Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Health”
Don’t take “no” for an answer! Here’s a great resource for anyone encountering barriers to getting insurance coverage for mental health care. Cover My Mental Health is a non-profit offering help to people battling for insurance coverage of care. They offer free guidance for every step of the way, including: No in-network care When a claim is denied Next steps: …
California law allows a mentally ill person to be placed in care involuntarily for a maximum of 72 hours if a designated officer finds that the person is a danger to him- or herself, a danger to others, or gravely disabled and unable to perform self-care. Once this 72-hour period is completed, a hearing must be held to determine if …
Faking symptoms? Too lazy to work? No! Functional neurological symptoms, such as tremors, limb weakness or numbness, facial functional disorders and tics, gait disorders, blackouts, dizziness and many others that seem to have no physical cause, are the second most common reason for outpatient neurology consultation (after headaches). These symptoms have been described in the medical literature as the 17th …
Today we’re sending some love to the terrific blog, Speaking Bipolar, by Scott Ninneman. It’s a super-positive and uplifting blog from somebody who’s been living with bipolar for thirty years. And what a well-examined journey this is. Scott is celebrating 7 years of blogging, and those seven years of posts are packed with practical tips, personal stories, and encouragement. Whether …
Surviving the time changes from Standard to Daylight Savings and back again, can be a challenge, and in our practice at Gateway Psychiatric, we always see an uptick in the numbers of people reporting sleep disruption and/or hypomania during the Northern Hemisphere spring. At the beginning of Spring and Fall, in higher latitudes both North and South, the length of …
There is no such thing as an illness that is “all in your head”. Just because the current level of medical science can’t understand what’s happening in the brain-body connection doesn’t mean your symptoms don’t exist. Research is beginning to find more and more ways that “mental” illnesses are caused by “physical” stimuli, and vice versa. This insight leads to …
Is it a mental illness? Is it a physical illness? How will you tell the difference? The concepts underlying our whole approach to medical care and treatment are coming under increasing critical scrutiny. Dr. Camilla Nord of the Mental Health Neuroscience Lab at the University of Cambridge writes in her new book The Balanced Brain that: “there is no separate …
What is catastrophism? Even if it’s realistic to know that there are forces able to wipe out your home, job, possessions, and community in a single stroke, worrying about the catastrophe maybe coming today or tomorrow can harm your health without improving your chances of escape. Anybody going in for medical checks and tests knows the feeling, but now, if …
A client writes to say the hot new trend in breathing exercises has proven “effective” in controlling his panic attacks. So what is a breathing necklace? In simple terms, it’s a small tube, about 2 inches long. The inner diameter can vary from about one-tenth to one-third of an inch. When you feel an anxiety or panic attack coming on, …
Hug a friendly tree, plant the flowers you love, play with your pets (they love that), go for a walk, watch the sunset, increase your connection with nature. Research consistently confirms a basic intuition people have: being closer to natural, unbuilt environments is good for us. Even if you live in a dense, built-up area, going outside means feeling the …
Here comes the end of Daylight Savings again, the signal of darker mornings and longer nights to come. Even in “sunny California” the winter months are darker and people can struggle. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a real phenomenon, and it shouldn’t be brushed off. Increased hours of darkness can lead to episodes of depression, sleeplessness, and even thoughts of suicide. …
Control your moods or live with them? A guy we’ve been working with for some time commented today that he didn’t want to focus on control of his moods. His focus is on living with them. This is an attitude that we often recommend to patients who have trouble accepting a diagnosis or a treatment option. Acceptance of the reality …
Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, has called for a massive, nationwide campaign to reduce the harm related to firearm violence that is spreading throughout our society. “The collective trauma and fear that Americans are experiencing is contributing to the mental health challenges that we are facing today. Nearly 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they worry about a loved …
Fish oil supplementation for major depression continues to garner positive reviews from scientists and clinicians. A recent review of the past few years of data shows significant positive effects without negative side effects for a variety of patients with differing diagnoses. Some recent findings: Systemic inflammation is increasingly recognized as an associated factor in many mental illnesses. MoodSurfing has investigated …
MoodSurfing celebrated the passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addictions Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008, when it was first passed. We again celebrated in 2013 when the Obama administration issued guidelines for the implementation of the legislation, including parity in payments made to mental and physical health practitioners; parity in limitations in coverage (for example the number of days …
To mark Mental Health Awareness Month, the American Medical Association (AMA) has released a series of resources for primary health care physicians and other practitioners to improve the integration of behavioral health care into primary care practices. Heavily emphasized in all the resources is training for health care practices at all levels in reducing stigma and prejudice around mental health …
Doing nothing? Daydreaming? Your brain is still working away Neuroscientists have discovered that brain activity occurs in “networks”: a coherent interaction of different brain regions. The networks are activated harmoniously or cooperatively, depending on what you are doing. One network, connecting several different brain regions, becomes activated when we are at rest, doing “nothing” or just daydreaming. This has been …
Invest your energy for greater returns and more energy Depression can feel like a deep hole that you just can’t get a foothold to climb out of. But some people have found that even from deep inside the hole, there is a way to get at least a toehold, which can lead to another fingerhold, and so on, until you …
It’s that time of the year again, when we have to figure out what to do with the clocks – and indeed, how many time-keeping devices we have around the house nowadays. Some of them change themselves and others don’t. Then on top of that, there’s all the people arguing about whether changing the clocks twice a year is a …
Intermittent fasting, or the “fasting mimicking diet” is slowly gaining credibility and hard evidence for its effectiveness not only in weight loss, but also in improvements in cardiovascular fitness, immune function, diabetes 2, longevity, and mood. There are several ways to fast intermittently, including daily patterns, such as 8:16, in which you eat during an 8-hour window, and not at …
