One of our very alert readers noticed that the links to Amazon that should allow you to buy books are not working. I tried in a short period of time to fix the problem but it looks as though this is a project that is going to take a few hours, and I don’t see it happening until February 18th …
Idea Map Redux
I just wanted to call your attention to a redo of the site map which we have located on a page called “idea map” to indicate that we have tried to organize the keywords into something that will be useful for finding the topic you are interested in. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the grand idea that I …
Mood and Food
Today’s post was inspired by Disorderly Chickadee’s blog. She has been in an unstable (irritable) mood but her post is about how proud she is of the fact that she has been losing weight. For some reason, several people we have been working with have also been feeling irritable and agitated, and using some of that energy to lose weight…It …
Update for February
Well last night was a lesson in how much time you can spend on the computer without accomplishing very much! Spent the entire night trying to figure out a better way of making a map of the topics in the posts. The result (which doesn’t work yet) is on the page entitled “Map of Ideas”… it is a Mind Map …
Tripolar Disorder
For a long time I have been trying to figure out how to convey to the people I work with the view of mental health professionals that a certain type of depression is really a kind of mania, called “mixed mania.” From an “objective” standpoint, this makes a lot of sense. A mixed state generates lots of energy and agitation. …
Be Helpful
We love today’s post from Just One Thing! (And yes, we have had several references to this site in the last few days… but he is starting the year by reviewing the best ideas on his site). And we felt compelled to put this post up today when we checked our email and found that today’s blog post from the …
Mary Poppins: Overcoming the Winter Months
What I most want to have available to me in the long winter months, to help me with my patients with bipolar and depression, is access to someone a lot like Mary Poppins. You may remember that Mary, played by Julie Andrews, was the incredibly cheerful nanny who transformed the unhappy and dysfunctional lives of the family she joined. What …
10% of Americans Suffered Childhood Sexual Abuse
Approximately 10 percent of American adults were sexually abused as children, according to a study reported in Comprehensive Psychiatry. They are more at risk of psychopathology and suicide attempts than are adults who were not sexually abused as children. This study fits with other evidence. The global prevalence of child sexual abuse has been estimated at 19.7% for females and 7.9% for males, based …
Silver Linings
We have heard interesting rumors about the new movie “Silver Linings Playbook” that is supposed to address some of the issues involved in living with moods in a way that avoids stigma. Last week we got this from the American Psychiatric Association News – “It has been a long time since a Hollywood movie actually seemed like it could help people suffering …
Feeling Already Full
A wonderful friend sent us a note that this post had been very helpful to him. It is, once again, from the Just One Thing site. The practice is called “Feel already full” and it is a perfectly timed reminder that so much of what we see in life (TV especially) is specifically designed to make us feel unhappy with …
Changes
Sometimes you take a very long and arduous journey and end up right back where you started, only with a new appreciation for what you left behind. This is the story of our forum… After spending many hours working with a developer to come up with a new forum for this site, and then, discovering that installing the new forum …
Getting It Done Anyway
From time to time I am inspired to pass on portions of a post from a favorite blog. Today’s Moodscope blog was all about those days when you feel a bit “blah” and what you can do to not get trapped in indecisiveness and time wasting. As it happened this arrived on a day when I was struggling to get …
Coming Out Can Help Your Health
We saw this article and thought it probably has a lot to say about the reasons to be direct with others about moods, and how they affect you. It is from Psychiatric News, January 29, 2013. The same reductions in stress hormone levels have been shown in a number of studies about disclosing potentially stigmatizing conditions. For more on the …
Crisis – When to Consider Hospitalization
A delightful, funny, smart young man we know called us on Friday to say that he had stopped his medications a few weeks ago, and now he felt he was entering a mania. We did our best over the weekend to patch things up, got him more medications, talked to him every day, worked with him to make sure that …
Sleep and Memory
An interesting story published in the New York Times suggests that the reason we are less able to remember things as we get older is that we sleep less well. The article is based on a report posted online on Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The report suggests that as the brain ages, changes take place that interfere with sleep quality, which …
Take a Chance
If you are feeling depressed or anxious, today’s post from Rick Hanson (part of his Just One Thing blog) may be helpful. If you are already feeling energized, you might not need more encouragement to do something risky/taking a chance… Rick’s post is about how, as children, we learn to avoid certain types of conversations that seem too risky, and …
The Cycle of Disappointment
Today’s post revolves around the universal desire to find one or more other people who is perfectly attuned to our needs, and the resulting cycle of disappointment. A woman we have seen for years continually experiences a strong sense of disappointment and loss because her highly anxious mother was never really able to be attuned to her needs. She told …
January 2013 Update
It’s probably time for another update about this blog and where it’s heading. Many of you may have noticed that the promised upgrade of our forum never happened. As I noted previously this is because the project turned out to be much more complicated than I thought and the work that has already been done on it suggests that the …
Running a Marathon
Many of us are strongly motivated by the desire to achieve results, complete tasks and succeed. Often we want to get where we are going quickly. Life is too short. Seize the day. Dealing with moods can be very frustrating. Change may take place slowly. Sometimes you have to put in a fair amount of energy just to hold on …
Parody No More: Mental Health Parity Law
In yesterday’s clinical team meeting we were talking about the mental health parity law, which has been largely ineffective at ensuring access to care. One of the psychologists said, “I call it the mental health parody act,” because it is a parody of meaningful change. That may be changing. President Obama announced that the Sandy Hook school killings had galvanized …