Mental Health Update

Amazing. The USDA is not fighting for more stringent oversight — it’s not even remaining neutral. It’s telling companies that want to voluntarily maintain higher standards that they aren’t allowed to do so. It might make the others look bad!

When I mailed the letter, I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, but I hadn’t gone yet. After I got home from the psychiatrist that day, I was freaked out and as white as a ghost because the only connection I had to the bipolar disorder was my friend Giles, who when he went into mania he would stay up for two or three days at a clip and he would talk a mile a minute. I sincerely thought that’s what would start happening to me, so I called Angela on the phone. I asked her if she’d read the letter I’d sent. It was on her dining room table, but she hadn’t opened it because she was afraid.

Recently, I was diagnosed with Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder (A. A. A. D. D.). This is how it manifests:

I read things like the above quote and just grieve. I do not know how she is alive and walking after years of eating disorders and drug abuse. Three years ago when she lived with us the doctor said she was on the verge of heart failure, and that was before the meth. I am quite sure that the damage she has done to herself has become somewhat permanent. Though I still believe in miracles. My logical mind tries to scientifically understand how she is still alive. I imagine that her body has “reprogrammed” to run on meth now instead of real food. That is why such addictions are so horrible to break, is it not?

In this case, the person involved was a regular customer of ours who appears to suffer from untreated schizophrenia. Most of the time she keeps to herself, but lately she has been approaching other customers and touching them on the knee. We're not sure if she does this to get their attention or to check if they are real or what, but whatever her reasons, it is freaking people out. On one day alone we had five people get up and leave the coffeeshop because she wouldn't/couldn't keep her hands to herself.

The teen years are some of the most difficult for both boys and girls. However, studies show that as teen boys enter puberty, their confidence is likely in increase. On the other hand, girls’ confidence and feelings of self-esteem are likely to take a downhill slide. The repercussions of this can be damaging at best and destructive at worst. Girls who do not feel good about themselves are more likely to suffer from depression and engage in self-destructive behavior that can range from eating disorders, to cutting, to risky sexual behaviors. Obviously, doing whatever you can to keep your daughter feeling good about herself is a good idea. The following tips are by no means all inclusive, but they are a starting point.

Soon after my return, I got diagnosed BPD, i.e. Borderline Personality Disorder, which caused me to fluctuate for a good one and a half week between going mad, and going insane. Having learned quite something in the Clinic, I decided not to sit around feeling sorry for myself, and to take it out on work.

I think you have failed to balance out the argument and you are targeting MTV (a very EASY target) to express your disgust with the fact that an otherwise healthy young 24-old-female Paula suffers from a very vicious, terrible eating disorder.

A Life Coach will help you with any and all issues you may have. A Life Coach will help you take what appear to be big problems, and break them into smaller, manageable challenges, like a good math teacher would do. A Life Coach will help you take action with the smaller points by getting to your real issues and learning the reason for your core problem. Once that is determined, action is taken to address and resolve the problem. This can be anything from procrastination, clutter, starting a small business, weight issues, relationship issues (with family, friends, mates, roommates, bosses, co-workers), or more serious emotional issues such as eating disorders, compulsive gambling, sexual issues, phobias or excessive-compulsive disorders, etc.

To help me get through some of the worst times with my boyfriend, I picked up one of my favorite books - Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I’d read it some years before and loved the story. This time I read it for the "you can do it" message just so I could make it one day to the next. At that point I was in a deep depression with severe anxiety from the stress of living with an abusive, suicidal man, and therapy wasn’t enough to override the downward spiral of his health and my feelings. Atlas did the trick. Needless to say, I pretty much maxed out the depression scale when I first went in to the doctor’s for treatment. After two weeks of reading Atlas, I felt alive, and confident, and *strong* for the first time in months. My depression scale score went from a 37/40 to a 2 before the meds could have any effect. The enthusiasm from the book did wear off slowly, but it gave me a shot in the arm when I was scraping the bottom of the barrel, and there’s a good chance it saved one or more lives at least once.

If what I’m using is doing the job, why change? Because I’ve got IADD… Internet Attention Deficit Disorder. I get twitchy if I don’t keep trying new things once in a while. The thing with browsers is I don’t really roadtest them very hard. If they annoy me I go back to Ye Olde standby, Firefox. So, I’m going Opera 8.5 (not 9 I know but it doesn’t have scrollbars for me.)

In a previous post I mentioned that I have bipolar II disorder and that is part of the reason that we decided not to parent. A reader asked if I thought that bipolar disorder should preclude any woman from parenting.

I forgot to mention, my psychiatrist (as well as my GP) thinks that bipolar disorder is caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, and she thinks that one day there will be drugs that will sort it out completely. Food for thought for all the people who try to tell people like me that bipolar disorder is due to weakness, wickedness, or any other daft idea - and believe me I’ve heard them all.

Here are some common ways this feeling expresses itself physically: (1) a tightness in the throat, chest or between the shoulder blades, (2) pain in the lower back, (3) headaches or dizziness, (4) chronic fatigue, (5) numbness of certain parts of the body, (6) anxiety and tenseness, (7) difficulty swallowing, (8) nausea, (9) upset stomach or irritable bowel, (10) ringing in the ears.

Many people with manic depression, also known as bipolar disorder, are living happy and fulfilling lives. How do they manage to stay well? Contributors to this book discuss many different ways to stay well. It is rarely just about seeing a psychiatrist and taking prescribed medication. It is often about so much more.

Paula is the character on the show that has an eating disorder but that’s not all. Paula is clearly a depressed person who shows signs of manic depression and a ridiculous amount of self esteem issues. She also clearly stated in her audition tape that she was “kind of bulimic”. The roommates notice that she is incredibly thin right away and the frat boy character John says that he thinks she would be pretty if she gained weight. This spirals into confrontation and ends in hyperventilation.

I have since learned that downer cows or cows that are so sick they can no longer walk, are rendered for animal feed, since they are not suitable for human consumption. Yet they are fed to animals we also eat: chickens, pigs, farm raised fish. The FDA just ordered the destruction of a whole trout farm because of whirling fish disease (the equivalent of mad cow disease in fish). Though I applaud their resourcefulness, recycling and reusing sick cows is one recycling project of which the green guru does not approve.

Obviously, the author of this comment is the true “redneck.” He has no idea what manic depression is; nor does he care to learn about it. He does not know the money I will be receiving from Social Security is based on the amount deducted from the paychecks I earned working for sixteen years.