In February the National Sleep Foundation announced the publication of new guidelines for the amount of sleep that we should be getting based on a rigorous review of the literature. The guidelines suggested that adults should be getting between seven and nine hours of sleep. The results were widely distributed and commented on. It was noted that many people in our …
Self Affirmations by Songify
A good friend and colleague suggested a new technique for “self affirmations.” A technique which makes something that can seem ponderous, but is also a powerful technique for positive change, seem like a lot more fun… Self affirmations are things that you tell yourself about yourself and the world. In psychological terms, they are about reshaping our constant internal dialog through …
Centering
Feeling scattered and distracted is such a common experience in our lives these days. Rick Hanson talks about getting centered in today’s post in his Just One Thing series. If you are feeling scattered, take one moment to be aware of your body as you take a long, slow breath, or think about something you feel good about. In that moment …
Bipolar Support
I want to encourage readers of this blog to consider signing up for Bipolar Disorder Connect. It is an easy to navigate social media site devoted to helping people with chronic health conditions. It seems to have a good cadre of moderators, which is important to prevent the tendency of support groups to veer off into an unproductive direction (“Ain’t …
Getting Up Early
Getting up early is one of the best ways of counteracting depression. And having a strong circadian rhythm is especially important for people with bipolar depression because their internal “clock” may be less powerful. But it can be a challenge making a change in your sleep cycle, especially if you have always been a late riser. This article will talk about …
Controlling Crazy Behavior
A young man came in and wanted to talk about his friend with bipolar, who, when he gets manic, can become uncontrollable. I said that the idea of controlling dangerous behavior can be problematic. The need to control someone else’s recklessness can lead towards confrontation and anger, which often does not work out well. I thought of the often repeated story …
Mental Health Awareness Week
It is Mental Health Awareness Week in the US. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has announced a “Go Green for Mental Health” campaign (although I am still pretty fond of the sliver ribbon campaign to fight stigma). Meanwhile, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance has just put out a video called “I’m Here” that makes the point that there …
Cannabis and Bipolar
More than half of people with bipolar will qualify for a substance use disorder diagnosis at some point. In many places, the most popular drug (other than alcohol) in people with bipolar is cannabis. People with bipolar are almost 7 times as likely to use cannabis than the general population. In the United States, many states have legalized cannabis for medical indications, and two states have legalized its recreational use. …
Mind Maps and Post Its
Stuck with a problem that you can’t figure out? Having trouble generating ideas? One of the things that the mind is very good at is coming up with potential pitfalls. And all of us have found ourselves trapped with recurring negative thoughts that make it hard to do any creative thinking. Sometimes changing the process or framework for thinking about …
Parity is What We Want
An overwhelming majority of Americans want parity. A large study found that almost 90% of Americans reported that mental health and non-mental health care were equally important to them in terms of their overall well-being. At the same time nearly a third of those Americans surveyed felt that mental health care was inaccessible and 40% felt that it was something that …
Self Injury is the 8th Leading Cause of Death
An article just published online in the prestigious journal JAMA Psychiatry makes us drawn case that our fascination with trying to come up with clear answers to questions that may ultimately be impossible to answer (what a person’s intent was when they injured themselves) is obscuring the fact that self-injury is now the eighth leading cause of death in this …
Omega 3 Prevents Psychosis
The Omega – 3 supplementation story seems to take many twists and turns. At one point, based on double blinded controlled study published by Andy Stoll, et al, from Harvard, in JAMA Psychiatry in 1999, it looked as though omega 3 fatty acids would turn out to be a very effective treatment for bipolar, with almost no side effects. Subsequent …
Is It Bipolar? The “Rule of Three”
Confession time: When I was younger I used to take the women’s magazine quizzes – How to know if you have met your ideal partner? When to worry about your sex life. It turned out that all kinds of interesting and complicated life questions could be boiled down to the answers to about 6 multiple choice questions. Of course it was …
Fall Warning
Northern Hemisphere Fall Warning If you live in the northern hemisphere, and particularly if you live in the United States, this seems like an appropriate time to point out that fall is coming. The yellow school buses are once again trundling through the streets taking kids to school, the commute has once again jumped up by a factor of two …
MIND Diet Prevents Memory Loss
Researchers at Rush University have developed a diet (the MIND diet) that appears to be associated with significantly reduced cognitive decline in aging. The diet was developed from three sources of information: the Mediterranean diet (as elsewhere on this blog), the DASH diet for the prevention of hypertension, and a review of the literature on the effects of specific dietary components …
Distress Tolerance
A wonderful young woman we have been seeing for a few months asked for some recommendations for skills to help her deal with her experience of moments of overwhelming negative emotions that often seem to come out of nowhere. This post is a relatively quickly pulled together document derived from Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Think of it as a “draft” …
St. John’s Wort for Depression
A recently published study raises questions about whether the natural supplement St. John’s wort is actually associated with fewer adverse effects than commonly prescribed SSRIs. Living in the Bay Area it is common for me to run into a strong conviction that any natural supplement is bound to be safer than any manufactured medication. Perhaps the most problematic of these …
DBT for Bipolar Group
We are very happy to pass this information on about a great group for people with bipolar being offered in the bay area by an expert in the psychosocial treatments for bipolar: Dr. Jenifer Culver. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills Group for Individuals with Bipolar Disorder in Los Altos, CA. The Next group begins September 2015. This group focuses on teaching …
UCSF Bipolar Group
The UCSF bipolar psychoeducational group starts on September 14, 2015. This group is lead by bay area bipolar expert Descartes Li, MD. It runs for 8 sessions, Mondays 12pm to 115pm. Most commercial insurance is accepted. Dr. Li describes this group as “an advanced class about bipolar disorder for people who have bipolar disorder.” For regular readers of this blog it …
Bipolar Types
One of my new patients introduced herself this way, “Hello Dr. Forster, I have Bipolar 2 and a half.” Had she just finished watching Harry Potter and was thinking about the invisible platform that takes young wizards to Hogwarts? No, she was referring to a type system developed by Hajop Akiskal, probably one of the most influential thinkers in the …