The 4-year-old child spills the cereal on the floor when trying to put some in his own bowl. The mother’s response: “I told you not to take cereal yourself! No one listens to me. I’m a piece of garbage!” Storming,… Continue Reading
You know what I like? A little good news. It doesn’t really seem like all that much to ask. You know, just not the constant drumbeat of gloom and doom. But apparently ever since T.S. Eliot had the brilliant insight… Continue Reading
My mother is a woman of – how shall I say?–unusual tastes. It came to the point in jewelry that nothing sold in stores could really satisfy her. So she, a woman of many talents, took to making her own.… Continue Reading
I know, I know. I’ve really hit you over the head with some of these stats, you could recite ’em in your sleep. Right, 1 in between 4 and 5 (it’s about 26.2%) Americans suffer from a mental illness in… Continue Reading
So you may recall from my mentioning in previous posts – and I most certainly hope you do not – that my ECT treatments combined with my bipolar disorder (BD) have left me, well – how do I say this… Continue Reading
Did you ever get the feeling that someone didn’t like you? I mean–really, really didn’t like you, perhaps even saw you as beneath contempt? And–did you get that feeling before there was any interaction between you and the aforesaid person?… Continue Reading
Unlike most of the Awareness Months, Weeks, or Days I cover, Mental Health Awareness Week is a grassroots public education campaign–it wasn’t designated by the Senate, it isn’t supported by an organization that’s been around since the time of… Continue Reading
I don’t always trust the way the government uses its funds to research on health. If you ask me why all that negativity, I turn to you: Do these studies look like good ways of using around a couple hundred… Continue Reading
Do you remember that I told you that bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia have been considered completely different illnesses for. . .well, pretty much forever? Until researchers started getting a look at people’s brains? And then it seemed possible–just possible–that… Continue Reading
Although there’s no reason to doubt that schizophrenia is as old as mankind, the name didn’t come into existence until 1910, when the Swiss psychiatrist Paul Eugen Bleuler termed the illness such, with the Greek words schizo (split) and phren (mind)… Continue Reading
Health professionals have known about the problem of this time lag for years, and back in 1999 were asking in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, “Is bipolar disorder still underdiagnosed? Are antidepressants overutilized?” The short answer is, ‘yup.’ That study… Continue Reading
There’s not a lot that makes you feel better about yourself than someone flat-out telling you you’re stupid. My doctor seems to think if he gives lots of reasons for my stupidity, excusing me for being a somewhat of an… Continue Reading
