Boost your brain power naturally! Try this simple intervention to reduce depression, stroke, heart disease and improve cognition. Does that statement make you a bit wary? A recent meta-analysis of 22 studies spanning two decades finds that the Mediterranean diet is associated with significant reductions in the risk of depression and stroke, and significant improvements in cognition. Across the studies, …
Sleep Therapy and Depression
What would you do if you could double the effectiveness of your antidepressants? Let’s say that this new treatment also had no known side effects, and was completely safe. That is what four studies have suggested could happen if people who were started on antidepressants received cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi). However, this treatment is not widely available. We …
Endurance of Pain and Suffering
He knew how to handle pain. You had to lie down with pain, not draw back away from it. You let yourself sort of move around the outside edge of pain like with cold water until you finally got up your nerve to take yourself in hand. Then you took a deep breath and dove in and let yourself sink …
Herbal Supplements Often Not What They Claim
A recent study concluded that herbal supplements are often not what they claim to be. The study was published in the journal BMC Medicine and it got front-page coverage on the New York Times website. Using DNA analysis, researchers tested 44 products from a dozen companies. The DNA signatures were compared with samples obtained from horticultural greenhouses. The study was summarized in the New …
A Worthwhile Project
A good friend of this blog, and a wonderful woman who has energy, talent and a commitment to making a difference, recently sent me an update on a project that she is working on to develop a film and website to reduce the stigma of bipolar. She and her team have put up “beta” website announcing the project. And she …
Food, Mood and Cognition
We recently got a useful update on this topic from one of the clinicians who works with us at Gateway Psychiatric. She had attended a seminary of the same title from the Institute for Natural Resources. Inflammation can be associated with poor diet for example, high consumption of sugars, especially high fructose corn syrup and high saturated fat intake. Chronic …
I’m In An Abusive Relationship… with Myself
Many people I see with chronic depression carry around with them a tormentor who says the most terrible things imaginable about them, their abilities, their worth, their very right to live. That tormentor is their own inner critic (hardly a strong enough term for the cruelty that can be unleashed by these inner voices). Often it is clear where this …
Learn How to Hardwire Happiness
As many of you know, I am a big fan of the new book, Hardwiring Happiness. One of the blog’s readers sent me this link to an upcoming class by the author. The class is this coming Saturday, and should be a GREAT experience. If you go I would love to hear from you.
Parity Final Rules Issued
Mental Health Parity Final Rules were issued by the Obama Administration on November 9th, 2013. Here is a preliminary summary of the rules and their implications, based in large part on the analysis of the American Psychiatric Association’s Government Affairs Department. We were also lucky enough to have an experienced attorney with a lot of knowledge of health care law …
Bipolar Treatment: The “Quick Fix”
A young woman came in to see me today. She was in a hurry. She wanted to make a change in her medication, and she wanted to make that change now. She told me that medication she was taking for bipolar was making her sedated and sluggish. She said she thought the medication was a “trap.” The medication was why …
PTSD Psychotherapy Affects Gene Activity
Mind-body dualism seems alive and well in the land of mental health. I am still surprised how often someone will say, “well that’s not a biological depression.” Meaning that it is the kind of depression that can be understood as a result of events in that person’s life, or that it can be treated effectively with therapy, or that …
Winter Leads to Spring
Someone shared with us a wonderful video about John O’Donohue, a Celtic poet, philosopher and writer. In it we found this quote that resonated very much with our experience. It is about winter. And depression. And how life blossoms from the seeming dreariness of a period of fallowness. We think you might appreciate it. If you like this clip we …
Outcomes of Childhood Bipolar
What happens to children with bipolar disorder? Boris Birmaher, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues at UCLA and Brown University, followed 367 of children with the disorder for an average of eight years to find out. 45% of the subjects had had a stable mood for most of the follow-up period. Birmaher reported the findings at a …
Mania and Depression Aren’t Opposites
Recently I found myself thinking about the similarities between two mood states that appear to be extremely different: mania and depression. I was talking to a young man who is now quite depressed, and who was sharing with me his incredibly negative internal though processes. One of the things that he said caught my attention. He said he felt that his illness and …
Protected: Making Sense of Mental Illness in a Family Member
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Changing Hormone Levels and Mood
I was on the phone yesterday having an urgent consultation with a woman we have worked for 15 years. She has had a pretty straight forward history of depression and anxiety that we’ve treated primarily with antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy. She’s had a good response to this treatment approach. The two things about her depression that are a little …
Hardwiring Happiness
Sometimes it is simple ideas that resonate the most powerfully with our psyches. This week I have found myself, again and again, thinking about the fairly simple but quite elegantly described ideas in the book Hard Wiring Happiness. I should probably admit that I’ve only gotten about half way through the book, but even so, it has had quite an …
Acupuncture Works for Depression
A recent large study showed that accupuncture was helpful for depression when it was added on to usual care (which mostly involved antidepressants). 755 patients being treated in 27 primary-care clinics were randomly referred for accupuncture, humanistic counseling, or neither add-on treatment. The participants typically had moderately severe depression that was chronic (many of them had had depression since childhood). Both …
Fall Mania
I had been gearing up to write my usual set of posts about seasonal affective disorder, and then this afternoon I met with a young woman who has had a clear and consistent pattern of getting hypomanic in the fall. We talk a lot about winter and fall depression. And, for many people, as the days get shorter and darker …
[x_video_player m4v="" ogv="" poster="" type="16:9" preload="metadata" hide_controls="false" autoplay="false" loop="false" muted="false" no_container="true" class="mvn"]
Depression is Something We Don’t Talk About
Here is a very thought provoking piece in the TED series about depression and stigma. Share it with others and tell me what you think. “If there is one thing that we need to do it is to accept that it is OK.” “We live in a world where if you break your arm everyone runs over to sign your …