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Category: Depression
Grace and Illness
Posted on March 19, 2009 in Depression Journals & Notebooks Writing/Darkness
Energetic gloom — the kind you get when you try to pummel your low temperament — poses a threat to life when it rises to anger. It’s tough to be graceful when you charge against lethargy with your head dropped like an angry bull. Plus you can end up with a broken neck. There’s no dancing except moshing — is it strange that I find heavy metal music depressing in the sense that it batters my heart and smashes my cranium with every twang of the guitars? Those voices — made to sound as if they came out of the throats of reanimated corpses – don’t frighten or enervate me: they bounce off me with all the pleasure of that water gets ricocheting off a hot frying pan. Depression smoulders. Spirit tries to get you moving, but for all the beating of the drums you don’t move again until the blessed morning when the music is silent and the spot where your spinal column meets your skull doesn’t sag from the weight of your scarred brain. How can you be graceful under such conditions? The body lacks a head, the head is at odds with the body ((This is one of those things literally at odds with itself that makes perfect sense when you are in the mood.)) . There’s an argument going on. The two sides are too busy thudding around that you can’t congeal into anything more detailed than a hot fog.
This is an exercise from [amazonify]1587613190::text::::Writing Through the Darkness: Easing Your Depression with Paper and Pen[/amazonify]
The Slow Moving River of Crude
Posted on February 7, 2009 in Depression
Contrary to what you have heard, it is not cold to the touch.
Widow at the Feast
Posted on November 13, 2008 in Depression
Depression is a widowed aunt sitting at the Thanksgiving table, listening to the conversation. From time to time she offers a thought, but it seems weak to everyone including her. So she clears the table, goes into the kitchen, and attacks the dishes, scrubbing away the stains but not her ignorance nor her gloom.
Needles
Posted on November 12, 2008 in Depression
Needles of the day stick out everywhere. The good thing was that I got out for a short walk with the dog that didn’t make my right foot spurt blood. Bad things included the computer doing bizarre things with the mouse due to a filthy shift key, the dog chawing down on five ball point pens, and feeling like an idiot because I don’t program or own the latest gizmos. Add to this discovering that I completely misread an email to me and answered it as if I were on another planet. Then shake it with my therapist intimating that my life was so without drama that I wasn’t worth having sessions with for the time being. I read that as I am boring, someone whose life wasn’t worth rescuing. Fiercer self-questioning on this point left me in a vacuum. Silence is no message and that makes it maddening.
Blame the longer, darker nights and Change. The Change that I voted for so that others will thrive, so that lives will not be shattered. I know that I will not be a part of that.
The pain has no antidote, unlike that caused by the needles of uric acid crystals in my toe. I know I just have to get through these nights, know that they will end with some more light
When all you have left to talk about is your sickness, then you have come to the end of worthy consciousness.
In the morning, I will take my meds, go for a walk, get some sunshine. I’ll be fine.
The World Turned Right Side Up
Posted on October 23, 2008 in Anxiety Campaign 2008 Depression Uncertainty
At the British surrender at Yorktown, the band played “The World Turned Upside Down”. Then as now a transfer of power took place. Certainly among the Americans — many of whom had been fighting for years — there must have been a difficult period: how do you go from being a warrior to a citizen? There were issues to be resolved such as the status of those who had supported the British, but nothing was so important and devastating to the morale of those men as the question of how to be in this new world.
The rush of history has my mind put in a blender for reconstitution. For the last several years — dating from before Bush became president — progressives have been staving off hateful attacks from the right. They are at their worst today: we are accused of being unpatriotic, of not loving our country. It’s the whole Bush Adminstration plus the Clinton impeachment concentrated into a bitter slushee that we are forced to swallow.
I have watched as some of the more sensitive of those on the Obama side have devolved into one of three moods: anxiety, depression, and grandiosity. The anxiety is easy to understand: the election is not yet won and the Republicans have been filling our ears and eyes with false information and character assassinations. If they can’t steal the election, they have been engaging in shenanigans designed to narrow the gap so the Democrats can’t claim a mandate for change. We are just not there yet.
Likewise, the grandiosity is easy to understand. We’re about to win, it seems, and win big. Therefore we are the best people in the world, chosen by God or the Universe or common sense. We know everything, can solve everything. So these among us stand on pedestals and lecture our peers on the way it is going to be. Doggoneit, they say, we have the key to convincing the most diehard Republicans to join us. We are unstoppable.
I figure I’ll just have to live with that for a few years. Believe me, it will be as insufferable for a few of we progressives as well as the defeated right, if for different reasons. Reality will click in and these will either come to walk with the rest of us on or fall into the ennui from listening to their own voices without insight.
Which brings us to depression. How can that be afflicting progressives at a time like this? I’ll tell you: first, the anxiety wears us down. Exhaustion claims us. So we lose all pleasure, all sense of accomplishment. There is also, second, the exhaustion of feeling obligated to answer every attack slung out by the McCain/Palin machine.
The third cause of depression stems from uncertainty. Now that we are about to win, what kind of political personality are we going to adopt? Since the late 90s, that has been one that constantly attacks the failed and repulsive premises of the neoconservatives. It’s been fun, but soon, with responsibility, that fun is going to stop. The problem with Republican rule is that it has been so founded on negativism, it failed to create positive institutions or freedoms. The same must not be allowed to happen in a Democratic era — though we may wisely be ready to fend off attacks as we strive to solve the crises that the Bush Administration has left behind. But change in political power is going to mean change in our attitudes. We are going to have to become compromisers, optimists. And some folks are as unready to make that change as Palin is to be vice president.
I am taking the following steps to mind my spiritual transition. First, for the duration of the election, I am keeping my consumption of television news to a minimum, which means I’m not watching it in my home and avoiding it outside. All the bells and whistles of your typical television news screen agitate me. The reporters spout out opinions. Inside their opinions are little assumptions that eat at me like acid.
Second, I am making time to do things that are fun. Walking the dog. Going to the beach. Relaxing with good books. Taking pictures and looking over what I have done previously.
Third, I am sharing every bit of positive news I can find. I am also seeking out news that is not about the election, funny videos, etc.
Fourth, I’ve made myself a promise: when and if Obama wins — yes, I am sticking to the conditional at this moment — I am going out to buy a new American flag and hang it outside to celebrate that I am once again included in this country.
The world will be turned upside down which means right side up for the first time since Ronald Reagan took office in 1980. That is something to cheer for, something to shed the shackles of low moods for. Yet, after the cheering, must come reality. This vote is not about making every man a king, every woman a queen, but about becoming citizens instead of serfs. The notion to come is equality, which is about dignity. That will have to be reforged in the new fires of an unexpected community.
A Cow in a Marsh
Posted on October 7, 2008 in DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Depression
I’ve fallen in a depression which has more to do with my missing a dose of my mood-stabilizers two weeks ago followed by missing a dose of my anti-depressant yesterday than any life event. I fell so hard after a week or so of light mania that I began to ache in my chest and in my head as I mucked around like a cow in a marsh trying to find a meadow.
The California State Conference for DBSA was the subject of the weekend. The feel of this compared to the National Conference in Norfolk was interesting to observe. At National, there was an emphasis on finding a meaningful life for yourself while at State there was the usual “get a 40 hour a week job and we’ll call you cured”. With my volunteer activities (I recently received an award for them given by GWB of all people), I would qualify as a failure rather than a success.
I don’t get why therapists are so out to put you in a full time job, especially when stress has precipitated me into many a depressed or manic state. I’m told that at fifty years of age I should go back to school and get a “real career” instead of the volunteer mission that satisfies me. There’s the usual “do what society expects of you” instead of doing what feels right and good to you.
What bothers me the most now is that I don’t feel much like writing or photographing. The photographs that I have taken don’t seem to excite others, so what’s the use, I think, even if I find they do something for me? I know this is the depression talking, but would the others on the outside shut up so I can ride this through? The life whose leather I find myself wearing is my own. Don’t try to skin me and throw the hide of a wolf or a plough-horse on my back.
[tags]depression, bipolar disorder, careers, career, choice[/tags]
Study: Treating depression a good business move
Posted on October 7, 2007 in Depression Guest Blogger
Guest post by Maggs
From CNN…
Study: Treating depression a good business move
How many of YOU have used your EAP “Employee Assistance Program”? I was always afraid I’d be found-out…
Suicide Risk
Posted on September 27, 2007 in Depression
….may be genetic for certain anti-depressants.
Specific variations in two genes are linked to suicidal thinking that sometimes occurs in people taking the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants, according to a large study led by scientists at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
NaNDepending on the particular mix inherited, these versions increased the likelihood of such thoughts from 2- to15-fold, the study found. About 1 percent of adult patients were deemed to be at high genetic risk, 41 percent at elevated risk and 58 percent at lower risk.
If confirmed, the findings may hold promise for genetic testing, as more such markers are identified.
Risks Outweighing the Benefits
Posted on September 6, 2007 in Depression Suicide
UPDATED
Remember how a few years ago, they put out warnings that certain anti-depressants might increase the risk of suicide? Well, here’s a gem for you:
A 22% drop in prescriptions for antidepressants for teens and children following government warnings about hazards of the drugs led to a sharp increase in suicides the following year, according to Chicago researchers.
The change in labeling in 2003 warned that use of the drugs could increase suicidal thoughts and behavior among youths, but the labeling seems to have backfired, according to a report in the September issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
In the year after the change in labeling, the suicide rate rose 14% among those younger than 19, the largest increase since the government started collecting suicide statistics in 1979, said biostatistician Robert D. Gibbons and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
A similar drop in prescriptions in the Netherlands led to a 49% increase in youth suicides over a two-year period, the team reported. They estimated that every 20% drop in antidepressant use among all ages in the U.S. would lead to a nearly 10% increase in suicides, an additional 3,040 deaths per year.
Science Daily had this to say.
[tags]depression, suicide, mental illness[/tags]
Atheist Psychiatrists and Good Medicine
Posted on September 3, 2007 in Agnosticism Depression Grief
The atheist world should be abuzz with concern and I, an agnostic, am one to join them. I have seen what religious counselling does to patients with mood disorders. I do not recommend them:
“A patient presents to you with continued deep grieving two months after the death of his wife. If you were to refer the patient, to which of the following would you prefer to refer first” (a psychiatrist or psychologist, a clergy member or religious counselor, a health care chaplain, or other).”
Overall, 56 percent of physicians indicated they would refer such a patient to a psychiatrist or psychologist, 25 percent to a clergy member or other religious counselor, 7 percent to a health care chaplain and 12 percent to someone else.
Although Protestant physicians were only half as likely to send the patient to a psychiatrist, Jewish physicians were more likely to do so. Least likely were highly religious Protestants who attended church at least twice a month and looked to God for guidance “a great deal or quite a lot.”
“Patients probably seek out, to some extent, physicians who share their views on life’s big questions,” Curlin said. That may be especially true in psychiatry, where communication is so essential. The mismatch in religious beliefs between psychiatrists and patients may make it difficult for patients suffering from emotional or personal problems to find physicians who share their fundamental belief systems.
Personally, I wonder about the doctors who avoid referring them: are they up to snuff on their medicine or are these backwoods GPs whose suspicions of modern medicine manifest in other ways in their practice? I have known people to give up their meds on the advice of a faith healer and consequently end up arrested after embarking on wild sprees. The problem is that many patients are looking for magical answers and when they are offered reality-based somatic therapy (replete with side effects) they balk.
Curlin seems to promote a model where the patient sets the therapy. While I do not believe in forced medication except where the patient is gravely impaired by her/his illness, I also feel that a wise patient works with the psychiatrist on a series of experiments designed to find an effective treatment for the illness. Religious talk therapy alone just does not work that well for severe depression and bipolar disorder. It’s practitioners are either woefully ignorant of what psychiatry can do or deliberately hostile lest they lose “souls” — translation: paying customers.
The Obsidian Cliff
Posted on February 7, 2007 in Depression Frustration
There’s no steam, no hyperthymia, no passion.
A Shaft and A Fatted Calf
Posted on October 30, 2006 in Depression
Around four o’clock of every day, I might find myself in the kitchen or the loft when my mind advances to the hour of my sleep.
