We are very happy to pass this information on about a great group for people with bipolar being offered in the bay area by an expert in the psychosocial treatments for bipolar: Dr. Jenifer Culver. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills Group for Individuals with Bipolar Disorder in Los Altos, CA. The Next group begins September 2015. This group focuses on teaching …
UCSF Bipolar Group
The UCSF bipolar psychoeducational group starts on September 14, 2015. This group is lead by bay area bipolar expert Descartes Li, MD. It runs for 8 sessions, Mondays 12pm to 115pm. Most commercial insurance is accepted. Dr. Li describes this group as “an advanced class about bipolar disorder for people who have bipolar disorder.” For regular readers of this blog it …
Prefrontal Cortex and Limbic System
A very bright young man who has a great potential as the therapist but who is wrestled with chronic depression for years and has developed a pattern of avoiding doing things that he knows he has to do in order to move ahead with his life led me to talk again about the relationship between depression, the limbic system (or emotional …
Chronic Insomnia Treatments
A recent study confirms that cognitive behavioral therapy is effective for chronic insomnia and is often more effective than medications. “What surprises us is that there isn’t more awareness of this treatment’s effectiveness and that there haven’t been more attempts to make the treatment more available to patients,” James M. Trauer of the Melbourne Sleep Disorders Centre in Australia told …
Mentalize
Sometimes a word just seems to show up everywhere. This past week the word “mentalize” has come up in conversation a number of times. A colleague who is looking for a referral for therapy says that she needs someone who can “mentalize well.” One of my patients who just completed a DBT-based treatment program says that she is doing better because …
Attentional Bias Modification Prevents Depression
A middle-aged nurse wrestling with depression said she want to do “everything” that she possibly could to improve her mood. She doesn’t have access to therapy through her insurance, and she’s already vigorously pursuing mindfulness practice, but her request reminded me of an article I recently read on Attentional Bias Modification as both a possible treatment of depression and as …
CBT for Insomnia Reduces Suicidal Thoughts
CBT for insomnia (CBTi) is clearly preferable to taking sleeping medications for most people. Studies show that cognitive behavioral therapy is associated with greater improvements in sleep quality than sleeping medications, and that those improvements are more durable, and, particularly in the elderly, sleeping medications are associated with significant adverse effects, including an increase in mortality. But it can be a hard …
Art Therapy – Lyndsey
When I was in the hospital, one of the activities they provided for patients was art therapy. I sat in a room, silent and bewildered as I was, and methodically glued tiny pieces of glass mosaic tiles on a black wrought iron trivet frame. I called it my Crazy Trivet ever after, and it was remarkable only because it was …
I Can’t Stand It! (ACT)
This week began with me spending three or four hours writing up a summary of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for one of the people I saw two days ago. For those of you who haven’t heard the term, ACT is the “hot” new approach to therapy (although much of it dates back thousands of years to Buddhist practice). I enjoyed the …
Mental health in the UK
A little flaw in the UK’s ‘socialist’ medical service is poor provision for mental health. We have some of the leading surgeons in the world, some of our A&E departments are regarded as world-beaters too. To my knowledge hardly any of the staff were trained in Cuba or Russia and none of them is related to Che Guevara. But don’t you think …