biggest difference for me. Not as a prescription, but as a starting point. Because PPD is far more common than we talk about. According to the CDC, 1 in 8 women in the U.S. experience postpartum depression symptoms after giving birth, and rates have doubled between 2010 and 2021. This decline in maternal mental health is something more new moms are quietly carrying than you might think.
Here’s what actually helped me....
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4 Things I Did to Support My Mental Health Postpartum
When I had my son two and a half years ago, I dealt with postpartum depression (PPD) and anxiety. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. The kind of hard that’s difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t been in the thick of it. So when I found out I was pregnant with my second, I knew something had to be different. Not just a little different. Intentionally, structurally different.
And honestly? It has been. I’m in a completely different headspace this time around. I’m able to be more present, to actually soak in those early moments, without that heavy cloud of PPD crushing me with overwhelm. I’m not just white-knuckling my way through the newborn season. I’m genuinely enjoying it.
If you’re expecting or newly postpartum, I want to share what made the biggest difference for me. Not as a prescription, but as a starting point. Because PPD is far more common than we talk about. According to the CDC, 1 in 8 women in the U.S. experience postpartum depression symptoms after giving birth, and rates have doubled between 2010 and 2021. This decline in maternal mental health is something more new moms are quietly carrying than you might think.
Here’s what actually helped me....
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ADHD
How to Build Consistency With ADHD: The Routine That Changed My Life
If you've ever wondered how to build consistency with ADHD, I've been there too. Consistency has always been an issue for me, in many facets of life. Ever since I can remember, I've gone through phase after phase and hyperfixation after hyperfixation – largely thanks to my ADHD brain. Sometimes I decide I want to pick up running, other times I want to learn Spanish. But I always go zero to 100 and then drop it quickly. Because of this, having structure in my daily life has always been a struggle. That is, until I established a routine.
Or, rather, what I like to call my “rituals.” From waking up by 6am for a workout to sticking with regular meal times, this kind of structure really improved so many things for me.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, building a routine literally changed my life. It helped me get a better hold on my ADHD focus issues and impulsivity, helped me feel more productive, and has pushed me so much further toward many of my big goals in life. Over the years, I feel like sticking to a routine has also helped me to better myself as a person. If you're curious to learn how I accomplished this, I have a few tips you can try....
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How to Build Consistency With ADHD: The Routine That Changed My Life
If you've ever wondered how to build consistency with ADHD, I've been there too. Consistency has always been an issue for me, in many facets of life. Ever since I can remember, I've gone through phase after phase and hyperfixation after hyperfixation – largely thanks to my ADHD brain. Sometimes I decide I want to pick up running, other times I want to learn Spanish. But I always go zero to 100 and then drop it quickly. Because of this, having structure in my daily life has always been a struggle. That is, until I established a routine.
Or, rather, what I like to call my “rituals.” From waking up by 6am for a workout to sticking with regular meal times, this kind of structure really improved so many things for me.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, building a routine literally changed my life. It helped me get a better hold on my ADHD focus issues and impulsivity, helped me feel more productive, and has pushed me so much further toward many of my big goals in life. Over the years, I feel like sticking to a routine has also helped me to better myself as a person. If you're curious to learn how I accomplished this, I have a few tips you can try....
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Anxiety
How Ozempic Affects Anxiety and Depression: A Psychiatric Clinician Explains
About 12% of U.S. adults have taken Ozempic or another GLP-1 medication to manage diabetes or lose weight. As use has climbed, a quieter question keeps surfacing in psychiatric appointments: what are these drugs doing to mood? The growing body of evidence suggests that GLP-1 medications, while prescribed primarily for weight loss, may also support mental health when used as prescribed by a qualified clinician.
How Ozempic Affects Anxiety
Ozempic is a brand name for semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, a type of medication that mimics a gut hormone to help regulate blood sugar and appetite. It became a household name as one of the first drugs in this class to take off, so its name is often used as shorthand for the whole category, which also includes Wegovy (the same active ingredient, for weight loss) and closely related medications like tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound). The focus here is Ozempic, but the questions a...
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How Ozempic Affects Anxiety and Depression: A Psychiatric Clinician Explains
About 12% of U.S. adults have taken Ozempic or another GLP-1 medication to manage diabetes or lose weight. As use has climbed, a quieter question keeps surfacing in psychiatric appointments: what are these drugs doing to mood? The growing body of evidence suggests that GLP-1 medications, while prescribed primarily for weight loss, may also support mental health when used as prescribed by a qualified clinician.
How Ozempic Affects Anxiety
Ozempic is a brand name for semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, a type of medication that mimics a gut hormone to help regulate blood sugar and appetite. It became a household name as one of the first drugs in this class to take off, so its name is often used as shorthand for the whole category, which also includes Wegovy (the same active ingredient, for weight loss) and closely related medications like tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound). The focus here is Ozempic, but the questions a...
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Women
Why Postpartum Psychosis Is So Often Misdiagnosed, Explained by a Psychiatrist
A few weeks after a healthy delivery, a young mother became convinced her husband was having an affair. There was no affair. But her parents believed her. Her sister believed her. So did her therapist and, later, her lawyer. Everyone believed her, because nothing about her looked like an illness. Only when the fear hardened into something stranger, and then frightening, did anyone suspect the truth: she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis – one of the rarest and most dangerous conditions in psychiatry, and one that most clinicians will never see in an entire career.
That gap between how devastating the illness is and how seldom it is recognized sits at the center of every high-profile case that reaches a courtroom. The Massachusetts prosecution of Lindsay Clancy has renewed a national conversation about how a new mother can allegedly seek help repeatedly and still slip through the cracks. Two decades earlier, the trial of Andrea Yates in Texas raised the same painful question. The purpose here is not to weigh guilt or innocence – those questions belong to the courts – but to explain a clinical reality: postpartum psychosis is easy to miss, and understanding why is the first step toward catching it in time.
While postpartum psychosis symptoms and warning signs are very important, this article takes on a ha...
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Why Postpartum Psychosis Is So Often Misdiagnosed, Explained by a Psychiatrist
A few weeks after a healthy delivery, a young mother became convinced her husband was having an affair. There was no affair. But her parents believed her. Her sister believed her. So did her therapist and, later, her lawyer. Everyone believed her, because nothing about her looked like an illness. Only when the fear hardened into something stranger, and then frightening, did anyone suspect the truth: she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis – one of the rarest and most dangerous conditions in psychiatry, and one that most clinicians will never see in an entire career.
That gap between how devastating the illness is and how seldom it is recognized sits at the center of every high-profile case that reaches a courtroom. The Massachusetts prosecution of Lindsay Clancy has renewed a national conversation about how a new mother can allegedly seek help repeatedly and still slip through the cracks. Two decades earlier, the trial of Andrea Yates in Texas raised the same painful question. The purpose here is not to weigh guilt or innocence – those questions belong to the courts – but to explain a clinical reality: postpartum psychosis is easy to miss, and understanding why is the first step toward catching it in time.
While postpartum psychosis symptoms and warning signs are very important, this article takes on a ha...
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Psychiatry
Safety Plan for Suicide Ideations: Tips from Experts
Suicide Safety Plan: What It Is, Who Needs It, and Expert Insights
Suicide, which remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States, is a crisis that touches millions of lives each year. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2024 alone, 48,824 people—nearly twice the capacity of Madison Square Garden—died by suicide. In the same year, 14.3 million adults seriously considered suicide, 4.6 million made a plan to carry out suicide, and 2.2 million attempted to end their lives. Despite accounting for 50% of the population, men account for nearly 80% of suicides. The elderly, especially those aged 80 and older, have the highest suicide rates.
Amid these statistics, suicide prevention efforts have proven to be effective, with significant breakthroughs emerging in recent years. In 2022, a major step was taken towards suicide prevention when the national suicide helpline phone number was shortened to 988. This made a significant impact, but more can be done in suicide prevention by emphasizing the importance of a suicide safety plan.
We asked three LifeStance mental health care experts Jillian Bace, LCSW, Dr. Melissa Cobbs, PhD, LCMHCS, LCAS, CCS, and Corinne Melling, LMFT to explain the...
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Safety Plan for Suicide Ideations: Tips from Experts
Suicide Safety Plan: What It Is, Who Needs It, and Expert Insights
Suicide, which remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States, is a crisis that touches millions of lives each year. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2024 alone, 48,824 people—nearly twice the capacity of Madison Square Garden—died by suicide. In the same year, 14.3 million adults seriously considered suicide, 4.6 million made a plan to carry out suicide, and 2.2 million attempted to end their lives. Despite accounting for 50% of the population, men account for nearly 80% of suicides. The elderly, especially those aged 80 and older, have the highest suicide rates.
Amid these statistics, suicide prevention efforts have proven to be effective, with significant breakthroughs emerging in recent years. In 2022, a major step was taken towards suicide prevention when the national suicide helpline phone number was shortened to 988. This made a significant impact, but more can be done in suicide prevention by emphasizing the importance of a suicide safety plan.
We asked three LifeStance mental health care experts Jillian Bace, LCSW, Dr. Melissa Cobbs, PhD, LCMHCS, LCAS, CCS, and Corinne Melling, LMFT to explain the...
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Adolescents
How to Reduce Screen Time for Kids: Tools and Apps a Therapist Recommends in 2026
Children are spending more time on screens than any previous generation, and therapists across the country are seeing the effects in their offices: disrupted sleep, shorter attention spans, rising anxiety, and kids who struggle to be present in face-to-face relationships.
Reducing screen time is a common recommendation therapists make to parents, not because technology is inherently harmful, but because the dose matters and most children are well past it. The good news is that technology itself can offer part of the solution. Working alongside families, therapists often point parents toward screen time management tools that help make limits easier to set, enforce, and sustain without turning every evening into a negotiation.
What follows is a therapist-informed guide to the tools worth considering, including an honest look at how determined kids try to get around them.
Why Reduce Screen Time for Kids
For children and ado...
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How to Reduce Screen Time for Kids: Tools and Apps a Therapist Recommends in 2026
Children are spending more time on screens than any previous generation, and therapists across the country are seeing the effects in their offices: disrupted sleep, shorter attention spans, rising anxiety, and kids who struggle to be present in face-to-face relationships.
Reducing screen time is a common recommendation therapists make to parents, not because technology is inherently harmful, but because the dose matters and most children are well past it. The good news is that technology itself can offer part of the solution. Working alongside families, therapists often point parents toward screen time management tools that help make limits easier to set, enforce, and sustain without turning every evening into a negotiation.
What follows is a therapist-informed guide to the tools worth considering, including an honest look at how determined kids try to get around them.
Why Reduce Screen Time for Kids
For children and ado...
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Trends and Predictions
How Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” Reminds Us Why Hope Matters
Hope is more than just a feeling. It serves as a psychological anchor, provides a way to cope, and acts as a force that influences how we move through difficult chapters. Not long before her passing, Dolly Parton rereleased her beloved classic “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” in 2026, describing it as a song she originally wrote when she was “searching for hope.” A message, she says, “still feels just as true” 50 years later.
In many ways, Dolly’s message resonates with the core of positive psychology: hope is a tool that helps us believe in possibilities beyond the present moment. Whether we’re rebuilding after loss, navigating uncertainty, or simply trying to make sense of the world, hope and optimism may fundamentally shift the emotional landscape of our lives.
Why Hope Is Psychologically Powerful
When Dolly wrote “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” in 1976, she was emerging from a painful professional rupture and needed re...
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How Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” Reminds Us Why Hope Matters
Hope is more than just a feeling. It serves as a psychological anchor, provides a way to cope, and acts as a force that influences how we move through difficult chapters. Not long before her passing, Dolly Parton rereleased her beloved classic “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” in 2026, describing it as a song she originally wrote when she was “searching for hope.” A message, she says, “still feels just as true” 50 years later.
In many ways, Dolly’s message resonates with the core of positive psychology: hope is a tool that helps us believe in possibilities beyond the present moment. Whether we’re rebuilding after loss, navigating uncertainty, or simply trying to make sense of the world, hope and optimism may fundamentally shift the emotional landscape of our lives.
Why Hope Is Psychologically Powerful
When Dolly wrote “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” in 1976, she was emerging from a painful professional rupture and needed re...
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