Depression Is A Family Matter

Depression is not just a medical matter. It's a family one, too.

The behaviors and mood of a depressed person affect the whole family. There's the irritability, which sets off conflicts and derails family dynamics. The negative thought patterns, which become a prism of pessimism for everyone. The withdrawal that literally disrupts relationships and breeds wholesale feelings of rejection. There are major responsibilities that get displaced. There is a general burden of stress.

And yet, families can be major forces of care, comfort, even cure. They are crucial to proper recognition and treatment of the disorder, not just at the beginning but throughout. They are the de facto caregivers, willingly or not. They contribute powerfully to the emotional atmosphere the depressed person inhabits, and so can be agents of recovery. Or not.

Yes, depression has a huge impact on families. And families have a huge impact on depression.

Nassir Ghaemi, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard, contends it's not even desirable to make the correct diagnosis of depression without the family. For one thing, many people -- particularly those at either end of the age spectrum and those with medical conditions -- don't realize they are depressed or may attribute symptoms to other things. The perspective of family members is useful.

Read more about the role and function of family and the depressed patient @ Depression is a Family Matter or Contact us for a clinical consultation.

Just like a teenager!

It's Friday! I think this means it's time to have a little fun.

I want to tell you a story about some squirrels that moved into our home some time ago. They were uninvited!

When I first moved out to this house 7 years ago, I was so careful about using live traps and I tried to think about how the animals and my family could live in harmony in the woods. It didn’t take too long before I started calling anything that invaded my space, “home wreckers” and if you were a “home wrecker” this means, war and I was taking you out dead or alive! I have never owned a gun or shot a gun in my life but last week I asked a friend of mine to loan me one. Remember in the cartoons when the crazy country person starts shooting up their house, if I had a gun I swear I would have been trying to shoot those squirrels through the ceiling and rafters.

My husband and I tried everything we could think of live traps, poisoning, trapping them inside, nothing was working and they were distroying our home. Our home I say....It was time for the professionals!

I called Barry from SW Michigan Pest Control. He came right out and got to work and set two live traps. Nothing! The next day he set a kill trap at the base of the tree and cut two holes for the squirrels to come in and out of with kill traps covering the holes. The bait was taken and one of the traps triggered but NO SQUIRREL. All the while, I can hear them running around back and forth, playing, rolling nuts, laughing and laughing...Ha, Ha, Ha! (This is really when the gun would have been a bad idea.) Barry came out the next day and said he had been thinking about this all night. I could tell because he was beginning to look a little disheveled. He was starting to look a little traumatized but I decided that he wasn't in need of a crisis intervention yet. He made a board to cover the holes with kill traps, covered any other place they could get out and put more bait in the traps. I could hear them again in the evening and SNAP! I run outside to see the kill trap has been triggered again! NO SQUIRREL. Really, I have no way of understanding how these squirrels could do this without getting caught. Barry is about fit to be tied and says, “You can fire me if you want, I have never been unable to catch an animal and you don't have to pay me.” (I think he wanted me to put him out of his misery and rid him of this hell job, but I didn't.) He noticed that somehow they have even gotten the bait out of the live traps, too! Ha! Ha! He had been at our home 3 times daily for 3 days in a roll. Barry noticed that they are making holes other places to get out and destroying our home even more, Home Wreckers!

So he decided to take the trap off the opening and set up other traps in the area. I noticed not soon after Barry left there was a lot of activity going on and I think I saw one carrying another squirrel…I haven’t heard much this morning and I am so hoping that they decided to move out yesterday!

You ask, "What does this have to do with a teenager?" I found myself chuckling to myself at how insane this chase had become with these squirrels. The more we tried to out smart, and control them it seemed the more oppositional and distructive the squirrels became. We were definitely putting pressure on them like you would do with a teen that you wanted to straighten up and fly right. Barry kept saying to have patience and they will come around, "We will get them." When provided a safe opening for the squirrels to leave after much pressure they decided to leave and make the choice that was going to most healthy for them. Sometimes as parents we need to let go a little to allow the teen enough space to make a good decision on their own.

Anxiety and Financial Problems

In this day and age with people seeking bigger homes, bigger cars, and increased wants with limited increase in salaries over the past couple years, people have maxed out credit cards, second mortgages, personal loans and extended equity credit lines. People are feeling overextended and increasingly anxious.

Dr. Irvin Wolkoff said Thursday of the findings of the report commissioned by Desjardins Financial Security, which sells life and health insurance. "This kind of empty pursuit of money - which is in the end unsatisfying - is generating a tremendous amount of stress, which in turn is producing a lot of anxiety, depression and physical illness," Wolkoff said.

Sustained anxiety can increase risk of heart related illnesses and other physiological concerns. If you are having difficulty managing stress and anxiety due to financial concerns contact us.

Point of View Matters

Our perception of our surrounds and environment effects how we see the world. An article published in the recent issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science studies how fatigue, physical ability and potential bodily endangerment effect how we view our environment. The study shows that when people are tired or fearful they see hills as bigger, roads as longer or packages as heavier.

The study indicates that point of view matters. It impacts our decision making, thinking, behaviors and emotions. Increased awareness of this phenomenon can improve our decision making skills. It also gives us insight into how to lead a more balanced life. Being well rested and receiving regular exercise can help us have a more accurate perception of our environment.

Helping

My role as a helper is not to do things for the person I am trying to help, but to be things, not trying to control and change his/her actions, but through understanding an awareness to change my reactions. I will change my negatives to positives; fear to faith; contempt for what he/she may do to respect for the potential within him/her; hostility to understanding; and manipulation or over-protectiveness to release with love, not trying to make him/her fit a standard or image, but giving him/her an opportunity to pursue his/her own destiny, regardless of what that choice may be.

Self-pity blocks effective action.
The more I indulge in it, the more I feel that the answer to my problems is a change in others and society, not in myself. Thus, I become a hopeless case.

Exhaustion is the result when I use my energy in mulling over the past with regret, or in trying to figure ways to escape a future that has yet to arrive. Projecting an image of the future, and anxiously hovering over it, for fear that it will or it won't come true uses all of my energy and leaves me unable to live today. Yet living today is the only way to have a life.
I will have no thought for the future actions of others, neither expecting them to be better or worse as time goes on, for in such expectations I am really trying to create. I will love and let be.
All people are always changing. If I try to judge them I do so only on what I think I know of them, failing to realize that there is much I do not know. I will give others credit for attempts at progress and for having had many victories which are unknown to me.
I too am always changing, and I can make that change a constructive one, if I am willing. I CAN CHANGE MYSELF, others I can only love.

Gratitude

Gratitude is a sentiment we'd all do well to cultivate, according to positive psychologists, mental health clinicians and researchers who seek to help everyone create more joy in life. Feeling thankful and expressing that thanks makes you happier and heartier—not hokier. Simple exercises can give even skeptics a short-term mood boost, and "once you get started, you find more and more things to be grateful for," says Robert Emmons, a leading gratitude researcher at the University of California at Davis.

Gratitude needn't be directed at another person to hit its mark. Take just a few minutes each day to jot down things that make you thankful, from the generosity of friends to the food on your table or the right to vote. After a few weeks, people who follow this routine "feel better about themselves, have more energy and feel more alert," Emmons says. Feeling thankful even brings physical changes, studies show. List-keepers sleep better, exercise more and gain a general contentment that may counteract stress and contribute to overall health.

When individuals start a daily gratitude journal, they begin to feel a greater sense of connectedness to the world. "The differences are noticed by others," Emmons says. "People who know them say they're more helpful." Thankfulness may launch a happy cycle in which rich friendships bring joy, which gives you more to be grateful for, which fortifies your friendships once again.

Even a simple "thank you" spurs people to act in compassionate ways they might not otherwise consider. People thanked for giving directions help more willingly in the future, social workers who get thank-you letters visit their clients more often, and diners whose waiters write "thanks" on the check give bigger tips.

Call it corny, but gratitude just may be the glue that holds society together.

For more on this topic of Gratitude, visit Make a Gratitude Adjustment.

e-Therapy is the Trend

In telemedicine today, the doctor is in -- and online. The medical profession has been developing telehealth technology for more than 35 years; integration of classic telemedicine (using telecommunications to provide health information and services) and telehealth technologies was the next step.

Some experts say Web-based therapy is the wave and the way of the future. Every day a growing number of people depend on the Web for advice and emotional support. Some look to the Internet for convenience, others for anonymity. High costs and low company co-pays, send some people shopping for bargain fees online. Aside from the issues of legality and legitimacy, several questions remain. Can an online mental-health practitioner can get a true sense of person's real-life situation and then adequately render service? Should the mental health community look at the numbers of people who seek counseling online and work to find ways to improve it instead of getting caught up in an emotional debate over its nuances? Should practitioners concentrate on all innovative therapies in the hope of meeting the mental-health needs of the next generation?

A local professor, who recently sought online counseling and had a positive experience, describes it this way: You moped away your week at the lake, you haven't showered in days. If you sat with a therapist, you'd worry that you looked bad and sounded worse. Or maybe it's not a good day outside for crutches, a walker or a wheelchair. Or your big meeting starts in an hour and you feel panic rising up in your chest. Or your glorious romance of three years just disintegrated. Or lots of little things have built up, and you feel like you're about to implode. You know there's no danger of you doing something egregious, but your problems are still very real. You feel safe there at your computer. That's when the right therapy for you might be waiting online.

Sticks and Stones

Abuse of any kind can have long-term detrimental effects on us. Physical and sexual abuse incidents frequently gain the most media attention. Emotional, psychological and economic abuse consequences are less obvious but the damage done is equally insidious and long-lasting. Researchers at Florida State University in Tallahassee report that repeated verbal abuse from parents can contribute to depression and anxiety that lasts well into adulthood. "Those who were verbally abused had 1.6 times as many symptoms of depression and anxiety as those who had not been verbally abused and were twice as likely to have suffered a mood or anxiety disorder in their lifetime," study author Natalie Sachs-Ericsson, an FSU professor, said in a prepared statement. Poor self-esteem triggered by verbal abuse during childhood continues into adulthood, allowing the symptoms of anxiety and depression to settle, the researchers said. But, they added, therapy offers hope for these victims.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps people replace their self-critical, irrational thoughts with more affirming, positive thinking. CBT has shown remarkable positive outcomes in reframing people’s thoughts, challenging and impacting their beliefs, altering their emotional and behavioral responses and ultimately reshaping a once damaged personal self-esteem.

Learning our Lessons!

We are often given opportunities for growth. It is our weakness that usually challenges us. There are so many ways of learning and one of those is to learn through tragedy, pain and hurt. What about learning and growing through our feelings of JOY? Do we need to take the unpaved, gravel, pitted dirt road? Sometimes we do! I prefer though to learn through JOY and love. Make every effort to create JOY and Happiness in your life. Laugh at yourself! We humans can be foolish animals. It is another day, don’t take it so seriously. If there is one thing that we all know in our wise mind (inner knowing) is that life WILL change. What can you do to focus it towards positive change? Smile, just for a moment!