We recently wrote about healthy eating for people with mood disorders (original post can be viewed here). Today, we bring you some delicious and easy ideas to enjoy in this summer weather—well rather, July in San Francisco that so happens to be co-occurring with the hot and sunny climate in other places. Infused water Drinking infused water is a great and …
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 …
Does Psychiatric Treatment Work?
How well do psychiatric treatments work? Aren’t psychiatric medications just placebos? Does psychotherapy really do anything? These are the kind of questions that mental health clinicians run into all the time. Dr. Maximilian Huhn and colleagues from the Munich Technical Institute (Huhn – reference 1) have conducted a major review of the data. They evaluated results from 852 clinical trials involving …
Hypomania and Sensory Experience
More than a decade ago, Dr. Suzanne Black, who occasionally writes posts on this blog, got me interested in the sensory experiences associated with hypomania.In our Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the only reference to these is under the heading of “distractibility.” And, indeed, sometimes people who are experiencing intense and profound sensory experiences everywhere they look and listen, may have trouble …
App that Predicts Mania
There are smartphone apps for monitoring your diet, your drugs, even your heart. And now a Michigan psychiatrist, Melvin McInnis, is developing an app he hopes doctors will someday use to predict when a manic episode is imminent in patients with bipolar disorder. Manic episodes can come with a dangerous mix of increased energy and impaired judgment. “We want to be able to …
Soul Training – Lyndsey
One difficult aspect of living with bipolar disorder, especially when it is new, is that our ever changing moods make it difficult to keep up a regular and normal social life. After all, If you can’t get out of bed for 3 weeks on account of acute depression, it’s pretty hard to make new or keep existing commitments. In my …
Stress and Trauma as Risk Factors for Bipolar
I have long been interested in the relationship between traumatic experiences and bipolar disorder. A couple of years ago I gave a presentation at the University of California, San Francisco, Bipolar Disorder Clinic on the topic. I got interested in the issue because I noticed how many of the women in my clinic with bipolar disorder also had childhood PTSD. …
Children of Bipolar Parents – Risk of Having a Mood Disorder
One of the most common questions I am asked is, what are the odds, if I am bipolar, of my children having bipolar. Recently we ran across a research study that tries to answer this question. The Pittsburgh Bipolar Offspring study, directed by Boris Birmaher of the University of Pittsburgh, looked at the odds of developing psychiatric disorders in children of parents …
Specialized Treatment for Bipolar is More Effective
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. A recent article from the excellent Bipolar News Network, summarizes a study that showed that specialized treatment for bipolar was more effective than usual care and actually saved money (the cost savings from avoiding hospitalization more than paid for greater outpatient treatment costs). Patients who had been hospitalized for a first episode of mania were …
Training Your Brain – by Lyndsey
I’m an avid animal lover in general, and dog lover in specific. I take a lot of life’s cues from dogs because they are such happy creatures. They greet every day with joy, rarely obsess and generally live in the moment, which seems to make them content. And I want that. I was listening to the Dog Whisperer give advice …
Acceptance: Living with Bipolar
I recently came across an article that described a man’s experience with bipolar disorder. I was struck by his reported shift in his relationship to the disorder from one of fighting it to one of embracing it and learning how to live with it as opposed to against it. This is such a powerful and difficult transition; one that can …
Mood Swings – What Causes Them?
What causes mood swings? What do we think about when someone says their mood has been “up and down?”Among the most common causes of mood shifts are the following: A mood disorder such as bipolar, or an atypical depression. Bipolar as a cause is obvious, but an atypical depression can also be associated with mood swings. In the case of bipolar …
Bipolar for Beginners
So you’ve just learned that you are bipolar. If you’re like me, things in your outer world have unraveled and you now find yourself with a new diagnosis and (hopefully) a helpful psychiatrist. I’m going to list the ‘awarenesses’ that helped me understand how my new brain works in the hopes that these will help speed up your own recovery. …
Denial: I’m not Bipolar, Doctor
You’re wrong, Doctor ! I’m not bipolar! How can you say that to me? You just met me – how can you possibly know??!! I’m just depressed and I get agitated and anxious and hyper – sometimes but everyone gets moody ! It s normal to have moods. You re pathologizing me! No other doctor has ever told me I have bipolar, …
Family Therapy Effective for Bipolar Teenagers
Family Therapy– Family-focused treatments have been shown to be effective adjunctive therapy to mood stabilizing medicine in adults with bipolar disorder (especially young, female adults), but whether this approach holds true in adolescents, has been unclear. Researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) assessed 145 adolescents with bipolar disorder to see if adding 9 months of family …
Bipolar Advantage: Has Bipolar Made You a Better Person?
I ran across this intriguing post while surfing the world of bipolar blogs…. I would love to get comments and responses… Maybe you agree, or disagree. Let me know – add a comment to this post or send me an email at peter@moodsurfing.com. [This introduction is quoted with permission but to read the rest you will have to follow the …
What is Bipolar 2?
A friend of this blog sent me a link to a talk about bipolar 2. As she noted, it is sometimes hard to find information about this type of mood cycling. I would love to hear from you if you think this is useful. Warning, it begins in an odd way, but then shifts gear to a more personal discussion …
What about Marijuana for Depression or Bipolar Moods?
Since we practice in San Francisco, which was at the forefront of the move to decriminalize marijuana, we find that many of the people with depression or bipolar have smoked, or are smoking, marijuana as a way of treating their depression. Over the years we have developed a general impression of marijuana as a psychotropic (mood affecting) agent.It has been …
Evaluating Emotions and Experiences: Could I Be Bipolar?
People often wonder whether the notion of bipolar moods really applies to their experiences. They compare what they have heard about bipolar (crazy person running berserk) and their life which is never that intense and wonder whether the doctor (or whoever else raised the idea) is just making a wild suggestion about the problem that they have. After all, it …
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 …