Depression Talk

You can have panic attacks for many reasons — not just because you’ve been diagnosed with phobias, panic attack disorder or general anxiety disorder. For example, my migranes can trigger a panic attack. Panic attacks can be the sign of another illness that needs attention. And, of course, suffering a severe trauma like a car accident, mugging or finding your spouse in bed with your best friend can also trigger a panic attack.

Many people with depression do experience panic attacks or know someone who is afflicted with panic attacks. Although panic attacks suck, it can be even more terrifiying to watch someone else go through a panic attack rather than experience it yourself.

When I feel a panic attack coming on, I ask someone I know well to talk to me about anything. It helps distracts me from the whirling thoughts. I sometimes also put on a calming video or DVD to sort of self-hypnotise me back to tranquility (or my usual acidic version of normalcy.)

But my panic attacks are mild in comparison with other people’s. So it’s great that Expert Village did a little video series dealing with panic attacks in a practical ways. I found that the best in the series was “How to Help Someone Having a Panic Attack,” because it explains the difference between helpful eye contact and leering. It also explains when touching is appropriate.

I just want to add that you may also want to help the person breathe deeply and gently remind them that nothing bad is happening to them right now and that you know it’s not their fault that they get panic attacks.

When you’re depressed over being victimized or abused, you often hear crap like “forgiveness is good for the soul” or “you’re creating a psychic chain between you and the one who hurt you.” This advice — although probably well meaning — winds up hurting a depressive all the more. This makes the victim feel guilty, which is the exact same tool abusers use in order to manipulate their victims.

Don’t Go Overboard

It is unhealthy when a victim constantly obsesses on how to get revenge upon an abuser. That definately needs intervention, if just to keep the victim out of jail. Life isn’t fair and you just have to accept it. Over time, the memories of pain and humiliation lessen.

Trying to get revenge on an abuser is like trying to get revenge on a tornado. Abusers are untouchable in the sense that they have no feelings for anyone other than themselves, so nothing you can do will affect them.

There are so many other things to do to occupy your time rather than obsess on revenge. These things will help your mental health and also help your loved ones who have to put up with you.

Forgiveness, Shmorgiveness

I have clinical depression and I have survived an abusive relationship. I will never forgive the man who abused me (and, who I discovered later, abused others). Quite franky, I hope he gets skinned alive — and even that would be too kind of a punishment for him.

He’s taken everything else away from me — but he’s not taking my forgiveness. And by staying ticked off at him, I can stay away from other abusers and help give support to other victims.

So, if someone urges you to forgive an abuser or murderer or whatever, ignore them. Anger is a tool — use it.

I highly recommend anyone suffering from any type of depression to read any of the Darwin Award books, because you will never feel so bad about yourself again.

But the first book in the series is quite long and may seem intimidating. The latest installment, The Darwin Awards Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool by Wendy Northcutt and friends, is a bit more digestable and chock full of scienctific essays, so you can claim to be learning something as you’re laughing. At least, you’ll never look at mosquito spit the same way again.

What Are The Darwin Awards?

One of the first real killer sites on the Internet, it started as a very unimpressive but incredibly funny list on a univeristy website back in 1993. A man in 1985 tried to get a soda out a machine by tilting it — and was crushed to death. Someone somewhere said that the deceased should get an award for not swimming in the gene pool any longer.

Another suggested that the award be called the Darwin Awards, after Charles Darwin, who always enjoyed a good laugh. So, the Darwin Awards honor those adult men and women who have either sterilized themselves or killed themselves in an incredibly entertaining manner. You can look at these as cautionary tales or, as I do, cheap therapy.

Not Drinking From The Fountain of Widom

You may feel as if you are hopeless or pathetically stupid. But if you already know not to enter a nuclear power plant when the security claims the radiation is too high, then you are a genuis compared to the folks in here.

As one DA website philospher pointed out about a Darwin Award winner, “That’s not drinking from the fountain of widom — hell, that’s not even gargling.”

Last time on DepressionTalk, we looked at treament resistant depression. That was so you’d get tha background information on this latest study on treatment resistant depression in teens which came out on the online version of The American Journal of Psychiatry, AJP In Advance. It’s got the toe-tapping title of “Predictors of Spontaneous and Systematically Assessed Suicidal Adverse Events in the Treatment of SSRI-Resistant Depression in Adolescents (TORDIA) Study”

The point of the study was to try and discover why some teens with treatment resistant depression are more likely to attempt suicide than others. The top predictors are (drumroll, please):

• Family problems
• Drug or alcohol abuse
• Previous suicidal attempts or threats of an attempt

(Cymbol crash). Not really that earth shattering, are they? The more the dperessive’s life sucks, the more they will think about leaving that life.

Study Specs

Alright, I’m back from banging my head against the desk to tell you how these brainiacs came up with the findings. They looked at 334 adolescents who did not respond to at least three medications. 48 of them thought about or attempted to kill themselves during the study. The average time from dropping the last ineffective medication to thinking about leaving it all behind was three weeks.

Any Practical Advice?

The study strongly suggests that in treating depressed teens likely to commit suicide, “family conflict” and “emotion regulation” methods be used. I think that means talk therapy or another form of therapy where you have to go to someone’s office. It also says that unless a kid can stop self-medicating with drugs and/or alcohol, expect more suicide attempts.

This is a dreadfully named type of chronic depression. Please, someone in the medical community rename this thing. When you’re depressed, you’re always convinced that you cannot be cured or helped. With a name like “treatment resistant depression”, that sort of kills off all desire to continue getting help.

Anyway, when you have this type of depression, the usual antidepressants do not work. According to the Mayo Clinic, a patient needs to have tried at least three different medications before they can be diagnosed with treatment resistant depression.

Things To Keep In Mind

A person’s circumstances could give them treatment resistant depression. For example, you will find a lot of treatment resistant depression in the homeless. The stress of trying to survive pretty much cancels out a lot of antidepressant effects. Other circumstances that could lead to this type of depression include grief, war and physical or mental abuse.

Unless these underlying issues are addressed, then all of the drugs won’t help the depression, although they may help the person get a few hours of sleep.

Other Therapies to Try

If you continue on trying to get help for treatment resistant depression, that’s a good sign that you will find some help. You can have this treated by a doctor or psychiatrist. They may recommend some or a combination of the following:

• New types of medications like anti-seizure meds
• Combining antidepressants with other drugs
• Talk therapy or cognitive behavior therapy
• Getting a new therapist, doctor or psychiatrist
• Shock therpay (usually reserved for sucidal cases)
• Deep brian stimulation
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation

Don’t give up.

If you suffer from any type of depression or general anxiety disorder, imagine what that’s doing to your dog. They pick up on thinks like that. Some dogs just shrug it off (”Oh, those silly humans are at it again,”) but some dogs seem to think that the cause for your shattered nerves are invisible monsters that need a brave dog to chase off — well, in a way, they’re right.

A stressed dog will perform a variety of actions to show you they are stressed. These actions include panting heavily for no reason, crouching, pacing constantly or flattening the ears against the head, trying to look like a puppy. Some dogs get so stressed that their tummies get upset. Dogs lick their lips a lot right before they throw up.

Massage is great not only for your dog — but for you, too. Massaging a dog is a bit like petting your dog. It soothes the both of you. I’m not sure who benefits most from a stress massage — you or your dog. Your dog will let you know if you’re not touching him or her correctly. But dogs will also let you know when you are massaging them in just the right way. If they fall asleep on you as you are massaging them, take it as a compliment.

This little clip is from Expert Village, which has about a jillion how-to videos up on YouTube as well as their own website. There’s a whole series of dog massage and people massage videos up on both sites, as well. Hope this helps.

Bestselling author Dr. Andrew Weil claims that for overall health, you shouldn’t watch the news on TV except for local news, because it’s too depressing. According to a Pittsburgh University study on teens, they back up Dr. Weil’s claims, but add that watching any TV may contribute to developing depression.

Study Specs

The study followed 4,140 teenagers and looked at how long they watched TV, played computer games, listened to the radio and if they were eventually diagnosed with depression. The study started with interviews in 1995 and again in 2002, when the teens were in their 30’s. All of the teens participlating in 1995 were not diagnosed with depression. Years later, 7.8% were.

The study highlighted that it was the TV watching group that were later diagnosed with depression, not the radio-listening group or the computer-games playing group. The other groups still watched TV, but about a half hour less each day than the TV watching group, who watched TV an average of 2.3 hours per day.

The Practical Upshot

The study acknowledges that there could be many other factors why 7.8% of the teens became depressed. One of those could be that the kids did not get enough sleep because they were watching TV instead. Not getting enough sleep can get anyone depressed. That’s why sleep deprivation is considered torture in some countries.

But you can stop TV watching a couple of hours before bed or watch rather goofy, fluffy entertainment like late-night talk shows instead of action movies. Sometimes, watching a really boring documentary can help you drift right off.

You can’t isolate yourself from what’s going on in the world. Also, when you have depression, ANYTHING can set you off. It doesn’t have to be TV. Watch TV, even if you are depressed.

If you aren’t worried about climate change, then you really should be worried about your mental health. But for those who know and personally experienced the devastating effects of climate change (such as species die-offs, diappearance of glaciers, Spain turning into a desert, and do on), depression is common and actually healthy.

Certainly, you can obssessively worry about anything, but in this post, we’ll just stick with worrying about climate change.

Denial Is Unhealthy

Truth hurts — that’s why many people don’t try to find it or accept it once they have found it. We are creatures of habit and try to get through life being as lazy as possible. So, many people have become global warming deniers and for some reason most of them seem to live in America.

Global warming isn’t something shockingly new. Scientists have been giving warnings since the late 1980’s. And hearing any news related to global warming can certainly be depressing.

But ignoring the problem is not an option (unless you want the Earth to become a lifess rock). Just like ignoring major depression is unhealthy, so is ignoring global warming. If you have depression and are worried about the environment — good.

Dealing with Worry

Climate change is a normal thing to be worried about. Convinced that a piano is going to fall out of the sky onto your head whenever you leave your house is not a normal thing to worry about. That would be paranoia. Worry can certainly become paranoia, but it doesn’t have to be in the depressive.

Being concerned or worried shows you actually give a damn. When you’re depressed, you’re really locked into your head. Worrying about the environment means you are thinking beyond yourself.

Then endorse yourself for the worry but then you need to work on your mental health to help do work for the environment in whatever way you choose. You can use the worry to help motivate you to not only get beter, but find a meaning to your life.

Hope this helps.

“A man is the sum of his memories” — Dr. Who

What date is it today? Did we just fast forward in time to April Fool’s Day? Actually, no. The blogosphere is jumping about a Dutch study that shows that the use of beta blockers could help people forget bad memories. The study notes that this is still all theory and that more research needs to be done.

If bad memories were fuel, then in a depressive, bad memories would be like nuclear power — complete with waste you can’t get rid of. But, if later research shows that beta blockers like propranolol can help you forget traumatic events, is it a good idea to take a pill to get rid of those memories?

The Value of Bad Memories

Bad memories — even traumatic memories — can be helpful to a person in the long run. It helps teach a person how to avoid or survive such events, should they ever crop up again. But they are oppressive when they repeat over and over again and you can’t shut them off or all you can think about are those bad memories to the point where they block out all good memories.

Part of dealing with depression or trauma is learning how to deal with the memories. Otherwise, you haven’t really progressed in your mental health. You can ease the symptoms, but until the root cause is dealt with, there won’t be a cure.

The Fire

In August of 2005, I saw my home burn down. It is not a memory I cherish and many days I would like to forget it. But it has become part of my personality that I survived a fire and kept my dog safe, too. If the beta blockers should prove to block bad memories, count me out. Getting rid of my bad memories also gets rid of parts of myself.

The BRODEAN study has begun at UT Southwestern Medical Center. A first volunteer has been given an implant hoped to help lessen or cure major depression. BRODEAN is short for BROdmann Area 25 DEep brain Neuromodulation. Impressive. What does that Mean? It means people are volunteering for surgery to implant this tiny device that promotes deep brain stimulation (DBS).

See what major depression does to you? You get so desperate that you’ll volunteer for anything in order to get relief.

Not Exactly Brain Surgery

What makes BRODEAN different from other types of brain surgeries? Instead of trying to bore a hole in your skull to stick in an electrode, and then connecting you to a seperate machine, everything you need is stuck inside of you. It’s sort of like a pacemaker for the brain (at least, that’s what Time says). This is how UT Southwestern’s Tony Whitworth, M.D. describes it:

The Libra DBS system’s generator or ‘battery’ is implanted near the collarbone and connected to small electrical leads placed at specific targets in the brain. The implantation surgery takes about two to three hours. Patients typically are able to go home one or two days after the procedure

With everything in place, the Libra DBS system generator delivers mild elecrical current to a particular area of the brain that gets quite active in major depressives called Broadmann Area 25.

No, I don’t get it, either.

Originally For Parkinson’s Disease

DBS first appeared on the medical scene in the late 1980’s as a treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. IT’s also being used as therapy for other neurological disorders that often involve trembling as well as trying to help rehabilitate drug addicts.

Very nice — but stay away from my head. After years of reading Stephen King, I just see too many ways this could go haywire…so to speak.

“I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.” — Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956) was an artist people either love or hate. There aren’t many in between. He’s classified as an “abstrct expressionist” but is usually called “the guy who does all the big paintings full of squiggly lines.” Whether you love or hate his art, if you have any type of depression, there is a lot to be learned from Jackson Pollock — namely, the right way and the wrong way to go about handling your mental illness.

What He Did Right

Pollock did channel a lot of his emotions into the creative process. His paintings are huge, incredibly complex and present a unique view of the world. His paintings could also be illustrations of what it feels like to be depressed.

Art therapy is highly recommeded for anyone with any kind of depression. It doesn’t have to be painting — it could be cooking, or gardening or just about anything you choose. The requirements for this creaticve choice are that you have to move your muscles and show tangible results.

As this clip shows, Pollock would move his whole body in order to paint.

What He Did Wrong

Pollock lived at a time when most medications for mental illness were not developed. Often, treatment back then consisted of a combination of shock therapy and talk therapy. But still, that would have been preferable to what Pollock did do.

He chose to self-medicate with alcohol. Not suprisingly, he became an alcoholic. Although an artisitc genius, he had a miserable live that ended short when he became drunk and got behind the wheel of a car.

Don’t self-medicate.

As we head into that time of discount sales on red edible underwear and bubblebath that comes in a champagne bottle, let us depressives remember one very important fact about romantic love:

It Sucks

If you have been diagnosed with depression, or even if you haven’t been diagnosed with depression, don’t make the mistake of thinking, “If I just find my soulmate, everything will be all right.” If you believe that, you are setting yourself up for a major heartache.

Let’s look at the problems in looking for a soulmate.

There Is No Such Thing As A Soulmate

The concept of a soulmate is that each couple makes up one half of a soul and that by only finding that special someone (usually around Valentine’s Day) you will feel complete and happy or at least able to cope with misery.

Bull cookies.

If you believe that people have souls, then why do you believe they’ve spilt in half? If you don’t beleive people have souls, why look for someone to make you complete?

You are putting all of the eggs of your happiness into the basket case that is your romantic partner or longed-for future romantic partner. By thinking that you need a soulmate, you have closed off all of the other avenues of life that can bring you happiness and good mental health.

In order to survive through life, you need to be flexible enough to adapt. A vast multitude of people can serve as your romantic partners and provide all of your needs in exactly the same way. Don’t expect them to make you happy — and don’t let them make you miserable.

True Love

If you want true love, adopt a pet from your local animal shelter. If you’re lucky enough to have a supportive family, send them Valentines and thank them.

Hope this helps.

Sometimes, these studies make me scratch my head. We know that high cholesterol can kill you, whether you have depression or not. Now, new research published in the Journal of Psychiatric Reasearchhas come out stating that in men diagnosed with drepression, low cholesterol can kill you, too.

According to this, the way the combination of low cholesterol and depression kills men is by making them commit suicide or taking a drug overdose or engaging in more risky behaviors that may lead to a premature death.

Damned if you pig out and damned if you don’t, huh?

What Is Low Cholesterol?

The article defined low cholesterol in men as “165 milligrams of cholesterol per deciliter or less”. The normal number is 200 milligrams of cholesterol per decileter.

When it comes to cholesterol, there is such a thing as getting the level too low. Low cholesterol is thought to perhaps play a role in making a person more predisposed to cancer. In pregnant women, it can lead to misscarriage or low birth weight.

For most people in North America or the UK, the dangers of getting low cholesterol are a moot point because of the high calorie, high-cholesterol diet. Because of the high price of food, people are choosing to get fatty calorie-laden food to help them get through the day. But, somehow, some folks still have low cholesterol.

Study Specs

The article was researched and written by the Geisinger Health System in Danville, PA. It looked at about 4500 veterans from Vietnam and followed up on what happened to them since 1985, with 2000 as a cut off date to begin coallating data. Veterans with both depression and low cholesterol were found to be seven times more likely to die a premature death than other veterans.

Of course, being a veteran may have had something to do with the high suicide rate, too, but for some reason, that point was glossed over.

America has a fatal fascination with trainwrecks, which may explain why the Republican party was in power for so long. The latest trainwreck is Nadya Suleman, a mentally ill woman in California who recently gave birth to octopulets — and yet already has six children. Not only that, Nadya lives with her parents (although they have threatened to kick her out), is unemployed and does not have a partner to help her raise this vast herd of rugrats.

She didn’t even get pregnant the old fashioned way. She went to an as yet anonymous California fertility clinic, which must have cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, which the American public will have to pay for because it’s inevitable that all of the children will be taken away from this Angelina Joile-wannabe.

And the odds are that all of the kids have inhereted their mother’s mental illness. Which means they will most likely grow up to commit suicide or at least be freaking miserable.

“I Can Be There For My Kids”

Suleman’s argument for having 14 kids while unemployed and living with her parents is that she can “be there for her kids”. Can someone throw this woman in a hospital and at least sterilize her, let alone get her some good mood stabilizers so she can see that she is completley insane?

Anyone remember their own childhood? The greatest thing was when the parents left you alone. You could run wild. It was what most kids pray for. “Please, God, let my parents get stuck in an elevator shaft for the weekend. I want to party.”

Not Usual Of Mental Illness

Most people with a mental illness like depression are not so whacknoodle. They can actually hold down a job, take care of many commitments and do not have 14 kids on purpose. Nadya Suleman is NOT a poster child of mental illness. She’s a poster child for abortion.

There are different flavors to bipolar disorder or manic depression, although there is a lot of quibbling over just how many types there are. This is because every bipolar patient has their own unique version of the illness. This is true of anyone suffering from any type of depression, but there are some generalities common to each category.

Types of bipolar depression are divided based on how often a patient cycles. A cycle means a period of time when they go through their manic phase, followed by the depressive phase. Manic phases and depressive phases can last weeks or months, depending on the person. There can be long gaps of time between each cycle.

Cyclothymic Disorder

This is considered the mildest type of bipolar disorder, complete with the manic-depressive cycles. It still should be treated, because the risk of suicide is just as bad as in more severe types.

Type I Bipolar Disorder

Also known as “classic bipolar disorder”, this is the kind we usually read about. The cycles are more severe than in Type II.

Type II Bipolar Disorder

The cycles are not as severe as Type I but stronger than in cyclothymia. The person will never become as severely manic as Carrie Fisher or Spike Milligan.

Rapid Cycling

No, not what Lance Armstrong does, but manic depressives who have their cycles practically on top of each other, without the weeks, months or years break in between that many other types exhibit. You have four or more cycles per year.

Mixed Bipolar Disorder

This was a new one for me. In this type of bipolar disorder, you experience mania and depression at the same time. That’s gotta suck.