The QMG Behavioral Health Blog with Nikki Shields

July 27, 2018

Hel­lo! This is the first post of the QMG Behav­ioral Health Blog, an online col­umn about all things behav­ioral health. Here you will find up-to-date con­tent about a wide vari­ety of men­tal health top­ics in the form of arti­cles, lists, book rec­om­men­da­tions, the occa­sion­al Shake­speare­an son­net, inter­views, and more. You’ll be able to read in-depth about behav­ioral health ser­vices and providers in the area and learn ther­a­pist-approved tips for improv­ing your emo­tion­al health.

Some top­ics you can expect to see here include:

  • Stress man­age­ment
  • How to be the per­fect par­ent (just kid­ding, that’s not a thing)
  • Child devel­op­ment
  • Issues impact­ing teens
  • Rela­tion­ships
  • Aging
  • Men­tal health dis­or­ders and symptoms
  • Grief
  • Par­ent­ing (because this is a thing, a thing that is hard)
  • Emo­tion­al Intelligence
  • Phase of life challenges
  • Types of therapy
  • Care­giv­er support
  • Sea­son­al­ly spe­cif­ic topics
  • Local events and services

I believe our job as humans is to use the knowl­edge, resources, and skills that we have avail­able to face life’s chal­lenges and be our best selves. I also believe it’s our job to return our shop­ping carts to the cart cor­ral but we’ll get to that lat­er. My hope with this blog is to pro­vide accu­rate and help­ful infor­ma­tion that makes nav­i­gat­ing some of these obsta­cles just a lit­tle bit eas­i­er. Each post will be cre­at­ed with that goal in mind.

I am a licensed ther­a­pist at the QMG Behav­ioral Health depart­ment with fif­teen years of expe­ri­ence pro­vid­ing ther­a­py ser­vices to all age groups for a vari­ety of life strug­gles. Out­side of work, I have a hus­band that finds my trou­bling obses­sion with dinosaurs charm­ing and some­times even puts his laun­dry INSIDE the ham­per. I also have two daugh­ters who have taught me a lot (most­ly that I don’t know any­thing about any­thing), a cou­ple of guinea pigs, and a fish named Kevin that has been far more trou­ble than I could ever have imag­ined. But that’s a sto­ry for anoth­er day.

When I’m not work­ing, remind­ing kids to use their inside voice, or fold­ing all the laun­dry, I write. I write progress notes, checks, to-do lists, emails, jour­nals, pas­sive-aggres­sive post-it notes to my hus­band, and humor essays when the inspi­ra­tion hits. I’ve been look­ing for a way to com­bine my pas­sion for writ­ing with my day job. This blog is the result of my search.

I hope you’ll check back here each week to see what we have to offer. While we can’t address spe­cif­ic ques­tions or offer indi­vid­u­al­ized advice, we’d love to hear top­ics you’d like to see fea­tured. Feel free to share and com­ment on our posts and thanks for reading.

Until next week,

Nik­ki

*The con­tent in this blog should nev­er be con­sid­ered an alter­na­tive to qual­i­ty med­ical or men­tal health care and is intend­ed to be a source of infor­ma­tion only.