Kitchen Therapy - The Bipolar Question of the Week
Let me get in a quick plug for doing your own cooking. For me, there are four benefits: I eat healthier, the food tastes better, it is a sure-fire stress-buster, and I have the satisfaction of a job well done.
Last evening I was busy preparing my “Green Meatloaf Wellington.” This involved frying up three different greens (spinach, chard, and kale), then adding sautéed Portobello mushrooms, caramelized... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - August 3, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Bipolar and You - The Search for Identity
To be or not to be: ARE you bipolar? Or do you HAVE bipolar? That is the question. In response to an earlier post, Don’t Call Me Bipolar, Tabby wrote:
I have said, time and again... "I am NOT a Bipolar person. I am a person who struggles with Bipolar." and I've found - over the years - that many with Bipolar bristle at that. Many WANT to be "a Bipolar" person because the Bipolar is who they are or describes their... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - August 2, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to a Depression - Connecting Depression and Humor
Old joke: A guy with severe depression seeks out a therapist. He’s lonely, feels hopeless, and views life as cruelly unfair. He has no idea how others cope. The therapist has the perfect solution. She advises her patient that the great stand-up comic, the Laughmeister, is in town. Just laughing to the Laughmeister, she explains, can work wonders.
The man bursts into tears. “But doctor,” he says. “I am the... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 31, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Your Doctor Says You Have Clinical Depression ... But Is It Really Bipolar?
In a recent piece directed at my readers with bipolar, I noted that for many people unipolar depression is bipolar waiting to happen. Too often, people with bipolar get misdiagnosed with depression. You could be one of them. Let’s investigate:
In May this year, the American Psychiatric Association published the latest version of it’s diagnostic bible - the DSM-5. Unfortunately, the DSM-5 does not address itself to the issue... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 31, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Electronic Gadgets in Your Life - The Bipolar Question of the Week
My iPhone is sitting in a bowl of fruit being charged. The fruit bowl serves as one charging station, a night table as another, and a candle sconce another. Speaking of charging ...
Last night, my sweetheart returned from two weeks in Alaska. She and 26 others were out in the middle of nowhere, hiking, kayaking, sleeping in tents. The most urgent need for the people on the trip was to get to a charging station. Everyone had a phone, of... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 29, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
When Anti-Stigma Backfires
This is the second in a series exploring stigma. We’re all against stigma, right? Here is how the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) looks at the issue (from their website):
Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life. ... Mental illnesses are not the result of personal weakness, lack of... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 28, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Your Summer Reading - The Bipolar Question of the Week
I have a confession to make. A few months ago, I downloaded my first Harry Potter book into my ancient Kindle. I couldn’t stop reading. Next thing, I was inhaling my fourth Harry Potter.
Okay, I thought, time to take a Harry Potter break. After all, I had commitments, obligations. I went to collect my junk mail. There, sitting atop the mail boxes, was the fifth Harry Potter. I’m not making this up. I mentioned this to... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 22, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
The Crazy Thing About Stigma: Don't Call Me Bipolar
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ...
Last week, in The Art of the Therapeutic Insult, I noted that on occasion I happen to refer to myself as “depressed and crazy.” Some people think the word, crazy, should be banned. I am not one of them.
Crazy is one of those, well, crazy words. It very accurately describes a large part of who I am, both good and bad.... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 21, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
The Art of the Therapeutic Insult
Did you ever wish you told some jerk off? Delivered a brilliant put-down, put some over-inflated gasbag in his place? We never do, of course. Our brains aren’t that quick, our nerve not that strong. Only our heroes in fiction get to have all the fun. Here are some of my favorites:
French soldier to Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 15, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Coming Someday in Your Intermediate Future: Brain Scans as a Diagnostic Tool in Bipolar
What if a doctor could get our diagnosis right the first time, just from reading a brain scan? In theory, the technology exists. The catch is we’re not quite sure what we are looking for.
Mary Phillips directs brain imaging research into depression and bipolar at the University of Pittsburgh and Cardiff University. A 2007 review article she published (with Matthew Keener), Neuroimaging in Bipolar Disorder: A Critical Review... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 15, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Watching Your Brain Go Crazy: The Bipolar Question of the Week
Have you ever been a disinterested observer of your brain going crazy? This happens to me when I go to the dentist, and it just so happened I was there on Tuesday. This was to be a simple routine check-up and teeth clean. Of course, nothing involving dentists is ever routine. Just allowing someone to look into my mouth is the equivalent of being suspended over a vat of boiling oil by a single strand of rotting dental floss. Nevertheless, it is a... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 8, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
DSM-5 Bipolar: David Kupfer Weighs In
Okay, this is really interesting. One can argue that the most trenchant criticism of DSM-5 bipolar comes from none other than the chair of the DSM-5 Task Force, David Kupfer. This requires some explanation:
Until 2009, Dr Kupfer was the chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and Western Psychiatric Institute. He is one of the leading experts on mood disorders, having authored more than 800 articles and... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - July 7, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Getting Mugged By Creative Ideas - The Bipolar Question of the Week
Wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge (referring to himself in the third person):
All the images rose up before him as things with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.
From Mozart:
Whence and how [ideas] come, I know not; nor can I force them … Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - June 29, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Depression: What the DSM-5 Doesn't Tell You That You Need to Know
I accidentally posted this under Bipolar by mistake. Here it is, in depression, where it belongs ...
Yesterday, I posted on two easy-to-overlook but significant changes the DSM-5 made to the depression diagnosis. In a nutshell, the DSM now recognizes that anxiety and manic symptoms can occur inside our depressions. These extras may profoundly change the character of the illness, with important treatment and recovery... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - June 29, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
Depression - What the DSM-5 Doesn't Tell You That You Need to Know
Yesterday, I posted on two easy-to-overlook but significant changes the DSM-5 made to the depression diagnosis. In a nutshell, the DSM now recognizes that anxiety and manic symptoms can occur inside our depressions. These extras may profoundly change the character of the illness, with important treatment and recovery implications.
Unfortunately, the DSM-5 left the rest of its depression criteria exactly as they found it, virtually... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - June 28, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs
