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Tips for managing holiday stress How’s your holiday spirit? Dreading that time of year again, with all its mental health challenges? Have you already started planning how you will handle possible mood swings, holiday anxiety, or seasonal affective depression? For many, if not most people, the holidays can be bittersweet. My own parents died many years ago, but it’s at …
Wearable devices are becoming more and more popular, and people are using them in a range of ways that may or may not follow the instructions for use given by the manufacturers. Even more concerning, the companies that market these devices do not publish data about how they have been shown to work, or about the algorithms used to analyse …
Hug a friendly tree, plant the flowers you love, play with your pets (they love that), go for a walk, watch the sunset, increase your connection with nature. Research consistently confirms a basic intuition people have: being closer to natural, unbuilt environments is good for us. Even if you live in a dense, built-up area, going outside means feeling the …
Here comes the end of Daylight Savings again, the signal of darker mornings and longer nights to come. Even in “sunny California” the winter months are darker and people can struggle. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a real phenomenon, and it shouldn’t be brushed off. Increased hours of darkness can lead to episodes of depression, sleeplessness, and even thoughts of suicide. …
Choirs and choral singing are being recognized as potent medicine for anxiety, depression, and loneliness, as research is beginning to show that group singing creates bonds between and among participants more quickly and dependably than other methods of community building. Writing in the Guardian, Kate Corbett-Winder describes her struggle with anxiety and panic attacks that seemed to have no cause …
The World Health Organization celebrates World Mental Health Awareness Day on Oct. 10 each year. MoodSurfing salutes this effort and we hope to be a small, but meaningful part of building the world’s awareness of mental health. Over the past few years, we have lifted up the names of people from many walks of life who are dedicating themselves to …
What’s my life all about? Why am I even here? Why is this [whatever it is] happening to me? If you’re like me, and, I think, most Americans, you were brought up to be practical and action-oriented, and not waste a lot of time thinking about “philosophical” questions like these. We pride ourselves on common sense, and “getting it done” …
Control your moods or live with them? A guy we’ve been working with for some time commented today that he didn’t want to focus on control of his moods. His focus is on living with them. This is an attitude that we often recommend to patients who have trouble accepting a diagnosis or a treatment option. Acceptance of the reality …
Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, has called for a massive, nationwide campaign to reduce the harm related to firearm violence that is spreading throughout our society. “The collective trauma and fear that Americans are experiencing is contributing to the mental health challenges that we are facing today. Nearly 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they worry about a loved …
Bipolar disorder is a chronic disease that can present lifelong challenges. However, remission rates and even complete recovery can and have been seen. Finding the factors associated with recovery from bipolar disorder can give us all hope, and also provide health care workers with specific strategies to enhance the possibilities of recovery. A recent Canadian study using data from the …
Strong, stable personal relationships are of great importance to people struggling with moods. Take a minute to reflect on your own experience in this area. Do the people you have important, intimate relationships with help or hinder your mood stability? Two recent conversations with patients helped us drive this point home. On the same day we met with two men …
Fish oil supplementation for major depression continues to garner positive reviews from scientists and clinicians. A recent review of the past few years of data shows significant positive effects without negative side effects for a variety of patients with differing diagnoses. Some recent findings: Systemic inflammation is increasingly recognized as an associated factor in many mental illnesses. MoodSurfing has investigated …
A newly released documentary Faye, about the actress Faye Dunaway has been screened at the recent Cannes Film Festival. According to a review published on the website Deadline, the film “gets to it right away” with questions early on about why she was such a “difficult” person to work with on a movie set. Dunaway herself believes that her bipolar …
Exercise is widely recommended as a first-line treatment for depression of all types. Many people have personal experience of feeling better and healthier when they integrate an exercise routine into their lives, and there are many studies showing measurable effects of exercise on clinical depression. However, most of these studies are small, and there are few solid conclusions that can …
Divorce is almost always a wrenching and emotionally challenging life experience. When one of the spouses has a disability, such as a diagnosis of major depression or bipolar, the questions to be addressed can be complex and difficult to settle. We are not attorneys and this post should not be understood as legal advice, but we do want to suggest …
MoodSurfing celebrated the passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addictions Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008, when it was first passed. We again celebrated in 2013 when the Obama administration issued guidelines for the implementation of the legislation, including parity in payments made to mental and physical health practitioners; parity in limitations in coverage (for example the number of days …
To mark Mental Health Awareness Month, the American Medical Association (AMA) has released a series of resources for primary health care physicians and other practitioners to improve the integration of behavioral health care into primary care practices. Heavily emphasized in all the resources is training for health care practices at all levels in reducing stigma and prejudice around mental health …
We use the image of “surfing” your moods to describe the experience of bipolar’s ups and downs, but we don’t mean this to imply that the mood waves of bipolar are chaotic and completely unpredictable. On the contrary, people who keep a careful log of their moods over time find clear patterns to their ups and downs. However, these patterns …
Doing nothing? Daydreaming? Your brain is still working away Neuroscientists have discovered that brain activity occurs in “networks”: a coherent interaction of different brain regions. The networks are activated harmoniously or cooperatively, depending on what you are doing. One network, connecting several different brain regions, becomes activated when we are at rest, doing “nothing” or just daydreaming. This has been …
Another interesting entry in the Sleep App market! Sleepwave promises a completely different approach to insomnia: focusing on the wakeup time instead of bedtime. This aligns with what we have said about changing when you sleep – focus on setting an appropriate wakeup time rather than trying to go to sleep earlier. According to the company, a regular alarm, whether …
