Moodsurfing Updated

Seems like it’s been a while since we blogged about the title of the blog.  Why is it called “Moodsurfing”?  Living creatively with moods means we accept that there are going to be ups and downs in life, and rather than aim for an ideal “stability” we learn to manage life with moods and, ultimately, even to exploit the strengths …

Pregnancy and Mental Health

Pregnancy and mental health problems – how to reconcile the two – are often topics of discussion on this website and in my clinical practice. In the past we have often referred people to  Vivien K. Burt, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychiatry and the Director of the Women’s Life Center at UCLA and the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for …

Parity Website

We ran across information about a new website that is drawing attention to the issue of mental health parity and that is dedicated to helping people get the behavioral health treatment they need – Paritytrack.org. The essence of the federal law that requires mental health parity in insurance coverage is not that mental health needs to have a certain level of …

Meditation Tricks

Most of us in the Gateway Clinic have been encouraging our patients to take up meditation for years.  We will explain how it works, and what the benefits are, we’ll suggest books on the topic, recommend guided meditation sources, follow up on those recommendations, and follow up, and follow up… And yet, this has been an exercise in frustration.  Very rarely …

MoodRhythm: Beta Users Needed

One of our readers forwarded to us a story about a new application called MoodRhythm that was developed at Cornell University and won  the prestigious $100,000 Heritage Open mHealth Challenge. The full story is available here. The application, which is available as a beta, is available for both iPhones and Android smartphones (although how to download it may be a bit …