Where does the mind go when it is not occupied by the worries, frustration, and anxiety? Does it go to a happy place, or are people naturally angry? According to Rick Hanson, PhD, the mind constantly fluctuates between a reactive and responsive state. When in the responsive state, the body is able to relax and reenergize. It is a time …
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 …
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 …
Escape from Depression
I met a young woman yesterday who got me thinking about the reasons why I feel so strongly about the work I do as a psychiatrist, helping people with chronic mood problems. She came in for help with what she described as a “mild but chronic depression.” She had already seen one psychiatrist, and he had not been terribly helpful; …
St. John’s Wort
St. John’s Wort is a plant which has been shown in many well controlled clinical trials to be more effective than placebo in treating mild to moderate depression (not transient sadness). In fact the evidence supporting its effectiveness is better than the evidence supporting the effectiveness of some FDA approved anti-depressants. It does not, in our experience, work as well …
Awareness and Acceptance
The New York Times has had a series of well written articles on the topic of mindfulness. The most recent article notes that brain scans show that mindfulness can change the way our brains function, and help us improve attention, reduce stress hormones and even bounce back faster from negative information. The increased ability to bounce back from negative information that comes from …
Trojan Horse Medications
From time to time we are asked to review the care that people with cycling moods have received, trying to figure out, from a complicated story of medication changes and mood cycles, what to do to get someone out of a period of deep pain and dysfunction. A few years ago I did such a review on a young man …
Small Rewards
A young woman who was scheduled to go on a big trek in the Himalayas was not doing the training she needed to in order to have a good experience. She had been depressed for the last few months and this was probably a manifestation of that mood. She told me that she felt she “should be doing much more.” …
Fish Oil Update
Since so many people with bipolar and depression take fish oil we thought we would pass on some information in a summary form from Consumer Labs. The full information is available if you subscribe. Consumer Labs is the only source of reliable information about supplements (the only place that does any testing) and if you take supplements we strongly encourage …
Creative Tension
I was inspired to write today’s post after watching a video sent out by a colleague as her “Valentine’s Day gift” to a group of mental health professionals interested in women’s issues. The video was from the TED series (strongly recommended) and had to do with the challenge of having a long-term passionate relationship. The author was a delightful, French …
WorkSurfing
The New York Times recently published an intriguing article entitled “Relax, You Will Be More Effective.” It arrived at just the right time. Preparing for an upcoming vacation had made me particularly hectic. And then, while I was on vacation and writing this post, I got a blog post from MoodScope which was devoted to the importance of taking regular …
Valentine’s Day Gift
I have been thinking a lot about Valentine’s Day, how it can become such a burden if one is single, or bereaved, and trying to figure out a way out of that bind. For years I did not lake the day at all, so I can certainly empathize. I came up with kind of an odd idea, and put together …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …