Understanding Bipolar Disorder

 

 Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder is a chronic condition that causes persistent and severe irritability. What may be perceived as a tantrum or temporary crankiness can actually be a serious condition. The guidelines for this disorder were created in an effort to replace childhood bipolar disorder. If you have gone the entirety of your life with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, it can be severely difficult to determine if you have this specific condition. Dealing with bipolar symptoms can be really intimidating and scary, and you should not go through this alone.
      During manic episodes, symptoms can include the following:
           - No need for sleep
           - Impulsive behavior and fast speech
           - Decreased appetite
           - Lack of concentration
           - Heightened irritability
           - Weight loss
           - Inflated sense of self-importance
  Those are examples of what can occur during a manic phase, and the symptoms for a depressed phase has a list that is opposite in action. A depressed phase usually includes feelings of sadness, loss of interest in everyday activities, low self-esteem and negative thoughts. If you or someone close to you is displaying any of these symptoms, contact an experienced counselor today.

How To Tell If Your Relationship Is In Trouble

Each relationship experiences some level of conflict at some point, it is inevitable. How do you know when that conflict is serious? Do you know when it is time for therapy? Read the article below for an exploration on how to tell if your relationship is in trouble.

Many couples will feverously plan a trip or schedule a date night. Unfortunately a couple who has reached the level where they think they have “fallen out of love” (whatever that means!) is likely to find that date night commitments all too frequently lose their fervor. The memories of a crucial romantic vacation will have faded within a month of the couple’s return to the reality of career, home, and family. They return to the demands of parenting or career challenges and find themselves once again on the treadmill of life. “Date night” – or romantic getaways – usually prove to be only a small band aid for big crises.

— Read More At Psyhcentral.com

Ways To Help Loved Ones With Depression

Depression can cause a sudden change of behavior, and this can be unsettling for an outsider, especially for someone with limited experience in this department. You may have the first instinct to stay away from a person who is displaying symptoms, but resist this instinct and press on. This in-depth article explains exactly how to deal with a loved one who suffers from depression.

Whenever one of my kids gets sick or injured, I start in with a series of questions: Where does it hurt? How long have you felt bad? Does anything make it worse (besides school)? Does anything make it better (besides ice-cream)? Just by asking a few basic questions, I can usually get enough information to determine a plan of action.

— Read More At Psychcentral.com

Reduced Sleep From PTSD Results In Lower Physical Activity

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, can cause a disturbance in sleep patterns, which in turn leads to reduced physical activity. This development was found during a recent study, and lowered physical activity can affect other areas of one's life in a negative way. Read more about this study below...

“This study adds to the literature that shows that better sleep leads to healthier levels of exercise, and previous research has shown that better sleep leads to healthier food choices,” said American Academy of Sleep Medicine President Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler. “It is clear that healthy sleep is an essential ingredient in the recipe for a healthy life.”

— Read More At Psychcentral.com

Exercise Shown To Help Those With Social Anxiety

Social anxiety can be a very frustrating thing to endure, especially when all you want to do is make the people around you happy. Once you start feeling the anxiety build up, the only thing that you want to do is escape, alone. A recent study showed that exercise can help ease the tension of social anxiety. Read more about this below...

“We wanted to examine whether people would perceive their environment as less threatening after engaging in physical exercise or after doing a relaxation technique that is similar to the breathing exercises in yoga (called progressive muscle relaxation),” Heenan said. “We found that people who either walked or jogged on a treadmill for 10 minutes perceived these ambiguous figures as facing towards them (the observer) less often than those who simply stood on the treadmill.

— Read More At Psychcentral.com

Mental Hospital In Oregon Tries To Reunite Remains With Family Members

Mental health used to be a murky topic, often avoided or mistreated due to lack of understanding. In Salem, Oregon, a mental health hospital that was used in the filming of "One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest" housed the remains of its patients for years. The ashes were kept in urns for thousands of patients, and the hospital has been trying to reunite people with their loved ones for a long time. Read more about this below...

"No one wants to be laid to rest without some kind of acknowledgement that they were here, that they contributed, that they lived," said state Senate President Peter Courtney, who led a successful effort to replace the hospital and build the memorial.

— See More At Huffington Post

Understanding Depression

 Feeling depressed for a day or week is an entirely different scenario compared to clinical depression, and sometimes people who suffer from this every day do not get the attention they need. Because of certain literature or music portraying the helplessness that accompanies certain situations, some feel that depression is situation-based or seasonal. While this can be the case for certain people, others suffer from serious clinical depression.

How can you tell the difference between situation-based depression and clinical? It is very difficult to differentiate between the two, but some symptoms include:

-          Feeling irritated or sad every day, regardless of the scene

-          A marked lack of interest in activities you once enjoyed

-          Noticeable weight gain or weight loss

-          Insomnia every day

-          Chronic fatigue

-          Unexplained guilt or anger toward loved ones

-          Inability to concentrate

-          Feelings of worthlessness

-          Thoughts of death on a daily basis

If you feel like any of these symptoms are taking over your life, contact an experienced therapist today. Talking to someone who has a background in dealing with depression alternatively can make all the difference in your recovery.

Questions You Should Ask Yourself To Help With Anxiety And Depression

When battling anxiety or depression it can be a common occurence to wonder what is wrong with you, or what is missing from your life. Asking the same questions every time you experience an episode is only going to perpetuate the feeling of hopelessness and despair.It can help to change the question you ask yourself, and this article explores that option.

Whereas we might not know the exact reasons that a 16-year-old boy is plagued with intrusive thoughts of his perfectly healthy mother dying unless he performs repetitive washing and checking rituals, we know why the fear persists. The very act of giving into the fear by performing these compulsions combined with his mother being alive serve to validate the obsessions. This knowledge can help a therapist to develop a treatment approach that weakens this loop.

— Read More At Huffington Post

What Three Weeks Can Teach You About Despair

Sometimes reading about other cultures can open our minds to alternate forms of recovering from a loss. In Judaism, there is a period of time known as Three Weeks, and it is a time to mourn destruction and express sorrow. This can teach a person to move on from grief, and shows one how to view a loss as a new beginning. The article below will explain this period of time and how it can help you start over.

We all know that whatever we focus on, direct more of our energy towards, tends to manifest more and more in our lives. While it is absolutely true that painful feelings may need to be addressed, talked through, worked out, it is also very important to focus on positive aspects of your life as well as positive aspects of your person.

— See More At Psychcentral.com

Returning To Work After Treatment For Addiction

Addiction treatment usually requires a person to enter into a program, and these programs can be pretty intense. Re-adjusting to every day can require additional therapy with an experienced counselor, but what other things are needed? How does one reenter the workplace after such intensive treatment? The article below explores ways in which you can easily reenter the workplace.

If you’re newly sober, here is what to expect: The very first question you may encounter from your colleagues is “where have you been?” It’s not even 8:30 and you are already faced with a major decision: to be honest about your absence, or offer an alternate explanation, such as a sick parent in Arizona. You may choose the latter, which is completely your right to do. As a person in recovery, you are entitled to protect your anonymity, but this does require keeping your story straight later, which may cause additional stress.

— Read More At Psychcentral.com

Understanding The Horror Of PTSD

If you suffer from PTSD, then you are very aware of the complex nature of this disease. There are many ways to treat PTSD, and having an open mind about treatment will only help you deal better. The following profile goes into great detail about PTSD, and explains all the things we have learned about it.

Treating PTSD is essentially the same process. We help the person to gradually confront situations, places and activities they've avoided since the traumatic event because they cause great anxiety; we call this in vivo (or live) exposure. In PTSD, however, the main "feared object" is not outside the person, it is the memory of their traumatic experience.

— Read More At The NEw Zealand Herald

Service Dogs For PTSD

Dealing with PTSD on a daily basis can be debilitating, and it helps to have multiple alternatives for treatment. Turning to a trusted counselor can only help further your progress, but recent studies have shown that service dogs can also help a great deal. PTSD affects about 30% of the country's war veterans. Read more about this below...

Rich Brewer served in the marines in the 1980's stationed at embassies all over the world, including war torn Lebanon. But serving his country didn't come without a price. After returning home he suffered nightmares, flashbacks and considered suicide to deal with the panic attacks. It took almost 20 years before he was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

— Read More At wcsh6.com