Behavioral & Mental Health

Last week, I tried to con­vince you that like cake, you need stress in your life. But also like cake, if you don’t have enough or if you have too much, it’s a prob­lem. So how do we find and keep that sweet spot of just enough stress? Spoil­er Alert: There is no cake involved.

A quick Google search for the ​“best stress man­age­ment tech­niques” will tell you that eat­ing right, exer­cis­ing, get­ting enough sleep, med­i­tat­ing, and liv­ing in the moment are some of the best ways to deal with stress. It’s true; those are def­i­nite­ly very effec­tive ways to keep your stress lev­el low.

You know that feel­ing when you’re all caught up at work, the house is clean, the laun­dry is done, your eye­brows are per­fect­ly shaped, the bills are paid, the lawn is mowed, no one is whin­ing, the sun is shin­ing, and all is right with the world?

Moth­er­hood comes with a lot of joy, but it can also bring unique chal­lenges and strug­gles. As moms, it’s nat­ur­al to pri­or­i­tize the needs of our chil­dren, and it’s equal­ly impor­tant to take care of our­selves. Accord­ing to Post­par­tum Sup­port Inter­na­tion­al, one out of five women are affect­ed by mater­nal men­tal health dis­or­ders includ­ing post­par­tum depres­sion, anx­i­ety, OCD, bipo­lar, PTSD, and psychosis.

Quin­cy Med­ical Group (QMG) will join a nation­wide project and host a com­mu­ni­ty game event at First Bap­tist Church, 739 N. 8^th St. in Quin­cy on Wednes­day, July 9 at 5:30 pm to engage com­mu­ni­ties in impor­tant con­ver­sa­tions about med­ical deci­sion mak­ing. The event, fea­tur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion game Hel­lo, will pro­vide infor­ma­tion about how to pre­pare for future deci­sions about seri­ous and crit­i­cal health issues.