This little tidbit appearing in the Start-Telegram from Ft. Worth, Texas, annoyed me. You be the judge. Somehow I am not impressed with that, why did they bother to print it? Was it filler space for the Women’s Section? Was it to tell us watch out in case we get stuck worrying about one thing?
Anxiety to me, and I suspect to anyone that reads here, is not as easy as not worrying so much. My anxiety had nothing to do with worry. Did yours?
About 20% had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But only 13% met the criteria, says Mark Zimmerman, MD, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence.
“In about half of patients previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder, we couldn’t confirm the diagnosis,” he tells WebMD.
Why is this happening? How did it get so far?
Patients with anxiety , agitation, irritability, and restlessness that does not persist are sometimes misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, Zimmerman says.
I wonder if that could be because only therapists see us now, Psychiatrists have been turned into Diagnosis and Prescription writing machines, with expensive degrees.
That’s all the news for today, but I want to ask a question: do insurance and and functionaries decide what treatments and drugs are right for us, or do the Physician’s do it?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy comes up a lot in the research pages, so I decided to do a little Googling, and came up with some decent resources to help find a definition. At first I was inclined to poo-poo the idea altogether, because in the past while I was in the midst of a massive attack that had nothing to do with my state of mind, I was told, you can make it stop right now by changing the way you think.
You can imagine how unhelpful I found that answer. It turns out, that was the dark side, the bright side is that even for those of us who are attacked by GABA misfiring in our bodies, and have anxiety attacks or panic attacks, we have developed a whole system of messed up thinking as a result.
An example. Joe loves to go to the library. One day Joe walks in and an attack suddenly comes on him. First he is convinced that everyone in the library knows what it happening to him, and are sneering at him. He leaves the library in a panic, goes home, and decides Everyone in town knows I’m crazy.
The leaps in logic Joe took to come to that dramatic decision are mind boggling. First of all, chances are not one person noticed Joe, even during his anxiety attack. Second, he is the one that decided everyone knew and was laughing at him, no one said anything to him, at all. He based all of it on a thought he had while having an anxiety attack. Admittedly, that is not hard to imagine. But breaking that train of thought for Joe, later when he does seek help, is going to be difficult.
Once the doctors get Joe on a medication which helps the GABA part of Joe’s life, the therapist can begin to help Joe understand that most of what he thought was built upon 1 + 3 = 34687598. It didn’t make any sense. It was irrational thinking. For that I recommend David Burns excellent book The Feeling Good Handbook.
It is no great surprise to find in our first article, “Feeling Anxious? It Could Be That Those Anti-Anxiety Pills Don’t Work.” And that doesn’t do much for creating a sense of security when taking ones morning dosage. What makes it even worse is that “physicians have no way of knowing whether a patient will be in one of the non-responsive 50 percent when they prescribe the drug.” You have to read the small article if for no other reason than to giggle at how important marijuana, yes the dreaded Pot, has become in anxiety research. Makes one wonder.
Let’s not quibble with the good doctors whom I do believe to be doing their best, even if they are working in the dark sometimes, and move directly to famous poets with mental illness. We should always bear in mind that a sober Hemingway never wrote a word. His routine down in Cuba was to drink until rather late in the evening, then go back to his hotel and write until dawn. Also, that Coleridge became a laudanum addict.
Alicia Sparks, whom is featured here regularly, wrote this informative piece “Meet Famous Poets Who Lived With Mental Illness.” It’s encouraging actually to those of us who write, and deal with our own mental problems. Perhaps if we were all cured, literature, dance, film, and all the rest would cease to be. We’d all wear burlap, listen to drones, and read non fiction for the rest of our lives.
I am continuously amazed by the statements made by those who work for Captain Obvious. First, let’s begin with this little tidbit. It seems that
New Orleans residents who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina were over five times more likely to experience serious psychological distress a year after the disaster than those who did not.
I’m sorry, did I forget to mention that’s just one of the findings presented at the annual meeting of Population Association of America in New Orleans. The article really is worth reading, in case you didn’t click the link before, do it now. Now one last block quote, I can’t resist it.
Blacks reported substantially higher rates of serious psychological distress than whites, Sastry and Van Landingham reported. Almost one-third of blacks were found to have a high degree of distress, compared to just six percent of whites. Those with higher incomes and more education were much less likely to experience serious psychological distress.
Really? I do wonder why that might be the case? Could it be the the “blacks” feel fairly certain that no one really gives a flying flip about what happens to them? And chances are, they aren’t in that lucky group of higher incomes and more education.
How about this? Stop with the number counting and pointing out the obvious and do something substantial to help these people?
Since The Anxiety Report has come online I have made every effort to remain detached from what I read and write on this site. I find that is seriously against my grain. I don’t care about something enough to detach from it, I shouldn’t be writing about it at all. I am no crusader, but I am tired of the general pablum that gets fed to us, the public and the patient’s of anxiety disorders, that we’re supposed to take seriously.
Sometimes I feel like all I’m reading is advertisements for Pharmaceutical companies. Anxiety is big business and never think otherwise. From therapists to drug companies, money is made off the anxiety disorder business.
In every post up until today I have felt like I was doing nothing more than being an obedient servant of Sicko Inc., an advertising firm. The deeper I dig the more this all looks like the same material rehashed again and again.
Now here’s the kicker. It’s not the doctors fault. They do the work and write up their papers in language it is taking me a long time to decipher, but they are honestly trying to get to the bottom of these disorders. And, in some instances it isn’t the pharmaceutical company either, because some really do want to make a drug that truly helps.
So now you want me to tell you where the fault lies, and that is something I can’t do. Why? Because I’m not the one paying for various studies, such as are people who lost their houses more depressed than those who did not. I am disgusted in a way by this study. It is insulting to the people who were studied, and to the intelligence of everyone who stops to think about it. Are there not better uses for resources at the University of Michigan where the study was conducted? I praise the people who did the study, because at least they were doing something. I blame those who couldn’t imagine whether or not the loss of your property, your whole life accumulation of things, and maybe grandma drowning in her attack, might make you depressed!
I was very interested in this article because when I think of the various agonies I put my family through as a teenager with serious problems.
“This Bill of Rights represents the standard of what families living with mental illnesses should expect from treatment,” said AACAP’s President, Robert Hendren, D.O. “Children do better when they receive consistent, tailored treatment. Few children receive any treatment and fewer still receive the sustained, quality care that they require.”
The fact that it is centered on children is helpful to parents, teacher, and baby sitters, but doesn’t do much for families living with someone with a variety of anxiety conditions and other possible mental illnesses. Living with an adult with anxiety disorders can be so challenging that it can end up in divorce. Just something worth thinking about, and perhaps someone will work out a Bill of Rights for the Family of Anxiety Patients.
When I prescribe medication for a patient with a mental health problem, I’m frequently asked, “How long will I have to take this medication?” It’s a good question. But for someone with an anxiety disorder, the answer is particularly complex.
It’s one of the first questions I asked the first doctor who helped me; how long do I have to take this? He said pretty much what the last sentence of the quote says, except he added, “you’ll probably be on something the rest of your life.”
There are short term disorders where the medication can be stopped at a point where the patient feels ready to give it a go without the drugs. Dr. Kahn continues: “A specific phobia can be treated as needed, for example, just before getting on an airplane or giving a speech.”
But other anxiety disorders — for example, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder — commonly require ongoing treatment. Experience shows that when drug therapy is stopped, symptoms often recur. Only 25% of patients who stop taking antidepressants for anxiety have relief for two years or longer. Two studies found that one in four people with generalized anxiety disorder relapse within a month of going off medications. Similarly, most people with obsessive-compulsive disorder relapse within a month unless they either continue drug treatment indefinitely or undergo behavior therapy.
So for some of us, we’ll always be taking one drug or another. When you consider the return to anxiety attacks, or OCD symptoms, you realize that each day you will take your medications.
Isn’t it a small price to pay for the freedom from symptoms?
For those who do not know who Herschel Walker is check this page out. He has D.I.D. Dissociative Identity Disorder. In other words, multiple personalities.
Walker had several alternate personalities, known as alters. After retiring from the NFL, Walker dealt with memory loss, a symptom of D.I.D. Because other personalities are the ones taking action, he often cannot remember things he has said or done.
That is down right scary condition to have. I think someone of Walker’s fame and position in football history, to come out with this book at such a time is worthy of many kudos.
While researching the research out there so I can digest, process, and post here, I have come again and again up against the phrase cognitive behavioral Therapy. So what is it? A little Googling brought a ton of answers, some of which are better than others, but that’s usual, so no whining on that score. Here are a list of links. Check em out then see what I say below.
Now let’s have a little story about a guy named Joe. Joe is plagued by anxiety attacks which come from nowhere, last for days, and make his life a living hell. Joe loves going to the library, and one day in the library he has an anxiety attack. I’m breaking in green type to now say that Joe is in a social situation, but his thinking capacity is impaired. Joe immediately is certain that everyone around him knows that he is crazy, and are probably sneering at his weakness. That’s not true at all, no one probably even notices Joe unless he does something stupid. Joe puts his book down, doesn’t even check one out, goes straight home to his room and sits on his bed thinking “Now everyone in town knows I’m crazy.”
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the way one finds their way out of such thinking patterns. David Burns wrote a magnificent book on the subject called The Feeling Good Handbook. (see link at bottom of post)
Joe’s original anxiety was all based in his hardwiring. It is a physical phenomenon that occurs and has something to do with our GABA receptors.
GABA acts at inhibitory synapses in the brain by binding to specific transmembrane receptors in the plasma membrane of both pre- and postsynaptic neurons. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GABA
When Joe finally gets medication for his anxiety disorder, to life the burden of the physical symptoms, then his therapist can begin to help him unbind all those irrational assumptions he had made while in the grip of anxiety. When Joe had anxiety attacks in the past, his mind would seize upon what ever was at hand as the cause of the attack, because we are human, we need a cause. It is very hard to admit that the cause might be your own body, because everyone has taught you all your life that “it’s all in your head.”
Once the physical symptoms have stopped, then you may begin Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. To start out with CBT, instead of taking a serious medical assessment first, is lunacy. Physicians today are more alert to the reality of the anxiety disorders. There is enough research out there to show them that this can and does originate within the physical system itself, our bodies.
The Great Task
With the flow of research going all the time, what is the most important for us, the patient, to know? Another disquieting problem I have is how too get what I find to you in plain enough English that you will bother to read more than two words. That is turning out to be no easy task, but I am up for it. There was never a time that research and it’s tortures could stop me from finding out every bit, every detail about what I was looking for.
If you could give me a push by suggesting a topic, any topic, it would help. Until you do, I shall muddle my way through as much as seems relevant and then post it.Email Me
Part of the original purpose of The Anxiety Report was to have a section for the people who live with others who have a disorder. What I had not thought about, and now have to seriously consider, are those who are also caregivers. I was a caregiver to my father until he died.
There is a new link list on the side bar for Caregivers.
News
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Have you ever felt like cleaning up your house helped your mood? Well, according to “Tidying the House Soothes Mental Distress” By Crystal Phend, Staff Writer, MedPage Today.
The benefits of physical activity in general could be by reducing biological stress reactivity, “given that heightened responsiveness to daily stressors is a risk factor for psychological morbidity,” they said. Exercise might also improve biological risk factors such as dyslipidemia, glucose intolerance, inflammation, and vascular dysfunction, “which have been related to mental health disorders such as depression and dementia.”
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Next item on today’s agenda is “Time on the Farm Helps Psychiatric Patients,” By Crystal Phend, Staff Writer, MedPage Today. it’s rather in the spirit of the first article, isn’t it? The article was too interesting for me to pass up. So here it is for you.
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Here is yet another story of a young girl starving herself. This epidemic amongst young women is totally unacceptable in civilized society. That we have allowed this image of skinny is glamorous to develop is a societal sin. “Skinny Sweepstakes” By: Hara Estroff Marano.
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Research
Research is difficult to tackle for anyone who is not educated in the upper regions of psychology, medicine, psychiatry and pharmacology. However, your humble webmaster will spend the remainder of his day deciphering, summarizing, and posting.
It takes a while to get into the swing of things, especially when first starting. Stay with me!
We’ll start today with a Video that I think explains depression, and the types of depression, very well. I wanted to start with the video because I’m excited to find a video, that’s not just on subject, but is also well done.
Today I have a Smörgåsbord of News
Seeking out the positive things in life might turn out to be the best thing to do for yourself, according to this article fro Oh yeah, go see a comedy and laugh. The title of the article says it all really. “By Seeking Out Positive Experiences That Make Us Laugh We Can Do A Lot On Our Own To Stay Well.”
As all of us know there is an amount of stigma with which we are branded, when it comes to all mental health issues. In her article “Health system keeps stigma on mental care,” Margaret Krome addresses the issue with some interesting observations along the way.
It’s perfectly common to hear about a political or corporate leader’s heart bypass operation, their pulmonary therapy program, diabetes or cancer treatment, or even the details of their colonoscopy. But treatment for depression? For anxiety disorders and phobias? Post-traumatic stress disorder? Obsessions?
How true that is. We’ll beat the drum for any of those serious conditions. Not for mental health. So what lies at the root of this stigma? Is there something that can be done about it?
The health care system is a principal driver behind mental health stigmas. Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady, worked as a mental health advocate for the Carter Center in Atlanta and earlier while her husband served as governor and president. She maintains that “if insurance covered mental illness, the stigma would go away almost immediately. It would legitimize mental illnesses.”
Along the same vein of stigma and all the fun it entails, this shows up today. “Herd QB leaves program.” by Jacob Messer, of Charleston Daily Mail. For me that’s the kind of step in the right direction that’s needed to keep these problems in the eyes of the public. I’m not going to quote from the article, it’s too personally expressive for me to mangle it.
“Be Careful What You Think.” This little piece is worth a read. Especially when “It would appear from results that vividness and control associated with negative images act as mechanisms through which images of poor performances significantly disrupt consequent performances.” From MedLine News Today
We will close today’s festival of linked articles with this book review by Stephanie Moulton Sarkis, PhD, NCC, LMHC. An impressive array of acronyms, but don’t let that stop you, it’s an interesting review of a book called Bipolar Kids, by Rosalie Greenberg.
Andrea Gordon’s article for the Toronto Star, is one that I think should wake us all up to the true danger of teen depression. We’re all used to the sullen teenager period that all adolescents go through, but this article isn’t about a period or a phase, it’s about suicide.
The parents of teens who commit suicide suffer something similar to those who loose a teen to a serial killer who tortures them to death. In both cases, torture unto death was involved. I have no science to back that up, but anything that drives a teenager to take their own life has got to be torture.
A survey last year by Kinark found 38 per cent of 1,500 parents would be too embarrassed to admit their child or teen had an illness like depression or anxiety.
So, out of that number, which is horribly large, their child needing medication for depression or anxiety was a stigma, a cause of shame. Didn’t I just talk about this in a post not long ago? The stigma of mental illness. I wonder if they would feel that way if their child had cancer? No, because then they’d be out there beating a drum calling attention to cancer research.
When it comes to mental health issues no one wants to talk about it. So I’ll end this post with this quote.
Ellen Ostofsky of the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario said stigma is still huge and that fewer than half of the 20 per cent of Canadians with a mental illness will end up seeking treatment.
Health warnings and controversy over antidepressants and teens “is a muddy, muddy issue,” she said. And rather than making decisions based on news reports, parents must raise these questions with a professional and consider the needs of their own child, she said.
“It is so important to be vigilant and watch your loved one,” she said, particularly if they have started or changed medication.
This is an article that should cheer up some people. It seems the the anti-depressent Paroxetine is safe for pregnant women in their first trimester.
Motherisk partnered with centres from around the world that study and provide information on the safety of medication in pregnancy to follow up on 1,174 women in Canada, the US, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and Israel who called such centres with regard to the use of the drug in early pregnancy (when the fetus’ heart develops). Data was then compared with the outcomes of an equal sized group of non-exposed infants. The rate of cardiovascular defects was 0.7 per cent in each group. As the incidence of heart defects in the general population is approximately one per cent, the rates in this study were slightly lower than expected.
That quote should make it clear they did not come to this decision lightly. Read the complete article here.
Here’s another article that I offer for a taste treat if nothing else. Subordinate Monkeys More Likely To Choose Cocaine Over Food It’s interesting that submissive monkeys want cocaine more than food. What does that say about our affluent Cocaine users?
And now for all us messy people out there is this article, Why a spring clean is good for you. It took me years to realize it, but the state of my house, workstation, or car, was a sure indicator of my mental state at that time.
