Pregnancy and mental health problems – how to reconcile the two – are often topics of discussion on this website and in my clinical practice. In the past we have often referred people to Vivien K. Burt, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychiatry and the Director of the Women’s Life Center at UCLA and the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for …
Mood Charting for Complicated Problems
Lucy is a single woman who is a professor of anthropology at a local university. She is in her late 30s and she was referred to me for a consultation because of a complicated set of potentially interrelated problems with cognitive impairment, sleep disruption, anxiety, depression, a seizure disorder, and migraine headaches. She’s an interesting person and I really wanted to help her figure …
Omega 3 Prevents Psychosis
The Omega – 3 supplementation story seems to take many twists and turns. At one point, based on double blinded controlled study published by Andy Stoll, et al, from Harvard, in JAMA Psychiatry in 1999, it looked as though omega 3 fatty acids would turn out to be a very effective treatment for bipolar, with almost no side effects. Subsequent …
Distress Tolerance
A wonderful young woman we have been seeing for a few months asked for some recommendations for skills to help her deal with her experience of moments of overwhelming negative emotions that often seem to come out of nowhere. This post is a relatively quickly pulled together document derived from Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Think of it as a “draft” …
Our Relationship to Pain, Matters
Chronic pain can significantly affect our lives. It can result in not being able to engage in activities we loved to do. It impacts our relationships with loved ones. The limitations brought on by pain, can lead us to question our identity and certainly our quality of life. Years ago, I worked with a gentleman (we’ll call him Marcos) who was …
Travel and Mood
Travel and mood are very much related. Often a trip is associated with a significant change in mood. This can be due to many factors. Getting out of a rut, experiencing new locations and meeting new people can bring you out of the depression. However there is also the possibility that travel may disrupt circadian rhythms in a way that leads …
Sleep Fatigue and Depression
Yesterday I gave a presentation at UCSF to the Mood Disorder Clinic psychiatrists and residents: An Update on Bipolar Depression. Much of that material is focused on psychopharmacology and so I will be writing about that on the gatewaypsychiatric.com blog. However, one important pearly derives from a series of studies that identify a strong link between sleep and depression. There is frequent …
Fatigue and Depression or Bipolar
Fatigue is a common symptom in people with recurrent depression or bipolar. And in fact a common symptom in the general population. It is estimated that up to 10% of otherwise healthy people suffer from fatigue. And it is a more common symptom in women than in men. Sometimes fatigue may persist well beyond other symptoms of depression. First, it …
Being Busy is an Antidote to the Terror of Being Alone
My attention was captured when I read an article that suggested that there was a common human experience that many people in our busy worlds find so disturbing that they voluntarily give themselves electric shocks in order to distract themselves from feeling it. No Time to Think. Nowadays, people can keep negative thoughts at bay with a frenzy of activity. …
Skill Building for Psychosis
One of the very hard things about many psychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, is that they often begin at a time that is critical to the development of many skills and abilities needed for successful adult life. Many years ago we visited a wonderful program in Atlanta developed for young people with schizophrenia called STARS. The program was …
Exercise for Sexual Dysfunction
Among the greatest problems that come from antidepressant treatment (and a leading cause of medication discontinuation) are sexual side effects. Early in the course of treatment with serotonin antidepressants, many people experience less interest in sex and difficulty reaching orgasm. Numerous prescribed and over-the-counter medications have been proposed as antidotes. The fact that there are so many proposed antidotes suggests …
Quitting Smoking Improves Mood
A study published in the British Medical Journal reports that quitting smoking had a simillar positive effect on mood as an antidepressant. The researchers did an analysis of 26 studies using a technique called a “meta-analysis” and looked at changes in mental health (anxiety, depression, mixed anxiety and depression, quality of life, positive affect, and stress) at ≥6 weeks’ post–smoking cessation …
Smoking Cessation Is an Antidepressant
Smoking Cessation Linked With Multiple Mental Health Benefits, Study Finds This article is reposted from the American Psychiatric Association News by permission Stopping smoking is associated with significant improvements in anxiety, depression, stress, positive affect, and psychological quality of life. And the strength of the association appears to be similar for both the general population and clinical populations, including those …
ADHD Increases Traffic Accidents
Psychiatry News Alert, a service of the American Psychiatric Association that is the source of a number of these posts, reports that a large study finds that people with adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have an increased risk of serious traffic accidents—those leading to injury or death. The study was recently published in JAMA Psychiatry, and was led by Zheng Chang, Ph.D., …
The Evils of the Snooze Button – Why Sleeping In Makes You Feel Tired
Winter is the time of year that the snooze button on your alarm clock can wreck havoc with your mood. Just as waking up early and getting light and exercise is the fastest way to improve depression, trying to sleep in, or lying in bed thinking about why you don’t want to get up, is the best way to make …
Mood and Menopause
What is the relationship between the hormone changes that take place around the time of menopause and depression. It seems as though there are many women who report that their depression gets worse in the peri-menopausal period, but is this a pattern? And if so what does that mean in terms of the interaction between mood and hormones? A recent …
Shame and Self-Disclosure
There is a lively discussion in our forum about self-disclosure. A couple of forum members are pushing the boundaries by talking honestly about their bipolar when the topic comes up in conversation. So far their experiences are largely positive. The interchange on the forum reminded me of a book I bought for my son when he was being teased. The …
Using a Therapy Light
Christmas vacation is ending, It has been wonderful to spend some relaxing time with family, getting up later in the day, lounging around and playing games, reading, or watching TV… and eating too much good food. Now the challenge is getting back to a more productive schedule. For many of us, our bodies are in a “hibernating” mode that makes …
Long Term Antipsychotics – Adverse Effects on Brain?
This post is a bit off topic. I have tried to not focus on medication issues in this blog on the grounds that there are many, many websites that talk about medications and very little else. However one of the blog’s most loyal readers sent in an email about long term antipsychotic medications and potential adverse effects on brain function …
Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) May Prevent Alzheimer’s
Higher blood levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) appear to protect against Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other types of dementia, that is the result of a study is published in JAMA Neurology this past month by Sudha Seshadri, M.D., a professor of neurology at Boston University and his colleagues. BDNF is “growth hormone” for the brain. It enhances the creation of connections between …