There have been many studies on family dynamics and the development of eating disorders, but I think that this is the first that I’ve seen that takes the next step and makes connections with specific symptomology: The dynamic relationship of parental personality traits with the personality and psychopathology traits of anorectic and bulimic daughters
Before I go further, I want to make two disclaimers.  First, from the article:
…we cannot infer a casual relationship between the parents’ personality traits and the daughter’s personality or psychopathology.  Moreover, correlational analysis does not define a …

I have been extra tired lately.  VERY extra-tired.  I go through spells of this and am always fairly convinced that there’s something wrong with me.  It’s not normal for someone to get eight hours of sleep and need one – two naps during the day.  I end up having conversations with my fiance like this:
grey: I think that I’m anemic.
fiance: oh?
grey: I have all the symptoms — fatigue, headache, difficulty concentrating, pale skin, leg cramps…
fiance: Funny, those sound like the same symptoms of anorexia.
Then, the next month…
grey: I think I …

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 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 …

Headline: Bad Economy Spurs Eating Disorders
According to Twin Cities, the patient load at Park Nicollet’s Melrose Institute/St. Louis has increased by 36 percent from one year ago, while the patient load at The Emily Program/St. Paul has increased by 20 percent for the same time period.
For instance, he says, people who suffer from an obsession with their weight, but who exercise to control weight gain rather than starve themselves, may no longer be able to afford their gym memberships. In that case, Jahraus says, they may decide to limit their …

I am officially the LAST person to blog about this study, but my thoughts seem to be pointed in a different from the other posts that I’ve read.
The Psych Central article, “Half of Young Adults Have Mental Disorder,” states the following:
“A total of 45.8 percent of college students and 47.7 percent of young adults not in college met the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder.
The most common disorders in college students were alcohol use disorders (20.4 percent) and personality disorders (17.7 percent), whereas those not in college most frequently …