Category Archives: Wellness

7 Ways You Could Be Wrecking Your Mental Health

17 Mar 2016

There are obvious things in life that will drag down your mental health: being in an abusive relationship, for instance, or dealing with the death of a loved one. Beyond that, however, there are factors that you may not realize play a role in keeping mental health on the up, and are letting slide in the belief that they don’t matter. News flash: they do. You need to get enough sleep, get moving, stop smoking, and stop ignoring the seriously stressful parts of your life if you want to avoid heading for a mental health crash.

The mental health disorders I’m addressing here are predominantly the ones that are most affected by environmental factors: the mood disorders, anxiety, depression, and to a lesser extent, bipolar disorder. Others do pop up, though, so it’s not just one size fits all. This isn’t about blame, either: every mental illness is a cocktail of unique factors, and you can’t in all honesty be thought to have “brought it on yourself”. But if you do want to keep your head on the smooth and narrow, there are certain activities to avoid and behaviors to stop, as they’re high-risk when it comes to mental health.

Getting Past the Shotgun Approach to Treating Mental Illness

11 Mar 2016

We treat depression by trying different drugs until we find one that works—a highly imprecise approach to treating the most sophisticated of organs, the brain.

Alexia had been in-and-out of intensive psychiatric therapy for nearly two decades by the time we met. She suffered from bipolar disorder, which meant that she cycled between explosions of boundless energy and black holes of suicidal despair. Despair brought her to our unit.

Her long chart chronicled how previous psychiatrists had emptied the armory: antidepressants, antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, mood stabilizers, group and intensive inpatient therapy, psychotherapy, dialectic and cognitive behavioral therapy. Nothing had a lasting effect

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.

Can You Hear This Hissing Noise? Tinnitus and How To Live With It

23 Feb 2016

Any ailment can be frustrating and upsetting, but tinnitus sufferers will tell you the constant humming sound goes beyond that. Tinnitus is the term for hearing sounds that come from inside your body, rather than from an outside source. It is usually described as a ringing, hissing, buzzing, roaring or humming sound where there is no external sound source. It can lead to clinical depression. There may be a single sound or two or more, and the noise may be there all the time or come and go. It can be heard in one or both ears or in the head.”

 

A Man on a Mission: Give a True Count of the Toll of Mental Illness

22 Feb 2016

0.4 percent. That’s the proportion of global development assistance that goes to mental illness prevention, care and treatment, according to Daniel Vigo. It’s $1.5 billion of the $372 billion total health assistance spending around the world over the last 15 years. Vigo, a psychologist and psychiatrist at Harvard, believes that more money is needed. And he also believes that one reason the percentage is so low is that the world doesn’t do a good job of assessing the number of people who suffer from mental illness and the disability and the premature death that result. Those lost years — years when a person can’t work, can’t take part in family life — and those earlier-than-expected deaths are what’s called the “global burden of mental illness.”