Todd Essig

Resuming some version of normal life is incredibly appealing, especially for psychotherapy. Like I wrote about for the American Psychological Association (APA), what takes place on screens, while workable, is fundamentally different and more…

If you’ve tried a therapy app to deal with depression and it hasn’t worked, relax. It’s likely them, not you. Don’t be discouraged. Help and healing are possible. I hope you’ll continue with your efforts to build a better life — just maybe not with a…

Meghan Markle had seemingly won life’s lottery. A commoner like the rest of us swept off her feet by the dashing Prince Harry, she had apparently scored the ticket for happily ever after. The fairytale come true. Then reality hit. They’re stepping…

Sorry Bret, you’re not off the hook. You still owe an explanation for how you ended up uncritically citing a discredited racist article in your “The Secrets of Jewish Genius.” Sure, you and your editor deleted that citation the next day. But the fact…

Maybe you heard. There’s a war brewing. At stake is the future of psychotherapy. Will manuals, algorithms, and automatons prevail? Or will we be able to preserve the centrality of unique and responsive human relationships? The fight will determine…

People struggling with mental illness, from the mildest and most routine to the intractable and utterly devastating, are also burdened by the stereotypes and prejudices of stigmatization. The stigma of mental illness interferes with getting needed…

One aspect of President Trump’s militarized photo-op takeover of the Washington DC July 4th celebration has not received enough attention. Lots of stories have reported that Trump’s tanks are unusual, controversial, a waste of money, a threat to…

Trump-world cheers, claiming total victory: We are the champions! The rest of you are liars and losers! What’s deeply troubling is if you actually read the Barr Letter those responses just don’t fit what the letter actually states. Sure, this could…

We are failing. Collectively. Some more than others. When white nationalist terrorism struck New Zealand, after similar strikes in Norway, Pittsburgh and Charleston, it showed how we are failing to meet a central challenge posed by our…

If you’re thinking about meeting with a psychotherapist remotely on screen, there’s something you should know: it’s not the same as meeting in person. Both the processes and the outcomes are different. Yes, it can help. But remote treatment and local…

With more people getting treatment on screen from a far-away psychotherapist, and more therapists offering such care, finding ways to manage the significant differences between remote and local therapy makes good sense. After all, gains in…

Polarized again. E pluribus duo! What a week. Viral videos of MAGA attired high school boys surround a chanting drum-beating Native American elder. The nation splits in two. Some go all in on Nicholas Sandmann being a good kid trying to defuse a…

Is the government shutdown also kind of a #MeToo moment? Can thinking about it that way help us better understand what’s going on? It does seem to fit. Think about it. A narcissistic man with a history of sexual predation lashes out after being…

Randomized control trials (RCTs) are all the rage, at least among those with a vested interest in clinical research. They’re considered to be gold standard building blocks for empirically-based treatments (EBTs). Increasingly, insurance company…

When therapy and therapists appear in TV and movies it is not just entertainment. Those moving images can also help or harm efforts to undermine the stigma that still sticks to psychotherapy. Plus, they reveal culturally accepted attitudes that…

Thanksgiving is over. Turkey sandwiches happily gobbled up. The carcass is soup. Leftovers safely stored away. And you know what that means. We’re about to enter the high season for holiday eating: cookies and parties, feasts and chocolate, champagne…

I’m a shrink and the American epidemic of gun violence is my lane too. Don’t believe me? Suicide accounts for more than half of the more than 30,000 gun deaths a year. Yet I can’t do anything about an ex-cop’s guns when he starts to spiral into yet…

Leaders should be held responsible for the consequences of their actions, especially when something terrible happens: you break it; you buy it. That's clear, isn't it? But so far, for many reasons, only one of which I’ll talk about here, President…

Make no mistake, President Trump is responsible for the MAGABomber. Not directly like he told him to do it. But still fully responsible. I write that knowing that doing so increases the chances that the next Trumpian stirred-up by the president’s…

Who to believe? If she’s telling the truth then he was a hard-drinking frat-boy bro who sexually assaulted her and he has no place on the nation's highest court. If he’s telling the truth he’s a falsely accused white male denied due process by #MeToo…