Overcoming Agoraphobia
Anxiety and agoraphobia are two of the most searched for terms related to mental health in the UK. On average the two terms are searched for 122,000 times a month on Google suggesting a large need for help with this area. Agoraphobia is typically found in up to 3% of the population. Mainly people aged 20-30 with it being twice as prevalent in women. But anyone can suffer from this regardless of age, sex or gender.
Under the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, agoraphobia is defined as a condition where individuals have a disproportionate fear of public places. People often see environm...
Source: Psych Central - February 24, 2020 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Gregory Warwick, DCounsPsych, CPsych, AFBPsS Tags: Agoraphobia Anxiety Panic Disorder Exposure Therapy Panic Attack Source Type: news
Handling a Stressful Day
For me, the most important day of the month is when I go to the veteran’s hospital where I get my medication. I wake up before 8am to make sure I get a parking spot. I immediately go to the blood lab where I get blood work done to ensure that I am not experiencing any adverse reactions to my medication. After my blood has been taken, I go to my appointment with my doctor.
This would be a normal schedule for me. When things do not go as planned, an interruption in the routine can create stress. Stress can be a trigger for my schizophrenia. I take deep breathes and deal with other triggers like needing a cup of coffee or ...
Source: Psych Central - February 21, 2020 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Jason Jepson Tags: Schizoaffective Disorder Schizophrenia Antipsychotic Psychosis veterans Source Type: news
Increasing Attachment in Grandfamilies and Kinship Care
While working as a family therapist with kinship families, also known as grandparents raising their grandchildren, I came across families who were struggling with the ability to rebuild broken trust.
Raising your grandchild (or another relative) brings with it attachment challenges you may not have faced when you raised your biological children. By “attachment” I am referring to the safety and comfort that develops, over time between a child and caregiver. For example, the bond between you and your children probably grew organically, beginning in utero, and continued to develop from the first day of their life. As you...
Source: Psych Central - February 19, 2020 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Beth Tyson Tags: Addictions Aging Caregivers Children and Teens Family Grief and Loss Parenting Substance Abuse Adverse Childhood Experience Attachment Bonding Child Development Grandfamily Grandparents grieving kinship family Source Type: news
Blinders for Coping with Schizophrenia
When horses pull a carriage, sometimes they are wearing blinders over their eyes so they cannot look to the right or left. They can only look forward without any distractions coming into their view. This is a good picture of how I approach my life in recovery from schizophrenia. Metaphorically speaking, putting on blinders each day is a way I have learned to cope with my diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Every month I go to a veteran’s hospital to get blood work for my medication and to get my monthly injectable. On the drive there, I am the only one in the car so if I hear a voice, I block it out because the doors are locke...
Source: Psych Central - February 10, 2020 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Jason Jepson Tags: Personal Stories Schizoaffective Disorder Schizophrenia breakthrough symptoms Delusions Hallucinations Paranoia Source Type: news
We Are the Luckiest: An Interview with Laura McKowen on the Magic of a Sober Life
Addiction affects a staggering number of lives in the United States; not just those who use substances, but family, friends, co-workers and society at large. According to Defining the Addiction Treatment Gap, a CATG review of the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and other national data sources, addiction continues to impact every segment of American society.
“Drug use is on the rise in this country and 23.5 million Americans are addicted to alcohol and drugs,” said Dr. Kima Joy Taylor, director of the CATG Initiative....
Source: Psych Central - January 27, 2020 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edie Weinstein, MSW, LSW Tags: Addictions Interview Substance Abuse Addiction Recovery Alcoholism Sobriety Source Type: news
Choosing Freedom, After Decades of Switching Addictions
This article includes references to self-injury, intravenous drug use and disordered eating.*
One in five US high school students have reported being bullied. Approximately 160,000 teenagers have skipped school as a preventative measure. I encountered bullies for the first time in second grade, in the midst of such an innocent time of my youth. I dreaded entering my elementary school classroom, as I was well aware of what my presence would entail. I endured both verbal and physical harassment from my fellow peers for nearly a decade. I was passive, inevitably leading to the acceptance of my “fate,” in addition to suffe...
Source: Psych Central - January 20, 2020 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Megan Lane Tags: Addictions Anorexia Bullying Depression Eating Disorders Personal Stories Substance Abuse Addiction Recovery Anorexia Nervosa Drug Use heroin Self Harm Self Injury Source Type: news
Kicking Toxic Love
The last man that used the words “I love you” used them to control me.
He used them by not saying it back, ever, when I said it.
He used them by smugly making me say it when he wanted to hear it.
He used them by only ever saying them himself when I would work up the strength to try to end things.
He used them to make me feel bad when I didn’t “behave” how he wanted me to.
He used them to convince me of a false future that he had no intention of ever providing.
The words “I love you” meant absolutely nothing. They were alternately a crowbar, a hammer, a master key… in a box of tools o...
Source: Psych Central - January 16, 2020 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Jessie Monreal, CADC Tags: Addictions Codependence Narcissism Personal Stories Relationships & Love Addiction Recovery Alcoholism Breakups Emotional Abuse Substance Abuse Source Type: news
How Social Anxiety Is Killing Your Cells and Why the Internet Can Help
Just over 19 percent of US adults experienced an anxiety disorder at some point last year (that figure jumps to nearly a quarter when looking at US women in particular) and over 12 percent of people suffer from social anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. So needless to say, quite a few present readers are about to get some bad news: it’s not just your retinue or lack thereof that’s feeling the consequences of sub-functional mental health. No matter how well you’ve co-opted your mental illness and colored it as an endearing eccentricity, if you’re still chronically distressed, impaired or both, then there...
Source: Psych Central - January 7, 2020 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Greg Hughes, PharmD Tags: Aging Anxiety Neuroscience Social Networking Technology Treatment Brain Social Anxiety telomeres Source Type: news
10 Strategies for Surviving Dysfunctional Family Holiday Gatherings
Holidays can be a very stressful time in general — but if you were raised in a dysfunctional family system, it can go beyond ordinary stress and enter the “danger” or “crisis” zone very quickly, depending on how toxic your current family system dynamics are. In this article I share 10 strategies that have helped my psychotherapy clients feel more at ease during family events via careful planning, self-caring acts, and having realistic expectations.
Holiday Gatherings with Dysfunctional Family Can Be Stressful
It is common to have high expectations when thinking of family gatherings. Alternat...
Source: Psych Central - December 19, 2019 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Rebecca C. Mandeville, MA, MFT Tags: Family Holiday Coping Narcissism Personality Boundaries Dysfunctional Family family systems holiday gatherings no contact Toxic Family Toxic People triggers Source Type: news
On Mental Health Stigma
One thing I shared with my wife Rachel about a year into our relationship was the time I suffered a nervous breakdown in graduate school. It would be an important moment in any relationship because I shared the time in my life when I was most vulnerable and at my weakest point. Did I technically suffer a nervous breakdown? I’m not sure, all I remember is the turning point came when I drove home late one night, collapsed on my kitchen floor and started crying uncontrollably. Up to that point, I had developed a quasi-schizophrenic outlook on life and could no longer bear the weight of the world-view I constructed. In psych...
Source: Psych Central - November 29, 2019 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Gregory Duncan Tags: Borderline Personality Personal Stories Stigma Suicide Antidepressants Borderline Personality Disorder college Delusions Life Transition Nervous Breakdown Paranoia Psychosis Shame Stigmatization Source Type: news
This Under-Utilized Drug Is Actually Critical for Treatment-Resistant Depression
Many people with clinical depression have tried an array of medication and still feel sick. Maybe they’ve tried different selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs). Maybe they’ve taken these antidepressants along with an antipsychotic (a common strategy to boost effectiveness).
Either way, the lack of improvement can make individuals feel even more hopeless and fear the darkness will never lift.
If this sounds all-too familiar, you’re definitely not alone. In fact, up to 30 percent of people with depression don’t respond to the first few antidepressants ...
Source: Psych Central - November 27, 2019 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. Tags: Antidepressants Depression Disorders ECT General Medications Treatment Atypical Depression difficult to treat depression Managing Depression MAOIs medication for depression Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors Severe Depression Treatin Source Type: news
Remembering Loved Ones Lost to Suicide: Give Yourself Permission to Heal
My sister, Amber, died by suicide on New Year’s Eve 2013. I’d last seen her just a few days prior at Christmas. She seemed “off” — depressed and over-apologetic — but certainly no one expected that she was suicidal.
She’d been struggling with depression and substance use, but had also gotten help and was working to get her life back together. In fact, she’d been a patient in my facility just six months prior. As a counselor and as her brother, I had so many questions. How could I have missed the signs? Did I fail her? Did I let her down? In the immediate aftermath, I felt anguish, hurt, anger and ...
Source: Psych Central - November 23, 2019 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Marlon Rollins Tags: Depression Grief and Loss Personal Stories Stigma Suicide Trauma International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day Source Type: news
Intimacy Without Intoxication: Is Sober Sex Better?
The sun is streaming through the curtains of a room that you have never seen before. You squint and rub your bloodshot eyes, as your hand reaches out to feel the prone body of the snoring person who a few hours earlier was a stranger. You notice your own naked body and wonder how the two of you spent the interceding time. You look at the floor next to the bed and see your clothes, strewn across the carpet, wine bottles and glasses, a few joints, and a line of cocaine on the dresser across the room.
You slide out of bed, gather your belongings, hightail it to the bathroom and quickly get yourself street ready. Wondering ho...
Source: Psych Central - November 22, 2019 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edie Weinstein, MSW, LSW Tags: Addictions Sexuality Substance Abuse Drug Abuse Rape Sexual Assault Sober Support Sobriety Trauma Source Type: news
Why Getting Off My Mental Health Meds Was a Bad Idea
I created this artwork while smack-dab in a low mental health place over the jummer. My anxiety was causing my hand to no-joke shake with the paint brush in it, yet I felt so sure: everything I was going through was material and it would take me somewhere. (p.s. Is it obvious that I’d just seen the newest Aladdin movie?)
Well, it happened again.
I feel like life for me over the past decade has basically been this: me scurrying around scooping up my marbles, then losing them again. Scoop em up, lose em again. Scoop, lose, scoop, lose.
The particular Marble Scattering that just occurred, though, I mostly did to myself.
In ...
Source: Psych Central - October 22, 2019 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tricia Arthur Tags: Anti-anxiety Attention Deficit Disorder Medications Personal Stories Adhd Adult Attention Deficit Medication Compliance Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors Source Type: news
Is a Gray Rock Strategy Advisable?
One strategy for dealing with a narcissist or sociopath is to act like a “gray rock,” meaning that you become uninteresting and unresponsive. You don’t feed their needs for drama or attention. You don’t show emotion, say anything interesting, or disclose any personal information. Nor do you ask questions or participate in conversations, except for brief factual replies. Limit your answers to a few syllables, a nod, or say “maybe” or “I don’t know.” Additionally, you may have to make yourself plain and unattractive, so your partner gains no pleasure in showing you off or even being seen with you.
This mane...
Source: Psych Central - October 18, 2019 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT Tags: Abuse Codependence Communication Narcissism Relationships & Love Coping Strategies Domestic Violence gray rock grey rock Narcissistic Personality Disorder Source Type: news
