Category: Depression
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My Parents Are Still Apart
Overwhelmed with feelings of guilt. Trying to do the best I can. The assisted living memory care where my father has been staying cannot accommodate my mother’s difficulty swallowing liquids due to her stroke. My mother is back in skilled nursing after a psychiatric stay for major depression and behavioral changes due to a UTI…
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Meaning and Mental Illness
I wrote this post for Lisa Bortolotti’s project Imperfect Cognitions: Blog on delusional beliefs, distorted memories, confabulatory explanations, and implicit biases. The blog was founded by Lisa Bortolotti in May 2013, after receiving the happy news that she had been awarded an AHRC Fellowship for a project entitled “The Epistemic Innocence of Imperfect Cognitions“. The…
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Bipolar Disorder Infographic
Infographic by TopCounselingSchools.org Sources HealthResearchFunding.org | 40 Profound Bipolar Disorder Suicide Statistics Statistic Brain Research Institute | Bipolar Disorder Statistics NIMH NIH | Bipolar Disorder Mayo Clinic | Bipolar Disorder
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Dear Kitt
Kitt, you fuel your rage by seeing a psychoanalysist one to three times a week, exploring over and over how you had been abused as a child. You deepen your depression by studying psychodynamic theory in graduate school. Doing so defeats you and undermines your mental health. Yes, therapy will enable you to work through issues you have with…
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Worn Out
Exhausted Overwhelmed Not thinking clearly Not able to complete sentences Not able to answer direct questions Fumbling with language With spoken language With what I hear With what I read So sleepy Feared falling asleep Driving to doctor’s office Door locked Looked at calendar Over an hour early Went back to parked car Overlooking hill…
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Where Am I Going Now?
How do I describe myself? How do I best describe my blog? What has my blog become? What direction do I want to take it? What direction is my life taking? Is my writing taking? Is my (dare-say) art or photography taking? Back in the 90s when I registered my first corporate URL, I knew that…
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A Room of My Own
My friend Dyane Harwood’s recent post A Stigma of One’s Own got me thinking. Dyane takes issue with the non-profit foundation A Room of Her Own (AROHO) for describing Virginia Woolf’s suicide as “took her own life” and for not mentioning her mental illness. I support Dyane for challenging them to rework Woolf’s bio. At the same time, I wonder… Is…
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I Don’t Want to Write About #Suicide
I don’t want to write about suicide I don’t want the image of her Clinging onto a chain link fence Chef’s knife in hand Chef’s knife inside of her Looking through the chain link At kids playing in the park She mourned the loss of her son She could not contain her grief She could…
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Online High School
My son struggles with multiple health issues: migraines, cyclic vomiting, weak immune system, allergies, eczema, depression, and anxiety. The newly defined spectrum syndrome ALPIM (Anxiety-Laxity-Pain-Immune-Mood) describes his constellation of symptoms, but does not yet give us answers as to how to cure or treat the underlying genetic disorder. Monday, August 31st would have been my…
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Podcast Preview
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Adam Lennon of SeaTread Studios. Adam, like me, lives with bipolar disorder. In April of 2014, Adam had a severe manic episode after taking medication that should have been complemented with a stabilizer. This “woke up” his bipolar genes, which would ultimately have devastating consequences for his…