Six months after my mom’s suicide, there is still a 12-pound lasagna she made in my freezer, and I can’t will myself to defrost it or throw it away. “In case you have guests,” my mother had said, hoisting the slab of meat, noodles and cheese from her refrigerator bag into my freezer. I took this to mean, you should have more friends over. Now that she’s gone, after struggling with such mental health issues as borderline personality disorder, I realize my translation was wrong. She was saying, I wish I had more friends to feed because I feel alone.
Inside Nebraska Medical Center, Nolan Sensintaffar, 5, drives his red Mini Coop down the hospital halls. In his passenger seat sits a plastic box full of instruments. It’s certainly not the normal hospital picture, but this young patient is on his way to therapy. More specifically, he is on his way to music therapy, to help with mental health.
Alongside clinical depression, it is also one of the most common conditions afflicting the artists who compose the long lineage ofthe relationship between creativity and mental illness. Among them was the great poet Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917–September 12, 1977), whose 1947 Pulitzer Prize made him one of the youngest recipients of the coveted accolade. The feat was followed by one of the most severe bipolar episodes in a lifetime with the disease, which first began bedeviling young Lowell decades before Bipolar Disorder was included in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and even before its progenitor, the term manic-depressive reaction, was coined in the early 1950s. With his uncommon poetic potency and mastery of language, Lowell has provided what is perhaps the most piercing account of what it’s like to live with this tragically common and woefully disorienting mental health disease.
I first began experiencing anxiety and depression at the age of 14 after being bullied at school for years. While at first it would come and go, anxiety and depression eventually became a constant presence in my life. Mental health issues were like a perpetual cough that eventually starts to get better, only to come back worse than before. Only unlike a cough, where usually I am still able to function, anxiety and depression hits like a ton of bricks and even the idea of getting out of bed seems to be a goal that gets to be less and less attainable. As time passed, more and more of my days started to be spent paralyzed by endless thoughts of regrets of the past and worries for the future.
When I brought my little corgi, Buddy, home in November of 2014, I didn’t realize at the time how much he would truly change my life. But it didn’t happen right away. Once the new puppy excitement went away, the anxiety and depression crept back as it always had. I woke up one morning and felt those familiar feelings again; the weight on my shoulders, the nausea in my stomach, the feelings of hopelessness and worry. I knew that the anxiety and depression had come back hard and felt depleted. I didn’t want to get out of bed. It felt impossible. I turned to pull the covers back over my head and give up for the day. What I always did. That’s when I came face to face with animal therapy and Buddy.
This letter is overdue. I’m almost 40 years old now, but my mom introduced me to your music when I was 10. As a child, I suffered from severe vertigo and vomiting and mental health challenges. That led to depression and anxiety so bad, I’m amazed I’m alive today. I spent the majority of my young life in my bed sick and scared, waiting for the room to stop spinning and for my stomach to calm down. Most days, I would pray God would finally decide I had suffered enough and give me the heart attack I so desperately wanted.
When a family pet dies, naturally the humans in the household grieve the death of their beloved companion, which often serves as a form of animal therapy for folks with mental illness. However, surviving animals in multi-pet households may also react to the loss in a variety of ways.
If grief is measured by changes in behavior, then grieving is common throughout the animal world.
In her book “How Animals Grieve,” Barbara J. King, a professor of anthropology at the College of William & Mary, defines grief like this: “When a survivor animal acts in ways that are visibly distressed or altered from the usual routine in the aftermath of the death of a companion animal who had mattered emotionally to him or her.” King cites studies and observations that show that animals in the wild, from elephants to birds, exhibit grieving behaviors, as do household pets.
The Companion Animal Mourning Project, a study conducted by the ASCPA, found that more than 60 percent of both dogs and cats exhibited four or more behavioral changes after the death of a fellow pet in the household. Changes include eating less or possibly not at all, craving more attention from their owners, changes in vocalization (barking or meowing more or less than usual) and changes in sleeping places or other habits.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/living/pets/article60433361.html#storylink=cpy
Tinnitus is an incurable condition which can lead to depression,anxiety and suicidal thinking. Following deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness’ admission that he has suffered from the ailment, Laurence White talks to two women about how they deal with the constant background noise and work on mental health, resiliency and wellness skills.
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.
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.
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.
Written by Felicity Thistlethwaite / Sunday Express
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.”
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.”
UFC fighter Ronda Rousey was so distraught after losing last year’s bantamweight championship fight to Holly Holm that she committing suicide. “I was literally sitting there and thinking about killing myself,” Rousey told Ellen DeGeneres on a show airing Tuesday. “I haven’t told anybody that.”
Written by Dr. T.K. Parthasarathy / The Edwardsville Intelligener
Tinnitus is a noise (e.g., buzzing, ringing, roaring) in one or both ears or in the head when there is no external sound present. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), 40 million Americans experience tinnitus of some type.
Clinical depression is normally described as a common clinical mental health illness that affects one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Depression has symptoms related to feelings such as intense sadness, anger, and guilt, hopelessness and constant pessimism. Behaviors symptoms include withdrawing socially, lack of energy, low motivation, sleep problems, poor concentration and changes in appetite causing either significant weight gain or lose. Symptoms in thoughts include poor self-esteem, recurrent thoughts of suicide and loss of interest in regular activities.
