Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Self Help”
We want to highlight the work, and especially the website of Cara T Hoepner MS, RN, CS, PMHNP-BC, a Bay Area colleague of ours who has spent years investigating whole-body treatments for traditional and integrative psychiatry. Recently, we reached out to her for consultation with a particular patient, and found out that she has a huge amount to offer all …
Lisa, a patient of ours, was excited to share her use of brown noise for getting a good night’s sleep. “All I gotta say is, I’m waking up refreshed and rested, where before I just felt awful in the morning. I haven’t even looked into the data on my sleep app, I just know I feel better when I use …
Are you breathing wrong? Breathing is about the most basic thing we do as living beings, and it’s hard to imagine there being a right and wrong way to do it, but experts say that constant high stress stimulates rapid, shallow breathing, which raises the heart rate, suppresses digestion, and heightens the brain’s tendency to detect danger, whether real or …
Using cannabis to help you sleep: do your research first In popular culture, pot is supposed to make you calm and sleepy, so it seems to make sense that if you’re having trouble getting to sleep, marijuana might be the way to go. As it becomes legal in more states for medical use, and even for recreational purposes, more and …
New smartphone app shows promise in control of bipolar Apps, apps everywhere! There are hundreds of apps you can download to your phone or computer that are supposed to help you live a healthier lifestyle. But, sadly, we know that many of them are just money-makers, with no clinical research or experience backing them up. We’ve been following the field …
New Year’s resolutions actually tap into a very strong human impulse to create start-over points in our lives and to use them to motivate improvements that we wish to incorporate into our regular lives. Internet searches for items like “diet” and “gym” that may be prompted by a desire to do something healthy show increased activity around the first day …
How to make New Year’s Resolutions What is a New Year’s resolution, anyway? Are you always determined to make yourself a better person than you were before? Or is it more like the wish you make when you blow out your birthday candles: quickly thought up and quickly forgotten? Before you set this weight loss goal or that gym membership …
It’s coming again: the holiday season! Intended as a time-out; a time to take a break from work, enjoy life for a while, share gifts, and eat great food, the holiday season in our complex society has become a stressor, not a relaxer. But stressful or not, the holidays come every year, and we all have to figure out how …
People seeking treatment for major depression and bipolar tend to do well if they have two related characteristics. The first is persistence: the ability to keep doing what needs to be done, no matter the mood. The second is willingness to do whatever it takes, even if that means giving up control over which treatments are acceptable and which are …
A discussion with a patient this past week really brought into focus the power of the mind to affect the world. Or maybe it would be better to say how we decide to live in the world. Our patient, I’ll call her “Amy”, is a teacher’s aide in a crowded, underfunded special ed. classroom, and she was saying she is …
Get close to the people you’re close to. We all know how easy it is to take people for granted, and everyone has had the experience of attending a funeral, or just hearing of someone’s death, and thinking “I wish I had told her I love her one more time!” But close relationships can also be draining, stressful, and many …
10 USEFUL* things you can do for suicide prevention *Spoiler: none of these things are about “fixing” a suicidal person. I’d like to apologize for missing the actual National Suicide Prevention Day, which was September 10, but, really, any day is a good day to talk about suicide prevention. Suicide prevention is not a matter of telling your distressed friend …
Fall is just around the corner in the Northern Hemisphere, and the impending seasonal change means impending mood changes, too. For every person who goes into September with a New Year’s feeling: new school year, new challenges, new friends; there is another who starts the autumn with anxiety, melancholy, or even dread of the dark days to come. Our agrarian …
What is rumination and how can it be overcome? Rumination, or repetitive negative thinking, can be a symptom, and possibly even a cause of depression. But where does it come from, does it have any upsides, and what can you do about it if you feel stuck in an endless loop of regret, recrimination and overthinking the past? Psychologists distinguish …
Diets and Moods Evidence for the importance of diet for mental health is slowly gathering. People are looking into the importance of specific diets like the Mediterranean diet, which we have highlighted here before. And the next big area of research into diet and mental health looks like being the ketogenic diet. Many people have heard of the Atkins diet, …
Some reflections by Denise Collins on The Mighty We were struck by this great post on The Mighty, (which is a fascinating site with lots of discussion groups to explore). One of their discussion groups is about depression, and Denise Collins is a regular contributor there. Recently, she posted this reflection on how writing helps her when she is depressed. …
Consumers’ Checkbook for the San Francisco Bay Area has a ratings table for medical care practitioners in the area that looks at a number of important criteria, including patient recommendations and peer recommendations (other doctors). This is a subscription service, and you have to sign up for at least the free 7-day trial period to get the list, but if …
Living with mental illness or mood disorder day after day can be taxing and tiring. You have to be more disciplined, stronger, more organized and more on top of things than anyone else you know. You are bombarded with advice about dealing with a chronic illness: exercise helps, diet is important, be sure to get enough sleep, but not too …
Bright light therapy has been in use for some years for insomnia and seasonal affective disorder, and results in those areas are very promising. Until recently, however, there has not been much data available about the use of bright light therapy for major depression. A recent study, though small, was reported in a presentation at the American Psychological Association’s 2021 …
Gardening improves mood Spring has sprung and people are looking to the outdoors, plants and gardening for a mood lift, a lifestyle change and a tried and true path to happiness and fulfillment. For those who think such attitudes are maybe a tad over-optimistic, we can show a surprising amount of research on the mental and physical health benefits of …
