Articles

Is Your Relationship Toxic?
How to Identify Unhealthy Relationships in Your Life
All relationships, whether platonic or romantic, have the potential of being toxic, and a toxic relationship may not start out as one but rather gradually develop into one over the course of time. Toxic relationships range from the extremes of domestic abuse to the friend or loved one that makes you feel bad about yourself or causes you to begin to second guess yourself.
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Making SMART Resolutions
Tips for Helping Plan Effective, Attainable Resolutions
The beginning of the New Year always brings about the desire to set goals in an attempt to better oneself, or one’s life. However, many resolution makers find themselves returning to their old habits by the First of February. The key to setting attainable goals depends on the attainability of such goals and how the goals are set. Click here to read more.

Your Child's Mental Health
Identifying Potential Issues and Navigating the Mental Health System
Today, mental health issues are more commonplace than ever. Identifying problems and taking the steps to get help can be difficult for anyone, but this is especially true for children. Identifying, understanding, and treating mental health issues in children can prove to be a challenging task for parents. With some research and awareness about how to navigate the mental health system parents should feel confident about getting their children the help they need.
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Managing the Holidays
Tips for Dealing with Expectations and Seasonal Stress
We’ve all seen those picture perfect portrayals of holiday gatherings everywhere from television shows and movies to advertisements and commercials. It’s no surprise that the media depictions of happy, stress-free holiday preparations and gatherings are unrealistic. Between the financial crisis, unemployment rates, and emotional stressors many families are anxious about this season’s plans.
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Dissecting Depression
Recognizing and Dealing with Depression
The weight of financial burdens combined with an increasingly tough economic state is enough to make anyone stressed. Mounting credit card debt, a failing housing market, a sharp decline in job security, and rising gas prices are just a few of the challenges that could attribute to stress and/or depression.
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Dying for a High
The “Choking Game” Epidemic
Adolescents have discovered a new way to get high for free. Nationwide, adolescents are ‘playing’ the “Choking Game” and using strangulation to achieve a high. While many youth consider the game to be a safe way to get high, increases in accidental deaths across the United States prove differently.
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IS WORKPLACE STRESS CONSUMING YOUR LIFE?
Tips for the Effective Management of Stress
Work and stress seem to go hand-in-hand. Contributing to workplace stress are extended work weeks, technological advances, and recent economic downturns. The physical, emotional, and psychological effects stress induces can negatively affect professional performance and personal relationships.
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Childhood Stress and Anxiety on the Rise
Tips for Helping Children Cope
Today, children and adolescents are required to manage increasing amounts of stress. Between pressures at school, hectic schedules full with various afterschool
commitments and coping with adult situations, children are commonly experiencing intense feelings of anxiety... Click here to read more.

Complex Trauma in Children and Adolescents
White Paper from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network
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Familial influences on the moral reasoning of adolescent first-time offenders
by Giunta, Stephen, Ph.D., University of Florida, 2002, 151 pages;
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Mediation or Litigation with Abusing or Neglectful Families: Emerging Roles for Mental Health Counselors
by Stephen Giunta, PhD.
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News

Endowment helps Directions for Mental Health raise its profile
by Margie Manning Senior staff writer
Tampa Bay Business Journal, Friday, July 18, 2008
CLEARWATER -- Directions for Mental Health Inc. has set a new financial direction, with the establishment of an endowment at the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay. The endowment will help the nonprofit mental health center raise its profile among potential donors, said Thomas Riggs, Directions' president and CEO.
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Executive Profile:
R. Thomas Riggs: Remembers His Blessings
Tampa Bay Business Journal, November 7, 2007
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