The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare and AstraZeneca conducted a really interesting survey on the impact of bipolar depression on people’s lives.  There were a couple of points in the study that really caught my attention:

The greatest concerns among people living with bipolar disorder are that their symptoms will have an impact on daily life, such as family, relationships, or job (73%), and that they will have long periods of depressive episodes (63%).
Ninety percent of people living with bipolar disorder said that they have difficulty managing or completing day-to-day …

“You get to define which experiences are traumatic for you, whether or not it would impact others in the same manner.  It’s not the objective facts that determine whether an event is traumatic,  but your own emotional experience of the event.”
– Dr. Kathleen Young

This is just a quick post, but I read this on a trauma blog tonight and thought it was so well-put.  This is something that i struggle with a lot — whether or not something “counts” as significant.  Maybe I am making it up.  Maybe it was …

I can’t remember the last time I saw “economist” and “bulimia” in the same headline — I usually don’t put the two together.  However, this article (Eating-Disorders Experts Challenge Economists’ Conclusions About Bulimia) made some pretty interesting statements:

Bulimia Nervosa (BN) is an addiction rather than an eating disorder
Black females are 50% more likely to be bulimic than white females
“Bulimic behavior” is less likely among wealthier, better-educated families.

You should definitely read the article, but I have a couple of things to add to these points:
1. BN is an addiction
I always compare …

Once in awhile, my therapist assigns me homework — usually for one of several reasons:

We only had time to touch on a subject in therapy and she wants me to keep thinking about it to flesh it out.
She wants to keep better track of my symptoms and I’m not very good at bringing up bad days (not because I’m manipulative and want to hide it from her, but because I never feel it’s “bad enough” to bring to her attention).
There’s something that I’m not able to say in person, and …

I’ve been reading Dr. Drew’s book, “Cracked: Life on the Edge in a Rehab Clinic.” There are a million things that I could talk about concerning this book, so don’t be surprised if it’s referenced several times in future posts. Tonight, the following quote really caught my attention:
“Most believe [addicts] connect around a common experience of pain and powerlessness without the fear of exploitation. Their pain is so raw and tender that getting them to start the process requires them to be convinced that their pain will …

I have mixed feelings about putting adolescents and adults together in treatment. I have been on both sides of the equation (treatment as an adolescent and treatment as an adult), and definitely have a stronger opinion about it now that I’m older.
Pros:

Adolescents can learn a lot from adults who often have been in treatment before and have some more insight into the disorder.
Adults are (hopefully) more mature and less competitive. Eating disorders in general are competitive… and I’ve just found that when you have a large group of …

I’d never heard of a “Sober Coach” until watching VH1′s “Sober House.” In the last episode (I think), Will, who is Seth’s Sober Coach, accompanies him to his first concert and make sure that nothing happens to jeopardize his sobriety. While watching this I thought, “Well that’s convenient — I could use someone protecting me from anything eating disordered.”
Upon thinking about it a little more, though, I wasn’t sure what this Anti-ED Coach would protect me from. Would he make sure no one served me diet coke? …

I stumbled upon this article last week:  Metabolic Assessment of Menstruating and Nonmenstruating Normal Weight Adolescents This is something that I have always been curious about — is amenorrhea associated with a low metabolic rate?  I always assumed yes, at least a little bit.  However, I didn’t really base this conclusion on any hard science.  Let’s say that I used “Grey Science,” which goes something like this:
Your body requires a certain number of calories to function at full-capacity.  When you chronically deprive your body of these calories, it has to …

It’s been a little while since I talked about Celebrity Rehab, but I have been meaning to write about Gary Busey’s “Buseyisms” (by the way, I highly recommend that you watch this — it’s less than two minutes long).  Buseyisms are really just made-up acronyms.  Backward acronyms, I guess, but you start with the acronym and come up with the meaning to match the letters.
I’m sure you’ve heard these before… like FINE – Frustrated, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.  Now, look at a few of Gary’s…
Doubt – Debating On Understanding Bewildering …

There is definitely a stigma surrounding mental illness.  It doesn’t receive the same kind of acceptance as physical illness.  I’m not really going to get into stigmatization and society and whatnot, but I just want to make it clear that I believe that physical illness is much more understood than mental illness.
That said, I am a little disappointed to read this article on relationships and mental health:
A partner is four times more likely to leave you because of a mental health condition like depression than because of a physical disability.
The …