by Richard Amaral | Jul 18, 2013 | Addiction Psychology, All Entries
A few days ago, Cory Monteith, a rising star in television, died from the deadly combination of alcohol and heroin. Monteith is not the first person to die from an addiction to alcohol or drugs, and sadly, he won’t be the last. In this post, I’ll be talking about why...
by Richard Amaral | Jul 4, 2013 | All Entries, Anger and Aggression
We’ve all copied something. We’ve all tried to imitate someone or something. But in some circumstances, people will copy or imitate violent acts. A couple of years ago, just after the Boston Marathon bombing, a husband and wife were arrested for attempting...
by Richard Amaral | Jun 27, 2013 | All Entries, Trauma
The word ‘resilience’ has been on my mind these last few days. In science, resilience is the ability of an object to spring back to shape; elasticity. In psychology, resilience is the ability to adapt well in the face of adversity, to overcome personal setbacks. I’ve...
by Richard Amaral | Jun 19, 2013 | All Entries, Relationships
For the last couple of months, I’ve been working with a lot of individual clients on the issue of marital conflict. Although I don’t typically provide marital counseling, I do work with people individually on their relationships as well as with the family unit. To...
by Richard Amaral | Jun 12, 2013 | Addiction Psychology, All Entries, Depression, Mental Health
When I was a young kid, my teachers would ask, “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?” I hated that question because I never really understood what it meant. Once I started working in the field of addictions and mental health, though, the logic behind the question...
by Richard Amaral | May 29, 2013 | All Entries, Social Psychology Theories
More and more people are using Twitter as a source for news information, but how do we know which feeds are legitimate and credible? Similar issues have been studied in the field of psychology. For example, how does a person assess credibility in someone’s message?...
