Category Archives: Resiliency

How Running and Meditation Change the Brains of the Depressed

26 Mar 2016

In 2007, writer Jen A. Miller went through a terrible breakup. (Her ex’s parting words: “I’ll keep you in the top eight of my Myspace friends.”) Soon afterward, her grandfather died. Soon after that, she bought a house and signed the paperwork just months before the recession hit. “I did not handle this well,” Miller wrote in a widely shared 2014 column headlined “Running As Therapy” for the New York Times. “As I was helping my mother pack up her parents’ house, I found myself too drained to move and lay down on the floor and sobbed. My mother suggested I try therapy. I signed up for a 10-mile race instead.”

That column could be seen as an early draft of Miller’s memoir, Running: A Love Story, which is out this week. In it, she details her lifelong relationship with the sport and how the simple act of putting one foot in front of another over 10, 15, or 26.2 miles brought back her mental clarity. In her book, Miller distances herself from the Times headline, writing that she “probably should have sought professional help,” and that she doesn’t mean to suggest self-care is an adequate treatment for the depressed. And it’s true that many severely depressed people are so ill that physical activity becomes impossible; it is also true that seeking professional help is crucial for those who struggle with mental-health issues.

Overcoming the Stigmas of Mental Illness

25 Mar 2016

Each year, MSU hosts a Mental Health Awareness Week with help from the Associate Students of Michigan State University, or ASMSU. The week aims to highlight resources, generate discussions, and ultimately lessen the stigma surrounding mental illness.

These four students share their own battles with mental health in hopes that it will shine a light on what it is like to live with a mental illness. A simple act — walking to class or sitting in lecture — can spiral into a terrifying event for microbiology-environental biology senior Mirijam Garske.

Garske was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and a panic disorder in addition to her phobias, which can cause problems especially with her anxiety.

Ragland Family Raises Awareness About Traumatic Brain Injury

24 Mar 2016

Over 10,000 Alabamians suffer a traumatic brain injury every year and of those, 2,300 are serious enough to require a hospital stay. “No two traumatic brain injuries are the same,” said J. Scott Powell, Executive Director of Alabama Head Injury Foundation. “For some, it may be immediately recognized by others and yet for others, it exists as an invisible injury, often leading to misunderstanding by others and added challenges faced by the survivor.” Wanda Canada of Ragland has learned many things about traumatic brain injury, or TBI, while raising her 15-year-old grandson Hunter Kay. “He is the sweetest boy you would ever meet,” Canada said. “But I want people to know that just because Hunter looks like a normal little boy, he’s not.” In 2004, Hunter was severely injured in a car accident that killed his parents, Summer and John. Hunter suffered broken bones, injured organs and burns on his face, but his most severe wound was right frontal lobe brain damage. “Initially he was just so out of control,” Canada remembered. “You couldn’t take him anywhere, you couldn’t do anything because his little mind was going every which way.” Canada has devoted herself to helping her grandson, but said his challenges can make school a lonely place. He attends Odenville Middle School where she said he goes to both special needs and regular classes, but academically still preforms at a second grade level.

Can Trauma Help You Grow?

16 Mar 2016

When I tell people that I had a brother who was kidnapped and murdered, I’m often asked how my parents survived. I was only four when Jon died, so for a long time I had the same question. My family suffered an unfathomable loss. Yet I grew up as free as most kids in the nineteen-seventies: my friends and I biked around town for hours, losing ourselves in the woods, the lakes, the arcades, with no cell phones to find us. When I finally had children of my own, I wondered more than ever how my mom and dad had done it. How had they found the strength not only to survive but to let me go? A few years ago, I began exploring this question while reporting and writing my memoir, “Alligator Candy,” about the murder and its aftermath. During that research, I found a new way to contextualize my family’s experience: a psychological phenomenon called post-traumatic growth. Psychologists have long studied resilience—the ability to bounce back and move on. But post-traumatic growth, which has been documented in hundreds of studies, is different; it’s what happens when trauma changes and deepens life’s meaning. In his recent book on the phenomenon, “What Doesn’t Kill Us,” Stephen Joseph, a psychologist at the University of Nottingham, describes victims of trauma experiencing enhanced relationships, greater self-acceptance, and a heightened appreciation of life. “To only look at the dark side and negative side is to miss out on something very important,” Joseph told me recently. Needless to say, no one wants to go through trauma, or suggests it’s a good thing. I’d rather have Jon here with me now—watching Louis C.K., eating a bowl of pho, hearing about his kid’s messy room—than be writing this essay. But, as Rabbi Harold Kushner (no relation) wrote after the loss of his son, “I cannot choose.” The existence of post-traumatic growth suggests that, while the pain never vanishes, something new and powerful is likely to come. As my mother once told my other brother, Andy, and me, “It’s like, after a spring gets pushed all the way down, it rises even higher.”

Virtual Therapy Helps With Depression

26 Feb 2016

Patients wear a headset that projects a life-sized image, firstly of an adult and then of a child. The new research tested the technology for the first time on patients with a mental health problem. The project is part of a continuing study at University College London. The university, which is working in collaboration with ICREA-University of Barcelona, has suspected for several years that virtual therapy could help with mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, suicidal thoughts, and more.

Exercise for Suicide Prevention

25 Feb 2016

Alaska National Guardsmen gathered Monday for a workout called 22 WOD to End Veteran Suicide. The WOD, or Workout Of the Day, is a national CrossFit event geared toward raising awareness about suicide prevention. Despite increasing mental health services, the number of veteran suicides in Alaska may be growing. Eight vets took their lives during fiscal year 2014, versus five the fiscal year before. Nationally, an average of 22 vets commit suicide each day. It’s a staggering number the military is working to combat through events like 22 WOD, which recognize those lives lost. At the gym on Camp Carroll, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, service members took part in a work out so tough, SSgt. Oliver Meza said it’s almost like going into combat. “High stress, adrenaline, sweat — you’re giving everything you got so it’s almost replicating that environment,” he said. Exercise can help treat such issues as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and more.

Animal Therapy For Humans?

24 Feb 2016

Ryan Lively first became interested in the human brain when she was a high school junior studying anatomy at Annapolis Area Christian School’s Upper School Campus in Severn. Now a senior, it was a “no-brainer” that Lively would select the human brain as the subject of her Senior Practicum, a year-long project that is a requirement for graduation from AACS. What made Lively’s project unique was the way she incorporated five dogs from Pets-On-Wheels into the brain study. This is a form of animal therapy, which is a mental health program used to help people with such issues as mental illness, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and more.