Pregnancy and mental health problems – how to reconcile the two – are often topics of discussion on this website and in my clinical practice. In the past we have often referred people to Vivien K. Burt, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychiatry and the Director of the Women’s Life Center at UCLA and the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for …
Body Mindfulness and Peak Performance
If mindfulness training works to achieve peak performance in Navy SEALs and top athletes perhaps it’s not such a New Age idea. In fact what distinguishes people who are resilient in the face of physical challenges may be a natural capacity for the kind of self-awareness that mindfulness teaches. A New York Times article called my attention to fascinating research …
Psychiatric Disorders Are A World Public Health Problem
How can we start to better intervene with individuals facing psychiatric disorders in an effort to improve global health? Visibility is the key. When we consider the deleterious health effects of mental disorder on the actual—re physical—health of our bodies, our mind’s eye might be so often obstructed by the extremes—blocked by images of more severe and the most disruptive …
Breaking Up without Depression
Some people seem to find it much easier to weather the breaking up of a romantic relationship than others. Sure they may feel sad, they may worry about what it means that their relationship ended, but relatively soon they’re able to move on. Others get mired in doubt and find it hard to reenter the dating world. A study from Stanford …
Exercise Dose
What is the right dose of exercise, how much before you hurt yourself, or stop seeing more benefits? You could be the AM riser, out jogging predawn in neon sneakers and sweatband, having just donned luminescent jacket or slicker. Maybe you’re the lunch hour weight lifter. Or perhaps you take the evening shift, the post-work workout, at the hour when …
UCSF Psychoeducation Group for Bipolar Spring 2016
UCSF Group Psycho-Education for Bipolar Disorder The Adult Psychiatry Clinic at UCSF has released the schedules of their Group Psycho-Education for Bipolar Disorder for January 2016. This activity under the Bipolar Disorder Program of the Department of Psychiatry is aimed at providing a community resource for individuals with bipolar disorder, mental health professionals and psychiatrists. Headed by Dr. Descartes Li, …
Awe Reduces Inflammation
What if you knew that the experience of awe could measurably improve your health, would you approach the world differently today? At the most recent TEDMED, psychologist Jennifer Stellar presented evidence that the experience of a number of positive emotions (joy, pride, contentment and awe) was associated with reduced levels of interleukin – 6 (IL6) a well validated blood measure …
Mood Charting for Complicated Problems
Lucy is a single woman who is a professor of anthropology at a local university. She is in her late 30s and she was referred to me for a consultation because of a complicated set of potentially interrelated problems with cognitive impairment, sleep disruption, anxiety, depression, a seizure disorder, and migraine headaches. She’s an interesting person and I really wanted to help her figure …
Children at Risk for Bipolar
Greater Mental Health Risks For Children Of Bipolar Parents From the American Journal of Psychiatry: David Axelson and colleagues find that, within seven years, 74.2% of children of parents with bipolar disorder will receive a major (Axis 1) psychiatric diagnosis. And are themselves at risk for bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, and other disorders. This same group of offspring carries a …
Preventing Cognitive Decline
Preventing cognitive decline is possible, and the solution may not involve fancy new medications with unknown side effects. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association cites numerous studies that argue that the brain changes that have been the focus of so much attention (neurofibrillary tangles and plaques) are not the whole story. Pathology is not destiny. So …
Thankfulness – A Meditation
On this Thanksgiving 2015 we received a link to the section of Rick Hanson’s Foundations of Wellbeing course that talks about thankfulness and gratitude. Rick talks about how thankfulness and gratitude promote long term well-being, reduces anxiety, and improves mood. He introduces the notion that it is possible to grow this sense and change our own experience, and perhaps change …
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Bipolar
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for bipolar may reduce anxiety and bolster emotional stability As with many psychiatric disorders, bipolar disorder isn’t impossible to treat but it has its own unique and unremitting way of seriously wearing down a patient’s resolve. Mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) for bipolar joins a handful of therapies that can help. A kind of yo-yoing of …
Mindfulness Apps Updated
Mindfulness Apps Updated We have updated our mindfulness links based on a nice review in the New York Times. The reviewer suggests starting with one of the two apps (both available on iPhone and android) that has a complete program for beginners – Calm or Headspace. We particularly liked the fact that the reviewer pointed to the very personal aspects …
Bright Light for Non-Seasonal Depression
Bright light may work for non-seasonal depression. This is the conclusion of a study published in the prestigious psychiatric journal JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia in Canada conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo- and sham-controlled, 8-week trial in adults (aged 19-60 years) with major depression of at least moderate severity. 122 patients were …
Poor Health Predicts Bipolar Outcomes
John has not been doing well. He used to be optimistic about all challenges and, although he had ups and downs, he managed to overcome these shifts in mood and maintain a focus on achieving his life goals. For the last year and a half he seems to be having difficulty focusing on those goals. And he seems discouraged, particularly …
Fish Oil for Depression
Is fish oil effective for treating depression? Just this past week a new patient in my practice asked me that question and I said that I didn’t know. I mentioned that ever since a study of people with bipolar depression was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (the leading journal in psychiatry) by Andy Stoll in 1999 there has been …
Taking Care of Yourself
Part of the key to self care is finding ways of being nice to yourself that don’t require a huge investment of time. Yes, it would be great to spend the day at one of those fancy spas. I can almost feel the sense of relaxation soothing all of the tension that I carry around in my body… But who …
S-Adenosyl-Methionine Update
SAM-e S-adenosylmethionine, or SAM-e for short, is one of the few nutritional supplements that has good clinical research to support its safety and effectiveness. Although SAM-e is used for many purposes, we are particularly interested in it as a compound that may have antidepressant properties. Clinical Significance S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) is involved in many reactions that involve methylating chemicals (transferring a methyl …
Apps and Links Updated
I have just been a couple of hours updating the apps and links page on this site. There are a lot more choices for mood charting including many more that are available on both android and iPhone. I’ve also been using three different apps concurrently for the last two months to get a sense of what it’s like with different mood …
Can Junk Food Shrink Your Brain?
Did you know that increasing or even maintaining your intake of burgers, fries and soda pop—and pretty much any other hallmark of the “Western diet,” high in saturated fats and refined sugar—isn’t just an efficient way of rotting your teeth out and raising your risk of cancer, diabetes or heart disease, but that you may also be shrinking your brain? …