Now that Fall is well underway in the Northern Hemisphere, back-to-school is already a memory, it’s a good time to take a look at habit formation, especially in the realm of medication and treatment adherence. Adherence is a critical issue, both for conventional medication and for alternative treatments of any kind: they can’t work if you don’t follow the plan. Medical researchers estimate that up to 50% of patients don’t take their medication regularly as prescribed, and the number is thought to be even higher for elderly patients, who may have as many as 6 to 8 prescriptions to recall, and who may encounter difficulties in getting to the pharmacy to get them filled; or in covering the expenses of ...
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Seasonal Affective Disorder is familiar to many of our readers; as the planet turns, days get shorter and nights get longer. In California, cloudy and rainy weather takes over from the sunshine that we’re used to, and many people get the “blues”. Others encounter more serious dysfunction, and may require medical intervention to cope. Seasonal changes affect our circadian rhythms, and require adjustments throughout the year, as temperature warms or cools, days lengthen or shorten and rainy and dry weather alternates according to climate zone. However, now people are noticing more variation in age-old patterns as industrialization, pollution, and climate change begin to bite. New research coming out considers changing seasonal patterns due to human interactions with the environment, and ...
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September is suicide prevention month, and there’s a lot of information available online. Overall, suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States. The vast majority of suicides are by gunshot, with suffocation next and poisoning third. There Is Help Available If you search the internet for “suicide prevention” one striking result is the number of formulas available: 3 C’s, 4 P’s, 10 steps, “tips for intervention”. People are trying hard and putting a lot of thought into suicide prevention. But one critical point that often gets missed is involvement. That’s why I like the 3 C’s approach: Connection, collaboration, choice. If you are concerned about someone you know and love who you think may be suicidal, ...
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We were talking with a patient recently, let’s call him Brian, who suffers from recurrent anxiety, which disrupts his sleep. He explained the technique that has helped him significantly improve his sleep quality: scheduled worry. Scheduled worry is a simple technique that many of our patients swear by. Instead of allowing worrisome thoughts or issues to float randomly to your mind at any time of the day or night, you just set a time to let them in. If they come back at an unscheduled time, you just tell the thought: “Sorry, you have to wait, it’s not your turn now.” Sounds almost too simple, but it works! Brian shares that this is an especially important way to handle work-related ...
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Since insomnia is one of the big concerns of many of our mood disorder patients, we keep a close eye on sleep apps and related fields like jet lag helps. We have been recommending the “Sleep Junkie” app for several years, but it seems they no longer offer it, although they have “tips” for jet lag on their website. Recently, however, we have come across a new player in the field that looks promising. Timeshifter addresses frequent flyers, as well as the sleep needs of shift workers. It’s not free, although you can get one free trip - say if you’re going to Tokyo or Paris - just to try it out. After that, it’s $24.99 per year for frequent ...
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How do you know if your medications are working? What does it even mean to say they are “working”? How long does it take to see if there is a real change in your situation as a result of taking (or changing) medications? A recent conversation with a patient, let’s call him Jim, highlighted some of these issues. Jim is a careful observer who has experience with balancing treatment for ADHD, anxiety and bipolar. He notes that it isn’t easy to tell right away if a change will be beneficial. “I feel like I'm on an effective dose now, even though at first I don't think I got the full benefit of it. I had to live with it for ...
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Welcome to MoodSurfing.com, the site that highlights strategies for living creatively with moods and coping with depression. This site is for people with bipolar, depression, cyclothymia, and others who experience powerful moods and want to figure out how to integrate these experiences into successful lives.
Although most of us are mental health clinicians of one kind or another, this site is not about providing people with medical or clinical advice (see below). We hope that we can help you cope with depression, maybe even allow you to live well with moods.
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We have done a series of interviews with people who have interesting things to say about different aspects of living creatively with moods. You can find those under the heading “Conversations.”
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This site is not designed to and does not provide medical advice, professional diagnosis, opinion, treatment or services to you or to any other individual. Through this site and linkages to other sites, Moodsurfing provides general information for educational purposes only. The information provided in this site, or through linkages to other sites, is not a substitute for medical or professional care, and you should not use the information in place of a visit, call consultation or the advice of your physician or other healthcare provider. Moodsurfing is not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis or any other information, services or product you obtain through this site.
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