Mental Health Update

Is this useful? The scientists think so. For a start, understanding the neurochemical pathways that regulate social attachments may help to deal with defects in people's ability to form relationships. All relationships, whether they are those of parents with their children, spouses with their partners, or workers with their colleagues, rely on an ability to create and maintain social ties. Defects can be disabling, and become apparent as disorders such as autism and schizophrenia - and, indeed, as the serious depression that can result from rejection...

So far, stopping taking my antidepressants recently is one of the best things I’ve done in a while - I feel great. When you’ve been depressed for a while, and on medication, it is amazing the difference it makes when you stop taking them and actually let your natural feelings shine through again. I had gotten to the stage where I was unable to feel happy - I was emotionally numb except for being extremely depressed and wanting to end it all. Now I’m actually feeling happy and optimistic about the future - which is an amazing feeling.

So I tried not to be gay. I tried through high school and I tried through college. I tried as hard as I could. I denied who was through depression and more. I could not be gay.

Talking about the situation, I remember one famous sentence from Kamal haasan’s film (Kurudhi Punal). He would say to the terrorist, “Do you know what is courage?”…and then he goes..”Courage is to act like you don’t have fear”…I am following the same principle…Inspite of having so much anxiety about the looming end-term clouds, I am trying to wear a ‘cool-chap’ mask and cover the underlying fear! Atleast, that will kill my nervousness…

My trig class ended up being part nightmare, part entertainment. The teacher seems knowledgeable but he acts timid as if he isn’t used to being in front of the class and his style leaves much to be desired. He kept saying,’I think that’s right.’ an then shuffling through the pages of our trig book for verification. His anxiety definitely wasn’t helped by the class. The girl next to me has taken a geometry class and kept trying to finish his sentences in the introductory portions which made it hard for me to learn....

But depression won’t just give you a headache or a backache.

Depression may weaken the immune system and a person may become more susceptible to illness or organ failure.’

‘Cognitive-behavioral therapy may be just as effective as antidepressants for depressed teenagers in more affluent families, a government scientist reported Thursday.

Amazingly, one day just a short time ago I noticed something about me which seemed different – my jaw didn’t ache or feel tight anymore – this wasn’t normal! For me a lifestyle change had removed a lot of tension, stress, and anxiety from my life; it was only after I no longer experienced discomfort in my jaw that I realized I had been living with a medical condition know as TMJ.

Teenage depression is widespread and can become a life-long illness, but is more often transitory, said UCLA Psychology Professor Constance Hammen, who will discuss her research at an invited address May 27 at the American Psychological Society's annual convention in Los Angeles… click link for more info.

The USDA has recently been accused of been covering up cases of mad cow disease for over a decade. Now a deceased California man’s family and doctor have announced they believe Patrick Hicks, aged 49, died late last year from variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, or vCJD. The fatal disease is contracted from eating beef contaminated with mad cow disease. Dr. Ron Bailey, a neurologist at Riverside Medical Center, believes this will be the first documented case of vCJD in the U.S., and in order to bypass the hand of the USDA, is sending brain samples...

this morning in therapy, my therapist was like, "i read your blog and i'm concerned that you may have an eating disorder. i think you should go to an outpatient program." i'm sitting here writing this as i'm eating moon and star-shaped cheese. i was like, "ru kidding?" she was like, u have the symptoms. i know the symptoms of eating disorders. i've read like five books on eating disorders, which is a lot for someone who doesn't even read. she was like, "i know girls want to look like celebrities, but you are excessive about it." i was like, i know what i'm doing. it's motivation. i do it for motivation. and i think it's normal to put photos of kate bosworth on my blog. i don't think it's weird. if i put one of mk's back (i call britney spears britney and paris hilton paris ,etc. HA) that would be a little weird - that would be a red flag,.

"Eating disorders are increasingly prevalent among Jewish and Orthodox adolescents," according to a new booklet called Body and Soul: Addressing Eating Disorders by Dr. Caroline Peyser and a research team, published by ATID. The booklet is an informative, user-friendly guide for educators on how to help students who may exhibit signs of Anorexia and Bulimia.

I’m single and looking to date. Although I view myself as a healthy person, most people shriek with fear if I reveal that I have a secret life; yes bipolar disorder is my secret. Shah.

On a lighter note, I think our dog has been plagued with separation anxiety. It seems that just over the past few months we'll come home to find something torn up. Most of the time it's nothing major, maybe just some paper or trash that he managed to get up. That was until last week when he topped all previous incidents hands down.

Interestingly, similar techniques are now being applied to traditionally hard-to-treat conditions such as schizophrenia that have been shown to have a positive impact on cognitive performance and brain function.

Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that patients who were using a class of anti-depression drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) prior to undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery have significantly higher death and rehospitalization rates up to five years after the procedure than patients who were not on SSRIs.

i felt what it was like to have bipolar disorder for like 6 months and it was terrible. bc people who are bipolar are dealing with it their whole life, even if they are on the right medication. it's more treatable than like schizophrenia or ocd, but i can't imagine being bipolar and having to deal with that all the time. i don't think i'm a psychologist, btw. i could be saying inaccurate things bc i'm just saying what i think or remember is right. we watched a video about schizophrenia in psychology class and it basically talked about how debilitating it is and how severe it is. one was about child-onset and it was really sad bc the kids were like 8 and were schizophrenic. usually u don't get it until like 18. the girl in our class told us that her cousin used to do a lot of drugs and that he became schizophrenic, basically ruined his life, and she said they don't want to talk to him bc he'll call and leave all these crazy messages. it's really kind of weird.

Yet, for all those people who are interested in learning about Attention Deficit Disorder there are a few who don't believe in it or don't want to learn about it. As tough as it is dealing with these people sometimes they are the ones to need to be educated the most about Attention Deficit Disorder. In my experiences with these people listening to why they feel the way they do can be very helpful in trying to educate them. I have come to learn that not all people can be educated about Attention Deficit Disorder the same way.

We put together a slide show of their childhoods for the rehearsal dinner. It was a delightful review of just what outdoor people both of them are, filled with the laughter that brothers and sisters poke at one another at shared memories. In the middle of the show I had a moment of emotional weakness, remembering a similar slide show that someone put together for a funeral I had recently attended. Anxiety in the face of death hovers around family members of those in active duty. Sometimes you try to banish it from consciousness as though reflecting...

Ha! The pharmaceutical companies are trying to sell drugs and they have induced physicians as their shills finding subjects for their medications. My advice, buy stock in Pfizer because their antidepressants will be selling like hot cakes in New York City, baby, as they drug up the population there.

Now consider this, I have never had or considered indulging in an eating disorder. But for that instant, I briefly saw how one can start. It's really subtle and the funny thing is, I know eating disorders. Not so much personally but from the media. And not once did I ever relate it to me. I've seen super skinny women on TV and never related them to me. So what was the diff between my past experiences and last week?

"The number one medication in college is antidepressants," said Richard Kadison of Harvard University, whose book about the growing mental health crisis at colleges was published last year. "It's surpassed birth control pills."

But when I’m alone everything falls apart. Even when I’m not alone, I keep my composure but there’s so much going on inside that I really just can’t feel happy. I know it sounds pathetic. People tell me you just have to work at being happy, and I honestly do try instead of allowing myself to wallow in my depression, but it’s too much of a battle and I feel like I’m getting old. I want to go away.

Of course some therapists make money treating ADD. I make money on ADD too. So what? Who makes money on it isn’t the issue. Whether it is a real thing or not isn’t even discussable by intelligent people or at least it shouldn’t be. Of course ADD is real. These TV guys just don’t get what it is. They are thinking of it in the same terms as major depression or other forms of mental illness. I don’t think it falls in that catagory at all.

It made me think of one of my psychiatrists, he told me that some of my symptoms could be construed as being borderline personality disorder, but he didn't think so. And I thought, well why tell me? Every time I have gone to A&E in a depressed crisis, my undoing has been the fact that I can hold an intelligent conversation. Simply because i'm not bouncing off the walls, no one could take me seriously and it has been this dismissal time and time again that has left me with a very sour view of the mental health system. If it wasn't for my lovely...

I wrote two weeks ago about the powerful piece by Bernie Sheahan about her struggle with bipolar disorder and how that struggle will be infinitely compounded when her TennCare coverage is cut off.

But back to the question, “what was her motive"? She obviously avoided the wedding. We did learn that she had backed out of another engagement with little explanation some time in the past. We also learned that she had been arrested on occasions for shoplifting. In my clinical experience shoplifting is often associated with bipolar disorder. It is a way of stimulating excitement to either help fight depression or fan the flames of hypomania.

Nevertheless, even Yank nutritionists and counselors heartily approve of Guiliano’s central message. “The good part of what she says is emphasizing the sensuality of food and liberating eating from `morality,’ ‘’ said Deb Burgard, a psychologist in Los Altos who specializes in weight and eating disorders. “She makes it clear that we deserve a lot more pleasure from what we eat and a lot higher quality.'’

Here’s a story about the workings of a gene that’s been linked to depression. The gene seems to interfere with the functioning of a circuit in the brain that regulates mood. The circuit involves the amygdala, which is central in the perception of emotions, including fear, and the cingulate, which dampens emotional responses. The suspect gene affects serotonin activity in the brain; when people have the depression-linked form of the gene, the changes in serotonin activity seem to affect the amygdala/cingulate circuit, leaving people more vulnerable to negative feelings. What was especially interesting to me was the connection between this brain circuit and harm avoidance, an inherited personality trait. I’m fascinated by the link between personality/temperament and brain chemistry and functioning.

when you are down, everything in life sucks. everything are just not going as they are suppose to be. anyway it’s not the first time that i faces so many shitty things all at the same time. i guess i’m prone to depression. there were a few times where i got so depressed that i just got the urge to open my bedroom window and jump down. but so far i’m still able to gather back positive thoughts before something bad happens.

A weight-loss program common in many Singaporean schools that singles out apparently fat children may be contributing to eating disorders among girls, a study published in the Straits Times said.

So the question is–are these drugs medically necessary? Or are they simply lifestyle drugs? If a man has a medical condition, like diabetes, which can lead to impotence, is it frivolous to restore his sexual ability? One can argue that the cost of Viagra can ward off the cost of antidepressants, which the man may need if impotence is too devastating for him to handle.

A study published last month in the American Journal of Psychiatry suggests an association between maternal exposure to toxoplasmosis and increased risk for developing schizophrenia in adult children. The study, which evaluated archived blood samples from pregnant women who participated in a large birth cohort called the Child Health and Development Study (CHDS) from 1959�1967, was conducted by researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University,...

Some of the specific factors that the study found to be associated with the risk of autism included: breech presentation at birth, delivery before 35 weeks, a parent who had a diagnosis of schizophrenia-like psychosis before the date that autism was diagnosed in the child, and low birth weight at delivery. The study also found many of these factors were independently associated with autism. For example, there was an association between adverse pregnancy events and autism, regardless of whether one of the parents had a diagnosed psychiatric illness.

Across America, of the nearly 2 million people being held in prisons and jails, experts believe nearly 500,000 are mentally ill. For anyone doing the math, that’s 25%. An astounding number. Additionally, according to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), 16 percent of the prison population can be classified as severely mentally ill, meaning that they fit the psychiatric classification for illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar disorder. These numbers do not include other mental illnesses, like anti-social...

Europe's policy is, in part, a reaction to a series of disturbing revelations about dioxins in chicken, mad cow disease, toxic substances in diapers and baby toys, all of which have made many Europeans more averse to taking risks with chemicals.

Thus, in this randomized control trial, sedative music was more effective than scheduled rest and treatment as usual in decreasing anxiety and pain in open-heart surgery patients during first time chair rest. Patients should be encouraged to use sedative music as an adjuvant to medication during chair rest.

Mrs. Baas says a new treatment for depression is changing her life - so much so that she’s willing to drive 115 miles five days a week from Decatur to UT Southwestern Medical Center where she is participating in an experimental study. She undergoes transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive, nonpharmacological technology, in which short pulses of magnetic energy stimulate nerve cells in a specific area of the brain - an area that research has shown to be associated with depression.

But since the government demanded in October that drug manufacturers place such blunt warnings on prescription antidepressants, many patients have been reluctant to try the drugs. And many psychiatrists have worried despondent youths are going without the medical help they need.

Depression can strike anyone, but people with serious illnesses such as stroke may be at greater risk. Appropriate diagnosis and treatment of depression may bring substantial benefits to persons recovering from a stroke by improving their medical status, enhancing their quality of life, and reducing their pain and disability. Treatment for depression also can shorten the rehabilitation process, lead to more rapid recovery and resumption of routine, and save health care costs (e.g., eliminate nursing home expenses).

There's plenty more good stuff in the article, including Michael Ramsay talking about "storage anxiety" when people have too many things saved on their TiVo that they're never going to get around to watching.

I went to the shrink again this morning, trying to get a handle on the anxiety and panic attacks. So now I’m off the Klonopin and Inderal, and onto Buspar, and have a referral slip in my purse for a gynecologist who specializes in psych hormonal issues. I can’t tell if I’m coming or going on these meds, but at least I’m calm. That’s an improvement I’m willing to settle for at the moment. I’m still a little jittery and drugged-feeling, but any way I look at it, it’s a major improvement over the hell of this last week.

Everyone aspires to someone else, everyone wants to change atleast one thing about their looks or their personalities that they see as a fault or a defect. No one is ever truly happy with who they are. You can open a magazine or a newspaper, switch on your TV and you are guaranteed to see some gorgeous vision of an actress or singer swathed in an expensive designer gown looking emaculate, but just ask yourself how many of these supposedly perfect human specimens suffer from eating disorders or have even stooped so low to having plastic surgery...

I’m so tired all the time now, and I suspect that it has something to do with depression. I don’t want to work, I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to bathe, or create, and I rarely do anymore. I just stay in bed with Cooper or stare at the screen like the art will just create itself, the e-mails will respond for me, my account will balance itself.

Two-thirds of people who have bipolar disorder are able to hold a job despite the disruptive mood disorder, according to a new Canadian study.

all this, and the wedding is only... 4 weeks away. i'm not consumed with fear or anxiety yet, so that's a good thing. and hell, i'm looking forward to being able to get away from all this recent hubbub for a week and just enjoy *life* (and being married) for a moment without having to deal with anyone or anything else.

I know, personally, a close relative of the murder victim, who is very much connected to this mess. They should've capped Charles McCoy Jr. from the get-go. He is guilty as hell. He did it. McCoy admitted he was the shooter, yet his attorneys pursued the paranoid schizophrenia angle.

What I realized writing my book was that I had been empty since adolescence. Whenever I try to figure out how to describe it, it always manifests for me in terms of emptiness. I feel like when I was an adolescent, and felt so unworthy of love and so empty, I moved outside of myself. Myself emptied out of myself. And what was left was a more perfect me that maybe people could love, and I wasn't going to show them the other part. And when you do that, you fill in the emptiness�well, it fills up with anxiety real fast, and to numb the anxiety you do...

KEVIN HELLIKER, a Wall Street Journal reporter, writes a compelling article about the effectiveness of exercise in fighting depression. Helliker writes, "A growing body of medical literature, including at least three 2005 studies, is showing that aerobic routines as well as weight lifting are effective at combating depression. In addition to the famous "runner's high," or endorphin surge that provides a temporary mood lift following a workout, the studies show that there is a round-the-clock relief that sets in several weeks after the establishment...

To top it off, I'm feeling sleepy during my awake hours and can't fall asleep when I'm in bed. And it's not that I've been napping either. I've religiously steered away from any catnaps, in hope that I can just fall into bed, and dive into instant slumber. No such luck. Could it be the depression catching up on me?

One such medication used to treat the symptoms of migraine may also chill hot flashes. The drug, called Neurontin, is approved by the FDA to control epileptic seizures and is also used to treat bipolar disorder as well as some social phobia disorders. In the June 2000 issue of Neurology, Thomas J. Guttoso Jr., MD, studied the effect of Neurontin on a handful of patients and found that the drug "reduced the frequency of hot flashes by about 87%" in the six patients he studied.

“Most striking, we saw that only 12 percent of poor minority women were receiving antidepressant medications and only 5 percent met with a counselor or support group. This is in stark contrast to a recent study in which 80 percent of middle- and upper-class white female cancer patients were receiving antidepressants,” study author Kathleen Ell, a professor of social work at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, said in a prepared statement.

Jo, Sleepydust Forum Manager has recently made an interesting post at the Sleepydust Forum about antidepressants. You can read her post here: