Resource Category: Mental Wellness

Learning How to See Invisible Illness

By Rabbi Sandra Cohen: I can’t recall when I first started feeling depressed or when the waves of self-loathing began. But by the time I was a teen, my inner life was a mess. The more competent I seemed on the outside, the more I was hurting inside. Low self-esteem gave way to clinical depression, anxiety and on-going, intense suicidal ideation. How, I wondered, couldn’t people see it?  
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Making An Emotions “Chavruta”

Psychotherapy, or “talk therapy,” is a primary treatment method for anxiety (National Institute of Mental Health). It involves discussing one’s worries in a directed manner with an expert to relieve anxiety. While “talk therapy” is practiced currently, Jewish tradition has long recommended a similar approach to alleviate mental distress.
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Addiction: Recovery and T’Shuva

The beginning of the Jewish year is a time of teshuvah, or "returning." For some, this is a return to God, but it can also be a return to healthier versions of ourselves in the coming year. This concept is very close, if not identical, to recovery, which makes the High Holy Days the perfect time to educate ourselves and our communities on how they can help those in recovery have the best chance of success.
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A Story of Teenage Death by Suicide – Mental Health Awareness Month ’22

As Mental Health Awareness Month draws to a close, I think about my friends’ son who died by suicide a few weeks ago. He was 16. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, and my heart aches for my friends. This most awful of tragedies continuously haunts me. It’s impossible to imagine that someone who is 16—who has his whole life in front of him—could be in so much pain that he chooses to make such an irreversible decision...
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Intergenerational Trauma

Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is an important and powerful day. It serves as a reminder of what we have lost and what we must never allow to happen again. But it should also serve as a reminder of those who are still affected by the traumas of the Holocaust like those suffering from intergenerational trauma...
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Prayer and Mental Wellness

Prayer is an essential aspect of religious experience. But while hundreds of thousands of people around the world practice daily prayer, they don’t always fully appreciate the ways prayer, at least Jewish prayer, can actually help to nurture our mental health and wellness with its proscribed routines and ways of thinking that can act as self-care.
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Mental Health and Climate Change

Given the reality of climate change and its accompanying consequences on our collective mental health, we need to start thinking about how we can make sure our mental health is stable as we try to figure out how to save the world at large.
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