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Exploring the links between stress, anxiety, and depression Stress and mental illness The stress response is unfortunately very familiar to modern people. We all know that when something bad happens, our brains flood our bodies with chemicals that would have been useful in the remote past, stimulating the “fight, flight, or freeze” response. Useful for dealing with a hungry sabre-toothed …
Activate your psychological immune system Our brains have built-in processes that help us make meaning of adversity, and find ways to pick up and keep going after a shock, injury, or disappointment. Psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson have been researching our abilities to “weather the storms” of life, and figure out how to make the best of bad situations. …
If you have an episode of depression, how can you tell if it is bipolar or unipolar depression? The simple answer is, you have bipolar depression if you have ever experienced an energized (not necessarily pleasant) state that qualified as a hypomanic or manic episode. And if you only have had depressed episodes, you are considered to have unipolar depression. …
Insomnia and struggle Poverty and social deprivation are better indicators of the risk of poor sleep than sex, income level, age, employment or education. An analysis of a public health information database in the U.K. looked at the responses of 500,000 people and found that almost one-third of them reported sleeping less or more than the recommended 7 hours per …
Why are we too shy to own our wisdom? I’ve seen teenagers and young adults come out with deep, powerful words from the heart, but at some stage, we learn to say anything like that with a self-deprecating giggle: “don’t take this too seriously-I’m just me”. Anybody who’s been through a few decades of life has gained experience, insight, and …
Marijuana and Bipolar-Yes or No? The use of marijuana in treating many and various illnesses is a hot topic among many of our San Francisco-area patients. Since legalization for medical uses, and even for recreation, seems to be spreading throughout the country, more and more people are looking into helpful uses for this ancient but little-understood plant. However, medical advice …
Positive emotions are supposed to be great for you, and of course it feels better to be happy than sad. But so what? If sadness is where you are, what’s the point of lecturing yourself to “be more positive”? Before we start lecturing ourselves or others about what emotions we are supposed to be feeling in any given situation, it …
Researchers looking at people’s perceptions of moral decline have found some curious patterns in a recently published study. Looking back at data collected over the past 70 years, they have found a consistent belief reported by thousands of informants that moral values and moral behavior have declined or decayed over the course of the informant’s life span such that now …
Insomnia is complicated! Poor sleep and feeling tired are one of the topics that we engage in the most with our patients who experience depressed and/or elevated moods. We have found that there is a very strong belief among Americans that 8 hours’ sleep is the ideal towards which we should always be striving. This paradigm comes from the early …
Tending to relationships is as important as watching cholesterol An 80-year-old longitudinal study of men, originally Harvard undergrads in the late 1930’s, looks at the determinants of good health, and has some surprising findings. Men who, in their 50’s felt “satisfaction” with their relationships with family, friends, and community had better overall health in the subsequent decades of life. Blood …
“I really adjusted fast, it was miraculous…” Patients who travel are familiar with warnings and advice we give about the potential for moods to get unbalanced or even out of control as a result of jet lag and time changes on international flights. Recently, Jason, who was making a 15-hour time change for his honeymoon, reported back on the helpfulness …
A new campaign launched by the American Psychiatric Association Foundation aims to change the conversation around mental wellness and illness from anti-stigma to prioritizing mental health in the same way we have prioritized physical health. APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D. said: “we all know there is no health without mental health. [This campaign is about] saying to …
We’ve come a long way! We now have a whole month for mental health awareness, and we have seen real awareness growing in so many ways throughout our society. While stigma remains, it is much easier now to speak out, discuss the issues and educate people about mental illness and mental health. MoodSurfing has been celebrating people, famous and not …
Self-care is critical for a healthy life. Because we can’t meet others’ needs if our own go unheeded. Because to lead by example for our families, for our workplaces, for our communities, we have to show what a healthy life looks like. Because self-care is not a reward, it’s the basic fuel that keeps the whole show running. But how …
We want to highlight the work, and especially the website of Cara T Hoepner MS, RN, CS, PMHNP-BC, a Bay Area colleague of ours who has spent years investigating whole-body treatments for traditional and integrative psychiatry. Recently, we reached out to her for consultation with a particular patient, and found out that she has a huge amount to offer all …
The Adult Psychiatry Clinic at UCSF has released the schedules of their Group Psycho-Education for Bipolar Disorder for June 2023. 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, the program director, it is designed …
Lisa, a patient of ours, was excited to share her use of brown noise for getting a good night’s sleep. “All I gotta say is, I’m waking up refreshed and rested, where before I just felt awful in the morning. I haven’t even looked into the data on my sleep app, I just know I feel better when I use …
Bipolar Disorder II is less well understood than BP I, even though the rate of prevalence in the wider population seems to be about equal. Previously considered a “lesser form” of bipolar, doctors note that rates of illness severity and suicide risk are very comparable in the two forms of bipolar. Less research has been done on BP II, with …
Are you breathing wrong? Breathing is about the most basic thing we do as living beings, and it’s hard to imagine there being a right and wrong way to do it, but experts say that constant high stress stimulates rapid, shallow breathing, which raises the heart rate, suppresses digestion, and heightens the brain’s tendency to detect danger, whether real or …
Using cannabis to help you sleep: do your research first In popular culture, pot is supposed to make you calm and sleepy, so it seems to make sense that if you’re having trouble getting to sleep, marijuana might be the way to go. As it becomes legal in more states for medical use, and even for recreational purposes, more and …
