Last time we discussed the routines involved around sleep, part of sleep hygiene, and how to train your brain to get a better night’s sleep. This time I’ll be sharing additional tips and information on how to beat insomnia and sleep better every night.
Keep up with mental health news. Three new things in mental health to learn this week:
I get asked fairly regularly for insomnia tips or ideas on how to get a good night’s sleep. I actually have quite a bit of knowledge in this area as I’ve written many articles on sleep disorders for other sites. I know many tips and even rules for getting a good night’s sleep.
If you’re like most people you will experience insomnia some time in your life. It’s actually a very normal problem. Insomnia stems from stress and anxiety, mostly, but can also come about thanks to mental illness or psychiatric medication.
And the thing is, conquering insomnia, no matter what the cause, takes work. You will have to do things you won’t want to do. But when trying to sleep well, you get out of it what you put into it.
The reason most people don’t sleep well is because they have something called bad “sleep hygiene.” Sleep hygiene is simply all the behaviors and thoughts surrounding your sleep habits, and for most of us, our actions and thoughts are keeping us from sleeping.
But you can train your brain to sleep well. It takes time, but you can do it.
Recently I read Invisible Tattoos: The stigma of psychiatry by Dr. Henry A. Nasrallah in Current Psychiatry. Invisible Tattoos is and editorial piece on how the stigma of mental illness affects psychiatrists just like it affects the mentally ill. And my reaction?
I thought the piece was a little whiny and navel-gazing. I mean seriously, these people are respected professionals making lots of money – they don’t have an illness threatening to kill them every day.
But then I got a comment from a medical student and I reconsidered my position. Maybe antipsychiatry poster-boy Tom Cruise doesn’t just fuck around with the way people look at me, maybe he fucks around with the way people look at psychiatrists too. And maybe stigma is difficult for psychiatrists to deal with.
Sometimes I get so wrapped up in research, I forget some people are looking for some introductory information like the different between the types of bipolar disorder. Thanks to commenter on my GooglePlus feed, I was reminded of this fact and I decided to answer her question here so I could give her more detail.
Unfortunately, within bipolar terminology resides more bipolar terminology. But don’t be scared, I have information on most terms on my site and I shall try to walk gently into that good encyclopedia.
But let’s try to get rid of the terminology confusion: What is the difference between bipolar type I and bipolar type II?
Part of having a mental illness like bipolar disorder is having a brain that hates you. A brain that overreacts to the slightest perceived imperfection. All it takes is believing that we have done something wrong for our brain to see it as a capital offense and spend hours or days beating ourselves up about it.
This is pretty de rigueur for someone with a mental illness (especially depression or anxiety).
Beating Yourself Up Over a Perceived ErrorAnd this morning I got an email from someone in just this situation. This person had spent some time with friends and felt they were overly-anxietious, overly-talkative, overly-hyper and so on. And unfortunately, this person was using this perception to beat themselves up.
This is wrong. Please read my response to this person. I hope it will help anyone in this situation (which includes me, from time to time).
Last week I didn’t post three new things but don’t take that to mean I wasn’t learning because I certain was, and always am. For this week I have these three new pieces of information to share:
You may not know this, but ecstasy (MDMA) has been studied as a psychiatric medication. Yes, that’s right, that stuff kids take at raves. The stuff that makes you thirsty and fall in love to the person next to you. That stuff. And MDMA was shown effective in several psychiatric uses.
But research on MDMA (ecstasy) was curtailed in 1985 when the US government named it a class 1 drug (like heroin) over the objections of doctors. Psychiatric research on MDMA is gearing up again though and it has shown promise in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and possibly depression and anxiety.
I am now 33. And that’s one of those ages where the biological clock starts to have a deafening ring. But the thing is I can’t get pregnant; I can’t have kids; I have bipolar disorder.
Admit it – you haven’t kept up with your bipolar reading. Come on. I know it. I can barely keep up and I write the bipolar articles.
Luckily for you, I like you a lot, and I’m happy to give you a little cheat sheet on what’s been getting attention at Breaking Bipolar. We’ve got mental illness and higher education, mental illness and physical pain, how to tell if it’s a med side effect and oh so much more.
Here is a sampling of recent articles written for Breaking Bipolar at HealthyPlace to which people have positively responded:
And just in case you haven’t been glued to the Bipolar Burble, here are a few things you should read here:
This week I learned three new things about psychotherapy and depression.
I’m a fan of psychotherapy for everyone. In fact, if we could get the mid-East folks to sit down for some good counselling, I think it would be more effective in bringing peace than anything you can do with a gun.
With that said, there are limitations to therapy and sometimes therapy is not all it’s cracked up to be. So this week, a look at three perspectives on psychotherapy:
The Bipolar Burble welcomes today’s guest writer, Allison Gamble. She provides resources about psychology degrees.
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Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, is a federal program that supplements income in order to help the elderly and disabled, including those with a mental illness, pay for food, clothing, health care and shelter. Many who receive SSI money are children with diagnosed mental illnesses without any access to health insurance. SSI covers adults with similar conditions.
Unfortunately, recent economic proposals force many of these individuals to face reduced SSI funds or a complete cessation of aid. This would mean adequate medical and therapeutic treatment would disappear, income support for their families would be gone, and, all in all, this would represent a huge step backwards for those affected by mental illness.
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