PsychWorld

If you’re like most Americans, you probably go through the daily routine of working from 8 to 5 (or longer) every day at a job you don’t love just so you can go home and lay down on the couch to watch some TV. Although you know that this is not the life you want, you may feel stuck. After all, if you quit your current job in this bad economy, how are you going to afford all the things you have and want? If you’re feeling this way (and are not mentally ill), instead of going to a therapist, consider a Life Coach!

Read the rest of this post to learn more about Life Coaching from renowned International Life Coach Natalie Ekberg.

The secret to happiness is experiencing as much as you can throughout your life according to numerous psychology studies and stories of people who have experienced the world. In one experiment, for example, Cornell University researchers showed that buying an experience makes consumers much happier than buying things. It is therefore really exciting to have a new revolutionary tool, Bucketlist.org by Scot Hacker, where you can track and share your exciting experiences as well as find new ones!

When people in India are facing a mental illness, they turn to Gods instead of mental health professionals according to a great article by NPR. Generations of this tradition has resulted in a highly stigmatized view of mental health. It is estimated that India has only 1 psychiatrist for every 400,000 people, but these few psychiatrists are not nearly as busy as the faith healers and temple doctors.

An Indian friend once told me that therapy is so stigmatized in India, that her friend was scared to approach her parents to ask for professional help even though the friend’s mother was a school social worker! I was therefore really excited to interview Shweta Nagpurkar, a clinical psychologist from India who started MindMirror to raise awareness about mental health among Indian people.

Kenneth D. Hartline, founder of Hartline Enterprises LLC, played all sports in high school and was especially good at golf. He was on the high school varsity golf team and was great in practice. But when it came to matches, Kenneth always freaked out and did not do as well as he knew he could without the audience of “8 parents”. That made him wonder about the psychology of athletes. For example, how could Tiger Woods stay so calm with a massive audience and cameras in his face?

“It’s not what technology you have, it’s how you use it,” says University of Iowa Computer Science Professor Juan Pablo Hourcade. It has long been known that autistic children love computers, yet only a few software developers have figured out how to help these children use computers in a way that makes them more social instead of isolating them further (and they charge a high price for it!). That is why Professor Hourcade and two of his students, Natasha Bullock-Rest and Thomas Hansen, decided to apply their knowledge of multi-touch displays with psychology to create Open Autism Software.

I Move You co-founders Andrey Petrov and Jen McCabe cleverly combined the power of social networking with basic psychological motivational principles to help encourage individuals to “Get up and move”. Visitors to their website, imoveyou.com, are immediately prompted to challenge their friend to an action. For example, one user promises to “work out every day” if her friend “will take a walk three times a week”. You can conveniently choose a friend to challenge via your facebook, twitter, or email account.

As state budgets become tighter, additional cuts to mental health community services are becoming more imminent. Although these cuts will be devastating to the poor individuals in the city, they will impact those living in rural areas even more. Some rural areas have only one mental health provider, and if they are forced to close doors, the mentally ill will be left without alternatives. That is where today’s startup comes in…

So your life isn’t going as well as you’d like and you could really use some help…but therapy is either too expensive, or too time-consuming, or too stigmatized, or all of the above, etc. If you are embarrassed to go to a therapist, or perhaps can’t afford to in this down economy, you can now get free and affordable self-help through Real Psych Solutions. Real Psych Solutions was started by Dr. Arlene Unger and her husband, Stefan Unger, Ph.D., for people just like you.

Live Happy iPhone Application is a positive psychology application that may be used in addition to therapy to treat depression. Live Happy was developed with the help of University of California-Riverside Professor Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness, which has very high reader reviews on Amazon.com.  Live Happy combines Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky’s happiness research and key points from her book to boost your happiness.

The best way to fight depression is to go out and do activities, especially with friends, instead of sitting on the couch and thinking about how depressing your life is. Live Happy is a great application because it encourages users to focus on the positive aspects of their lives and to pursue their goals. The catch? You have to remember to use it.

Since I moved to San Francisco a little over a month ago, I’ve met several people who are starting interesting psychology-related businesses. From helping you achieve your goals to providing you with self help resources to bringing you good online therapy, it’s out there. In the upcoming months, I will be covering these cool Psychology StartUps and the people behind them. If you have a Psychology StartUp or know anyone who you think should be included, please email me at natasha@psychblog.com.