Inflammation and Mental Illness

There is no such thing as an illness that is “all in your head”.  Just because the current level of medical science can’t understand what’s happening in the brain-body connection doesn’t mean your symptoms don’t exist.  Research is beginning to find more and more ways that “mental” illnesses are caused by “physical” stimuli, and vice versa.  This insight leads to …

Cognitive Behavior Therapy – Is It for You? – Nancy

One of the popular and well-researched non-medication alternatives for bipolar and unipolar depression is Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), a method of helping people identify and change unhealthy patterns of thought and/or behavior.  CBT looks at the interaction between feelings, thoughts and behavior, and helps participants learn to analyze the connections between them and how they influence each other. For example, …

Attention Bias Modification

Attention Bias Modification (ABM) – also sometimes called Cognitive Bias Modification – may be an inexpensive and effective way of enhancing standard treatment for social anxiety. The standard approach to social anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT focuses on teaching people to modify their thoughts about social situations. First the client is asked to track thoughts before a group …

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 …