MoodSurfing

March is Bipolar Awareness Month!
March is Bipolar Awareness Month!
Here, we share material from the World Bipolar Day website.  We encourage everyone to visit the website and get involved in education, research and advocacy for the 60 million people worldwide who are affected by bipolar disorder. WORLD BIPOLAR DAY 2024 The vision of World Bipolar Day (WBD) is to bring world awareness to bipolar disorders and to eliminate social stigma and discrimination. Through international collaboration, the goal of WBD is to bring diverse populations around the world information about bipolar disorders that will educate and improve sensitivity towards the illness, including access to the latest research and the best treatments. Since inception, WBD has officially been recognized on March 30th, the birthday of famous Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, ... Read More
Mood Swings and Daylight Savings
Mood Swings and Daylight Savings
It’s that time of the year again, when we have to figure out what to do with the clocks – and indeed, how many time-keeping devices we have around the house nowadays. Some of them change themselves and others don’t. Then on top of that, there’s all the people arguing about whether changing the clocks twice a year is a good thing or a bad thing.  Everybody has an opinion and it turns out that there is not much hard data to back up any of those opinions. What we do know is that here at Gateway Psychiatric we see an uptick in complaints of sleeping problems whenever there’s a time change. Over the years, we’ve gathered a few tips ... Read More
Mental Health Apps Get Warnings, Need Regulation
Mental Health Apps Get Warnings, Need Regulation
Apps for mental health of all kinds are a rapidly growing phenomenon, you can hardly look at an online store without getting a list of all the new apps for meditation, online therapy, diet helps, insomnia, mood charting and many others. Now, researchers are taking a deeper look into the data that these apps collect on users, and how well or poorly the data is protected. There is a spectrum of providers running the gamut from rigorous protection of users’ privacy to those who exploit loopholes and gray areas in existing regulation to harvest and monetize the data of even the most vulnerable of users. Last year, in a landmark ruling, the Federal Trade Commission banned online counseling service Better ... Read More
Intermittent Fasting Update
Intermittent Fasting Update
Intermittent fasting, or the “fasting mimicking diet” is slowly gaining credibility and hard evidence for its effectiveness not only in weight loss, but also in improvements in cardiovascular fitness, immune function, diabetes 2, longevity, and mood. There are several ways to fast intermittently, including daily patterns, such as 8:16, in which you eat during an 8-hour window, and not at all during the other 16 hours, or simply prolonging the usual nighttime fast for up to 12 or 13 hours. Other patterns include what is called 5:2, meaning that you eat normally for five days each week and have a severely restricted 500 or 600 calorie diet on two non-consecutive days. As usual, there are some people who have become ... Read More
Learn How to Pay Attention to the Positive
Learn How to Pay Attention to the Positive
Patients in recovery from major depressive episodes may need help learning to process positive information and stimuli. Researchers found that people with a history of major depressive disorder spend more time processing negative information than healthy controls, and they may have less control over which information they process. This negative bias suggests that people recovering from depression may need to learn strategies for processing positive information, and that treatments focusing on the reduction of negative processing may not be sufficient. Processing positive information is not the same as urging someone to “cheer up” or “think positive”. Rather, it is a long-term discipline, or a skill set that can develop over time. The research cited above has not been able to ... Read More
Look Up!
Look Up!
New Year’s resolutions should be simple and easy to keep; that’s one of the better pieces of advice on the subject that I’ve seen.  So here’s a simple one, Every time you step outside of a door, look up. That’s it. Just see the sky. Not to check the weather, but to open yourself up – body and mind. Tilting your head back, just for a few seconds, usually gets you to take a deeper breath, which is always good, and it gives you a moment of stillness in between inside and outside. The sky reminds us that the world is bigger than we are, and our problems are smaller than we think. The sky may be the last view ... Read More

About MoodSurfing

Welcome to MoodSurfing.com, the site that highlights strategies for living creatively with moods and coping with depression. This site is for people with bipolar, depression, cyclothymia, and others who experience powerful moods and want to figure out how to integrate these experiences into successful lives.

Although most of us are mental health clinicians of one kind or another, this site is not about providing people with medical or clinical advice (see below). We hope that we can help you cope with depression, maybe even allow you to live well with moods. 

If you like what you see here, be sure to sign up to get updated with new posts. 

We have done a series of interviews with people who have interesting things to say about different aspects of living creatively with moods. You can find those under the heading “Conversations.

DISCLAIMER

This site is not designed to and does not provide medical advice, professional diagnosis, opinion, treatment or services to you or to any other individual. Through this site and linkages to other sites, Moodsurfing provides general information for educational purposes only. The information provided in this site, or through linkages to other sites, is not a substitute for medical or professional care, and you should not use the information in place of a visit, call consultation or the advice of your physician or other healthcare provider. Moodsurfing is not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis or any other information, services or product you obtain through this site.

IF YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY CALL 911 OR YOUR PHYSICIAN. If you believe you have any other health problem, or if you have any questions regarding your health or a medical condition, you should promptly consult your physician or other healthcare provider. Never disregard medical or professional advice, or delay seeking it, because of something you read on this site or a linked website. Never rely on information on this website in place of seeking professional medical advice. You should also ask your physician or other healthcare provider to assist you in interpreting any information in this site or in the linked websites, or in applying the information to your individual case.

Medical information changes constantly. Therefore the information on this site or on the linked websites should not be considered current, complete or exhaustive, nor should you rely on such information to recommend a course of treatment for you or any other individual. Reliance on any information provided on this site or any linked websites is solely at your own risk.

Moodsurfing does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, products, procedures, opinions or other information that may be provided on the linked websites. The linked websites may contain text, graphics, images or information that you find offensive (e.g., sexually explicit), Moodsurfing has no control over and accepts no responsibility for such materials.