I’m Baaaack😁

Has it truly been four years since I last posted? The older I get the more I understand the concept of time flying by. Mathematically it makes sense. One year to a ten year old is 1/10th of their life while one year to a 50 year old is a mere 1/50th. So when I say that it doesn’t feel like I’ve been away from this blog for four years, I mean it.

So much has happened in my life in the interim and I have so much to talk about. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting about chronic pain including the radical shift in treatment by the medical establishment, the awakening of our conscious mind and abilities as a collective and individuals, the rise of alternative media and it’s role in our use of critical thinking and discernment, the obvious failure of many of our systems and efforts being made to create a world most of us want to live in, and finally the growing body of evidence and anecdotal stories that demonstrate alternative and complementary mental health treatments are starting to get true acceptance. Whew, and that’s just to start!

Bottom line, you can call me crazy but I believe now more than ever that we are on the cusp of a huge change in our way of life here on this little blue planet. Stay tuned and buckle up because it’s going to be a wild ride from here on out.

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Little Known, All Natural Secret Treatment For Depression

I Got Major Depressive Disorder (Photo credit: Jean Big Cat)

I have battled the beast otherwise known as major depressive disorder for a decade or so now. During my battles I did extensive research on treatments for this debilitating condition and consulted with many professionals. I met with dietitians and nutritionists. I met with spiritual counselors, I joined a support group…..which turned out to be a triggering  and numbing experience for me personally. I had, and still have, many sessions with psychologists. I was treated by psychiatrists. I considered whether I should have ECT therapy….. otherwise known as electric shock…… after several courses of several different anti-depressive medications seemed not to work. At one point, one of my treating doctors had me on a regimen of medications that included an SSRI, a tricyclic antidepressant, an antipsychotic, an anti-anxiolytic, and gabapentin. Within six or seven weeks of this regimen, I developed a pretty severe reaction called serotonin syndrome that put me in the ER.

Finding a treating psychologist that is a good fit for you is a tricky thing in my experience. It has a lot in common with finding a mate. It takes a bit of time to figure out if you are a good fit.  Just like dating, some things look pretty and shiny and wonderful on the surface, but as the layers peel back over time, you find some behaviors or thought processes that are deal breakers……you just aren’t the right fit. For some people they find the right fit on the first or second try. With me, it took five. It seemed like it took forever and I was ready to give up hope on the whole thing. But number five was THE ONE. And his advice and guidance has been more precious to me than any diamond ring. While helping me address and process the trauma and issues that are my life in a way that will lead to my maximum return to health, he has passed on to me some real gems. So many of these things in hindsight seem so obvious……the kind of “duh, why didn’t I think of that” obvious. And I am about to share one of them with you.

As a firm advocate of holistic healing, he understood my strong dislike of taking psychotropic medication.  But he also knew that I was  struggling with strong suicidal ideation and very scared of my own mind. During the course of one of our sessions, he told me that a wise old guru once shared with him that when a person feels down, what they need to do most is go give back. The worse one feels, the more depressed one is, the more urgently they need to go volunteer. They need to help someone else who is struggling. His prescription to me that day…..immediately go do something nice for someone who was suffering and expect nothing else in return. And you know what?…..This RX is one that really works.

During the eight years before getting this prescription, I had not heard or read of this idea once before. But it seems so natural. What a concept! If you are feeling down…..force yourself to get out from under your covers and go give back. Not only will you receive the blessed feeling of doing something good, it will naturally lead you to contemplating gratitude. Practicing gratitude flips a metaphorical switch in your brains thought processes for the positive. You will be amazed the power that a smile to a random person holds. I know I was, and continue to feel this way .  I find that something Tony Robbins says quite a bit holds true in my life…..if you look at the ceiling and smile and laugh…..even if you are forcing it…..it is practically impossible to feel bad in that moment. While it is virtually impossible to look up and smile every minute of every day…..doing something to help someone else on a daily basis is much more attainable and gives you the same results.

So please go share this “secret”treatment…..dare I even say for some a cure……for depression. Give it a try and tell everyone you know. Let’s make this the worst kept secret ever. Keep on going!

Breaking News! This Just In…..

To all of us who are concerned with the state of mental health recovery in this world, what follows is important and amazing news. I just found this as reported at http://www.mindhacks.com. I am shocked and saddened that this is not international news being reported by every media station worldwide.  I want more people to know about this, so I am reporting it and hope that others will follow.

National Institute of Mental Health abandoning the DSM

In a potentially seismic move, the National Institute of Mental Health – the world’s biggest mental health research funder, has announced only two weeks before the launch of the DSM-5diagnostic manual that it will be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories”.

In the announcement, NIMH Director Thomas Insel says the DSM lacks validity and that “patients with mental disorders deserve better”.

This is something that will make very uncomfortable reading for the American Psychiatric Association as they trumpet what they claim is the ‘future of psychiatric diagnosis’ only two weeks before it hits the shelves.

As a result the NIMH will now be preferentially funding research that does not stick to DSM categories:

Going forward, we will be supporting research projects that look across current categories – or sub-divide current categories – to begin to develop a better system. What does this mean for applicants? Clinical trials might study all patients in a mood clinic rather than those meeting strict major depressive disorder criteria. Studies of biomarkers for “depression” might begin by looking across many disorders with anhedonia or emotional appraisal bias or psychomotor retardation to understand the circuitry underlying these symptoms. What does this mean for patients? We are committed to new and better treatments, but we feel this will only happen by developing a more precise diagnostic system.

As an alternative approach, Insel suggests the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project, which aims to uncover what it sees as the ‘component parts’ of psychological dysregulation by understanding difficulties in terms of cognitive, neural and genetic differences.

For example, difficulties with regulating the arousal system might be equally as involved in generating anxiety in PTSD as generating manic states in bipolar disorder.

Of course, this ‘component part’ approach is already a large part of mental health research but the RDoC project aims to combine this into a system that allows these to be mapped out and integrated.

It’s worth saying that this won’t be changing how psychiatrists treat their patients any time soon. DSM-style disorders will still be the order of the day, not least because a great deal of the evidence for the effectiveness of medication is based on giving people standard diagnoses.

It is also true to say that RDoC is currently little more than a plan at the moment – a bit like the Mars mission: you can see how it would be feasible but actually getting there seems a long way off. In fact, until now, the RDoC project has largely been considered to be an experimental project in thinking up alternative approaches.

The project was partly thought to be radical because it has many similarities to the approach taken by scientific critics of mainstream psychiatry who have argued for a symptom-based approach to understanding mental health difficulties that has often been rejected by the ‘diagnoses represent distinct diseases’ camp.

The NIMH has often been one of the most staunch supporters of the latter view, so the fact that it has put the RDoC front and centre is not only a slap in the face for the American Psychiatric Association and the DSM, it also heralds a massive change in how we might think of mental disorders in decades to come.
Link to NIMH announcement ‘Transforming Diagnosis’.

Movie Alert! Tune Your TV Or DVR Now!

Lifetime television channel here in the US is debuting a fantastic movie at 8 PM EST entitled “Call Me Crazy”! I am so very excited to watch it….and admit that I am totally biased with the title they chose. It  follows five families trying to survive, recover, and thrive in the face of mental illness diagnoses. Check it out!

Related articles

• ‘Call Me Crazy’ Sheds Light On Mental Illness; Assembles Big Names (hothits957.cbslocal.com)
• Call Me Crazy airs Tonight at 8 p.m. on Lifetime! (namibroward.org)
• Lifetime Program Partners with NAMI to Tackle Topic of Mental Illness (theblogerotic.com)
• Jennifer Aniston: “Call Me Crazy: A Five Film” World Premiere (beautelicious.com)