Jack is a delightful older gentleman who loves sailing and beautiful women, but who has also been wrestling with depression for a year or more. We recently had a fascinating conversation about how romance and depression relate to each other in his life. He has a loving girlfriend who’s been very supportive to him during the past year, during which …
Kathy Leichter and Here One Day
We had the absolute pleasure of talking with director Kathy Leichter about her experience of making her movie, Here One Day. Here One Day is an intimate look into Kathy’s mother’s experience with Bipolar Disorder as well as her own experience, as her daughter. Question: How did you come up with the idea of Here One Day? Kathy Leichter: I’ve been …
Effective Communication
A friend recently asked for my advice about how to talk with his manager about some concerns he was having at work. He explained that these concerns were growing in intensity over the last few weeks, and he had yet to mention them because he did not want to “cause waves,” didn’t want to offend anyone, and didn’t actually know what to say …
Lucky Marriage
What is a lucky marriage? Last week we were talking to a man who has had a year of challenges in his marriage. Ivan is a thoughtful and articulate man we have been seeing for about a year, and during that time the subject of his marriage has come up many times. He suggested that a lucky marriage is one …
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: 2 – Depression Assessment
…I’m returning to do the test suggested by my therapist in our previous meeting – the Beck Depression Inventory II. Tremendous. Doing a test sounds like something you see in those silly magazines that tell you how good a lover you are are some such other rubbish, but apparently this test is rather serious. So I return that afternoon and Dr Black …
A Bipolar Couple
This morning one of the clients we have worked with for several years came in with his wife. It was a surprise that she joined the weekly session. They had just returned from a vacation in Mexico. And neither of them had had any fun on the trip. When he left for Mexico, he was very mildly hypomanic and, I suspect, stayed that …
Blowing Things Up: Self-Destructive Responses to Frustration
Why do we sometimes come up with self-destructive responses to the unpleasant feeling of being trapped or the anxiety of an unhappy life situation? I talked about this a little bit in an earlier post that was based on an article in the New York Times. In that article, it was noted that many people may find it so hard to deal with the stress …
Friends and Family Don’t Understand – Bipolar Communication Problems
Sometimes those without the challenges of bipolar neurochemistry simply “don’t get it” – how moods can shift abruptly and dramatically, and often without warning, or with subtle hints of the mood shift about to confront you – and at what might be the slightest trigger a sudden onslaught of overwhelming sensations due to hypersensitivity to stimuli, someone chewing can sound thunderous; a repetitive noise, such …
How Mood Can Influence Events
What I do for a living often involves asking dumb questions. For example, we all know our moods are usually affected by events. In fact, if we happen to notice we’re in a bad mood, the first thing we start to do, often unconsciously, is try to figure out what caused that bad mood. It’s not that it’s a bad …
Seeing the Other – Kelsey
“I see you.” That is one of the many profound concepts in one of my favorite movies, Avatar. “I see you.” For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, “I see you,” is the greeting of the Na’Vi, which expresses a sense of being aware of being seen by another.* Whoa. To be seen by another person. To feel …
Irritability and Coming Home from Work
I feel bad about it but at the end of the day I end up in a fight with my husband. It starts with me telling him that I am anxious about the work I am doing… there are lots of things going on and I feel anxious about whether I am doing a good job… but he doesn’t reassure …
Friends: Who to Tell and Who to Keep – Lyndsey
If you are like me, the life you created for yourself pre-diagnosis is probably not going to be the healthiest influence during this time of transition. Remember that old adage about birds flocking together? Now is the time to be aware of which birds you are flying with. Family. So you can’t do anything about who you’re stuck with in …
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 …
Helping Your Spouse
You have gotten help for your depression. You have seen a therapist or psychiatrist and spent long hours working to understand and improve your situation. Your spouse, who has been there for you during this process, has not. And now you are confronting the almost inevitable realization that he, or she, is really uncomfortable in the psychological world. Maybe she …
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 …
Oxytocin and Maternal Depression
There is lots of interest these days in how maternal depression affects kids, and also in how to prevent those effects. Recent research has suggested that the hormone oxytocin may play an important role in what happens. A nice review of this literature appeared in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. The authors note that the …
I Need New Friends
“I thought I needed to replace my friends.” This is how one of our patients described her experience of a several week period of mania last summer. Her friends insisted that she needed to get help and that something had to be done about her energized state. But she had just emerged from a many year depression and felt that …
Pay Attention
We need to be noticed and attended to. It is one of the most important psychological needs we have. For several years, I have been lecturing residents in psychiatry at UCSF on the management of people in crisis. One of the topics, is how to work with people who are potentially violent. On an inpatient psychiatric unit there are, from …
Coming Home
In a different post, we talked about the frustrating problem of getting sick at the beginning of vacations. We said that this has to do with the difficultly that our bodies have switching from high stress to relaxation, and something called cortisol withdraw. A version of this same phenomenon may be happening in your home almost every evening. This week …
Postpartum Episodes
Summary and Comment Perinatal Mood Episodes Common in Women with Bipolar Disorder Women with bipolar I disorder had higher risk for episodes within 6 weeks of delivery than those with bipolar II disorder or recurrent major depression. All mood disorders tend to recur during pregnancy or the postpartum period, but does the frequency and timing of recurrences vary by …