Psychology Chat ⁽⁸⁵⁾

In early November 2021, when I was back in my hometown visiting my mother-in-law, she told me that just the day before I arrived, a 16-year-old at a school near their village had died by suicide, reportedly because his phone had been confiscated by a…

The weather in Beijing has turned cold, not great for outdoor exercise. Even so, I still insist on cycling about 20 kilometers at noon every day, taking an hour and a half. My route is basically fixed: from Zizhu Bridge to Xiangshan (Fragrant Hills), then…

For most cancer patients, the first three years are the hardest. After being diagnosed with cancer, a heavy stone presses on the heart. Many patients become melancholy because of this; at the slightest change in test results, they feel as if the sky has fallen.

On April 4, 2021, during the Qingming Festival, Dr. Wang Zhuorong, a 27-year-old physician at Tsinghua University Affiliated Changgung Hospital, died of a sudden cerebral accident. Wang was an eight-year-program MD graduate of Peking University Health Science Center who had just started work and was…

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) is an indole derivative, abbreviated 5-HT, with the chemical formula C10H12N2O, and is converted from tryptophan. It was first discovered in blood serum, hence the name serum tonin. Serotonin is widely present in mammalian tissues and is highly concentrated in the cerebral cortex…

In my spare time over the past few days, I finally finished reading Years Gone Like Water, the oral autobiography of the centenarian Zhou Youguang. A hundred-year-old man calmly recounts events he lived through: the series of historical upheavals from the late Qing Dynasty through…

Depression is becoming more common and younger in onset; many of my readers, or their family members, are depressed. They are anxious, believing the disease cannot be cured—though this very belief is itself typical depressive thinking, and depressed people are very pessimistic. In fact, this…

On Friday, March 26, a woman diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma more than three years ago came to see me. She is a nurse from Dalian, twelve years older than I, who has spent her whole career in nursing. I have treated her for three years; recently…

When Yuan Shikai declared himself emperor, his son Yuan Kewen wrote a poem, "Ganyu" (Reflections), mocking his father for being bewitched. The most widely quoted line is: "Pity the heights where storms gather; do not climb to the topmost jade tower." It cleverly reworks Su…

At noon today, after finishing work, I went to my small vegetable plot to water the plants and picked some vegetables on the way back. Riding my bicycle home, I suddenly and for no reason fell into a deeply negative state. I felt life was…