Psychology Around the Net: May 5, 2018

Happy Saturday, Psych Central readers!

May is Mental Health Month here in the United States. Does anyone have any plans for boosting awareness? If not, Mental Health America has a toolkit you can download for conducting awareness activities.

Moving on, this week’s Psychology Around the Net takes a look at the relationship between smartphone addiction and commitment-phobia, the stigma surrounding men and mental illness, why children who grow up in cities might be more susceptible to mental illness, and more.

Smartphone Addiction is Indirectly Linked to Commitment-Phobia According to New Psychology Research: New research suggests people who are “avoidant” in relationships might have a higher risk of becoming addicted to smartphones. Eunyoung Koh, the study’s corresponding author, says: “As the use of smartphones has surged, concerns about smartphone overuse and addiction have been increasing. We wondered whether insecure attachment would affect smartphone addiction. Especially, we paid attention to avoidant attachment, which had a relatively low interest compared to anxious attachment.”

Motivations of Stimulant Misuse in Adults in the United States: What are the most common motivations for misusing stimulants? Feeling alert? Weight loss? Help studying?

Going Mental: How MLB Players Have Embraced Psychology to Manage High Stress: The next time you see your favorite baseball player wall out of the dugout and take a minute to look at his bat or adjust his glove, know that he might be making sure more than just his equipment is ready for the game.

The Problem with Asperger’s: According to Edith Sheffer, historian and author of Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna, the problem isn’t with the condition itself (although the classifications are problematic and “autism spectrum disorder remains a vexing, heterogeneous diagnosis”); it’s with the man after whom it was named (Hans Asperger) and–even more importantly–his Nazi-influenced research.

Not Talking About Mental Health Is Literally Killing Men: Men’s Health editor Sean Evans is fed up with the stigma that surrounds men who talk about mental health struggles. “This macho attitude of stuffing your feelings down, or ignoring them, is antiquated and downright dangerous.”

City Upbringing, Without Pets, Boosts Vulnerability to Mental Illness: According to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) children who grow up in rural environments, exposed to animals and dust, build more stress-resilient immune systems and could have a lower risk of developing mental illnesses than their pet-free city-dwelling counterparts.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/psychology-around-the-net-may-5-2018/