Keep up with mental health news. Three new things in mental health to learn this week:
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?
Read MorePart 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).
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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.
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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.
Read MoreIt’s a bit of a short week what with the holiday and all, but still, there is time for three new things about mental health. Today’s three new things are:
This week’s three new things include:
In my line of work I come across the most obscure information, which is why I love sharing it with you. This week’s three new things about mental illness include:
How could you not want to know the details about that?
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The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the manual that defines all mental illness in the US, is being revised and a new version is due out in 2013. One of the proposed changes to the DSM is to the diagnosis of mixed moods. This change is being proposed by a mood disorders workgroup. It aims to reflect clinical practice where doctors already refer to a “mixed” mood that doesn’t officially meet the DSM criteria. (As I noted, mixed moods are only technically recognized in bipolar type 1.)
Changes to the mixed mood diagnosis will help people with bipolar 1, bipolar 2 and unipolar depression get better treatment.
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