Recently, we were writing about the bias that practitioners have that the technique that they they have mastered is the most effective treatment for any condition. We were reminded of this issue very vividly this morning when we met up with one of our favorite people, an older man who has been seeing us for a couple of years. He …
New Intern
Hello all, My name is Emma Swayze, and I am excited to report that this summer I will be interning for Dr. Forster. I am currently a junior at Boston College as a Psychology B.S. pre-med student. I plan to one day go to medical school in the hopes of becoming a psychiatrist. I have a particular interest in mood …
DSM5
In the next few days the American Psychiatric Association is meeting in San Francisco and will announce the latest version of its diagnostic and statistical manual: DSM5. Tom Insel, the Chief of the National Institute for Mental Health, created quite a stir last week by seeming to announce that the new diagnostic manual was an emperor with no clothes. The …
Parallel Universes: The Duality of Hopelessness and Optimism
It’s hard to explain how it is possible to go from a state of complete hopelessness and a sense that the universe is profoundly hostile, to a state of optimism and and the experience of receiving support from the world and others within a single day. The fact of the matter is that it often seems as though there are …
Benevolence
It’s been a hectic week. I will be updating you on some of the exciting new developments that we’ll be rolling out this summer on the website, but, last night, the perfect cap on a crazy week was getting a phone call about a relative who was having panic attacks because he had stopped his medication and now he couldn’t find a …
Gratitude
Recently it seems that many people have been talking about the idea of gratitude as a practice that enhances psychological health. I was intrigued to run across a recent post by Disorderly Chickadee (a woman with a WordPress blog about bipolar) on the topic of her gratitude journal and the reasons she has discovered for gratitude. And then I started …
The Facts are Friendly
We have found ourselves wrestling with a couple of situations where patients seem to be trying to help us come to the “right” conclusion about their problems. For example, one young woman is very adamant about the fact that she does not have bipolar disorder. She has a family history of bipolar moods (her mother was bipolar) and the idea …
The Search for Meaning
When three people independently send you an article and urge you to read it, there is something very important contained in that article. A New York Times article by a woman with bipolar elicited that kind of response from people who know me. The article talks about the struggle of a woman who discovers that she has bipolar, struggles to …
New Intern!
I am very pleased to announce that we have hired Emma Swayze as our intern to work on enhancing the quality of this blog. Emma is an undergraduate at Boston University who is majoring in psychology and planning on applying to medical school in order to become a psychiatrist. She will be working with me (starting in three weeks) to …
The Future without Me
One of the really great things about my job is that I am continually challenged to think about my own life in new ways. I started this blog almost exactly a year ago as a result of a bicycle accident that caused me to change in some significant ways my thoughts and feelings about the future. It was a wake-up …
The Big Fight
How is it that so many couples end up having knock down, drag out fights? How can seemingly rational people end up saying things that just don’t make any sense? Several people that I’ve seen recently have told me a similar story. As in every relationship, they have had certain long-standing issues in their relationships, areas where one or the …
Disclosure
I finally got around to posting the interview with Dr. Cannon Thomas about relationship and communication issues. This interview was a response to the discussions on the forum that suggested that a very important topic for readers of this blog was when and how to talk about having a mood disorder with others. Re-reading the interview I found myself feeling …
Phew… That’s Done: Sustaining Attention
It is such a relief, after worrying about some health problem for a long time, to suddenly realize that that problem no longer needs acute and urgent attention. This is as true for an ankle or knee injury in sports as it is of anxiety or depression, or any other mood state that impairs our ability to function. There is …
Stress and Your Brain
Stress has a major affect on our bodies and our brain. The release of catecholamines (adrenaline and related chemicals) and cortisol causes significant changes throughout our body that are designed to prepare us for “fight or flight.” By shutting down all non-essential functions the stress response system prepares us for a life and death struggle Nowadays there are no life …
Mental Health at the Exploratorium
I was intrigued to see that the newly reopened Exploratorium is hosting a temporary exhibit entitled The Changing Face of Normal devoted to exploring how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has changed over time and the various implications of psychiatric diagnosis for what we call “normal.” There is an interesting interview in the Mental Health Matters series that is …
Depression and Heart Disease: Inflammation
A large study published in April of 2013 in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology followed 667 people with heart disease for 5 years and found that depression appears to lead to inflammation rather than inflammation leading to depression. Excessive inflammation is one of the main causes of heart disease, because it is associated with blockages in the blood vessels that deliver blood to …
Iron for PMS
A recent study suggested that women who consumed higher amounts of iron (from plant not animal sources) had a lower rate of premenstrual symptoms. Those who consumed more than 20 milligrams per day had about a 30% reduction in PMS symptoms compared with those who consumed less than the average amount (average intake of 9.4 milligrams per day). This study …
Lowering Your Profile
This is the season (spring) when there is suddenly lots of energy around. I used to regularly run around a local lake. The run was peaceful and pleasant at all times of year except in the spring. In the spring the male geese suddenly felt that that had to make their presence known. They would flap their wings and attack …
New Spouse by Friday
I’ve been working with a very successful attorney who has been struggling to find a way of staying in his marriage for a couple of years. The heart of the problem is that his wife had a serious health problem (which is now resolved), but through the process of dealing with this health problem she became depressed and discouraged about her health and …
Nature’s Cycles
It should be raining. It is March in the San Francisco Bay area, and we have had hardly any rain for the past three months. It’s a funny thing, but even though I have been taking advantage of the good weather to go out bicycle riding and hiking, there’s a part of me that doesn’t feel quite right about this …