Research and Editorials

Screentime is the wrong number to watch: compulsive social media use, ADHD symptoms, and what helps. Dr Rick Smith, Hong Kong psychologist.

Stuck in a ritual or lost in time? How obsessional slowness in OCD differs from ADHD time blindness, by Hong Kong psychologist Dr Rick Smith.

Body dysmorphia is not poor body image, it is a treatable mental health condition that affects men and women. Dr Rick Smith, Hong Kong clinical psychologist.

Whether parents stay together or separate matters less to a child's mental health than how conflict is handled. Dr Rick Smith, Hong Kong clinical psychologist.

Online or in-person therapy in Hong Kong? A clinical psychologist explains the outcomes evidence, when each format works best, and what happens when expat families leave.

Perfectionism, ADHD, and OCD are not superpowers. Each looks productive but is driven by avoidance of internal experience, and the rebrand hides the cost.

Considering medication for your teenager's ADHD? A Hong Kong clinical psychologist who doesn't prescribe explains how to think about the decision honestly.

Most adults with ADHD need both coaching and therapy: coaching builds systems, therapy addresses the shame and perfectionism that keep systems from sticking.

ERP is the evidence-based treatment for OCD; talk therapy that explores intrusive thoughts often makes OCD worse by treating the thoughts as meaningful.

SPACE works as well as individual therapy for childhood anxiety, and is the right choice when the child refuses therapy or home accommodations are heavy.

Psychologist or counsellor in Hong Kong: counsellors are excellent at support, psychologists are trained in clinical change work. Choose based on what you need.

Three questions improve parenting more than any system: what does your child get unconditionally, what do they earn, and exactly how do they earn it.

After an ADHD diagnosis, six findings matter: ADHD is fluid, medication is partial, environment shapes symptoms, and home matters as much as clinic.

School refusal is anxiety telling your child avoidance equals safety. A structured graded return works better than forcing or waiting for readiness.

Most people do not have a time problem. They have a priorities problem, and that is good news because priorities are far easier to fix than time itself.

AI cheating destroys what school is actually for: building capacity to do difficult things. Students get the grade and lose the only thing that mattered.

Adult ADHD affects roughly three to six percent of adults worldwide. Many adults go undiagnosed, especially women whose anxiety gets diagnosed first instead.

High-performing students do not study harder than their peers. They manage energy like athletes do, with cycles of deliberate effort and real recovery.

Screen time is not the real problem; the function the screen is serving is. Use driven by escape causes harm; use driven by enjoyment usually does not.

Exposure and response prevention is the gold standard for OCD. SPACE helps when children refuse therapy. Other tools are emerging but still experimental.

You build motivation by noticing what did not happen because attention is reinforcement, and the missed argument or skipped scroll is where real progress lives.You build motivation by noticing what did not happen because attention is reinforcement, and the missed argument or skipped scroll is where real progress lives.

Nagging teens fails because it teaches them that responsibility belongs to the parent. Teens only develop self-starting when parents stop carrying the prompts.

What you pay for in high-quality therapy is not the hour in the room. It is years of training, case formulation skill, and a relationship built for you.

Your phone use is a problem when it pulls you away from what matters to you, not when it crosses an hour threshold. Direction matters more than duration.

Professionals stay stuck in high stress because stress signals meaning and belonging. Reducing it can feel like reducing identity, not just workload size.

ADHD in women and girls is mostly inward: inattention rather than disruption, internal restlessness rather than hyperactivity, and years of being treated for anxiety first.

Telling yourself others have it worse does not shrink your stress, it prolongs it. The thought functions as avoidance and adds guilt without resolving the underlying problem.

Helping a teen quit vaping without a power struggle starts with curiosity, not confrontation. Lectures shut teens down; understanding the nicotine loop opens them up.

Perfectionism causes procrastination because tasks that matter most threaten self-worth, and not starting protects the self from a feared judgement of inadequacy.

Screens affect mood less through total hours and more through what is on the screen, when it is being used, and what it is replacing in the rest of the day.

CBT works for so many conditions because anxiety, OCD, and depression share core mechanisms: avoidance, rumination, and unhelpful thinking patterns.

Handling love bombing without feeling cruel means naming the pace you want, calmly and once. The guilt that follows is the cost of values, not wrongdoing.

Trustworthy mental health advice on social media has three markers: named credentials, narrow claims with caveats, and no product pitched in the same post.