A Psychology Today Column Maps the Mental Health Toolkit for an Uncertain Decade

Psychology Today's "Psychology Insights for a New World," a column written by registered psychologist Sebastian Salicru, has spent five years tracking how people can "respond, recover, and thrive in an uncertain world." Its recent entries signal a clear shift: from meaning-centered coping tied to COVID-19 toward the mechanics of psychedelic-assisted therapy and the deeper psychology of why change tends to fail.

The column's two most recent posts, both published in July 2026, focus on psychedelic-assisted therapy. One argues for the role of self-compassion in that setting, framing it as having a supportive presence rather than a critical one alongside a patient. The other examines suggestibility, which Salicru describes as a double-edged element: a possible catalyst for healing, but also a factor that can leave clients open to bias and misconduct. That framing matters because it treats psychedelic therapy less as a breakthrough and more as a clinical process with defined risks.

From pandemic coping to structural change

The blog's arc is visible in its own archive. A September 2021 post centered on purpose and meaning "beyond a COVID-19 world," reflecting the crisis psychology of that period. By late 2025, the emphasis had moved to why behavior change is hard to sustain. A December 2025 post on New Year's resolutions attributes most failures to maladaptive schemas, the entrenched patterns Salicru returns to repeatedly, rather than to weak willpower.

Schema therapy is a recurring thread across the column. Earlier entries discuss the "healthy adult" concept in schema therapy, breaking negative "life-traps," and identifying what the author calls a personal "lifetrap combination code." The through-line is a claim that lasting change requires working at the level of deep-seated patterns, not surface-level goal setting.

The practical angle

Salicru's posts lean toward actionable framing. A December 2025 entry on language argues that word choice influences whether people take action or sustain change. Other posts cover managing anger versus chronic anger, using written emotional disclosure to process negative emotions, and a set of practices aimed at authenticity and self-leadership. A 2024 post uses a Sherlock Holmes analogy to describe how therapists and clients might approach problems through structured reasoning.

The column also weighs in on how mental health itself is classified. A May 2022 post discusses what Salicru describes as a paradigm shift in mental health frameworks and urges readers to be critical consumers of mental health services.

Why it reads as more than self-help

Salicru is a registered psychologist, psychotherapist, and board-approved supervisor with more than 25 years of experience in clinical and corporate settings, and the author of Leadership Results. That background positions the column between consumer-facing advice and clinical commentary. The treatment of psychedelic-assisted therapy is a useful test case: rather than promoting it, the recent posts foreground suggestibility and the potential for misconduct, which is closer to how clinicians discuss emerging treatments than how they are often marketed.

For readers in Asia-Pacific, where access to therapy varies widely and psychedelic-assisted treatment remains tightly restricted in most jurisdictions, the column functions mainly as a conceptual reference. Its emphasis on schemas, language, and self-directed practices does not depend on any specific treatment being legally available.