Is Having Depression or Bipolar an Advantage?
January 31, 2008
Philip over at Furious Seasons has a great interview with author Tom Wootton about his two books, The Depression Advantage (2007) and The Bipolar Advantage (2005). These are two self-help books that use “accelerated learning techniques [the author] developed as a corporate consultant to Fortune 500 companies” (according to the Amazon blurb). The Amazon reviews are worth the read, as some readers have some reservations about the author.
It’s an interesting interview and the author makes a very important point that we often see lost in the conversation about coping with long-term depression or bipolar disorder. You can learn important lessons from dealing with adversity, which includes any adversity in our lives. I’m not sure I buy into the idea that having a serious mental illness is the thing that people need in order to properly learn life’s lessons; I think there are many more positive ways to learn them. Surely you can learn lessons from depression, but you can also learn a lot of meaningless pain, because not every emotional disorder has an insightful point to it.
And while a person may take positive things away from very negative experiences, one has to be self-aware enough to do so at the time, and recognize the opportunity when it arises (which many of us have trouble doing).
Oops, They Did It Again to Britney Spears
January 31, 2008
For the second time in a month, Britney Spears has been hospitalized for her mental health concerns. And not exactly in a quiet or private way.
The Los Angeles Times reported this morning that Britney Spears’ was taken to the UCLA Medical Center under a “mental health evaluation hold,” a period of 72 hours when the hospital will once again evaluate Ms. Spears’ mental health and whether she is being compliant with her treatment regimen.
This is the second time Ms. Spears has been hospitalized this month under a mental health evaluation hold (called a “5150″ in California parlance). The first occurred on Jan. 3 when she refused to return her two sons to former husband Kevin Federline. She was committed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at that time and released within 36 hours.
She was transported by ambulance from her Studio City home around 1:00 AM, with hounding paparazzi safely and determinedly kept at bay, as more than a dozen motorcycle officers, two cruisers and two police helicopters escorted the singer, the L.A. Times reports.
People magazine reports on its website that the singer’s mother, Lynne, as well as friends Alli Sims and Sam Lutfi were inside Britney’s mansion when police arrived.
According to the L.A. Times, authorities said the 1:00 AM intervention was staged at the request of Ms. Spears’ psychiatrist.
Police or a mental health professional can request an emergency hold if a person is deemed to be a danger to himself/herself or others.
“She was driving around her neighborhood like a mad-woman,” says a Spears’ family source. “Britney has been prescribed medication which she refuses to take. This is just another sad, sad evening.”
Earlier this week, Barbara Walters noted that Lutfi had contacted her regarding Ms. Spears’ condition. He reportedly claimed that Ms. Spears has “mental issues which are treatable” and revealed that she had consulted a psychiatrist and that she would start “some kind of treatment.”
“There is no question she is bipolar… She’s had manic episodes for years,” an anonymous source told People.
New Analysis Demonstrates Efficacy Of Seroquel (Quetiapine Fumarate) Maintenance Treatment For Bipolar I Disorder
January 30, 2008
New Analysis Highlights Potential Of SEROQUEL For Long-term Treatment Of Bipolar Disorder
January 28, 2008
Episode 29: More Bipolar Britney
January 25, 2008
Former state hospital patients are subject of an exhibit and book
January 20, 2008
A recent post on The Wall Street Journal’s health blog is a review of “The lives they left behind: Suitcases from a state hospital attic”, which is now on display at the New York Public library through the month of January. The display features items left behind from patients who stayed at Willard State hospital, a former psychiatric hospital which closed its doors finally in 1995. According to the blog post, some 50,000 patients were treated at Willard hospital during its 126 year existence, more than half of which died there.
The suitcases featured in the display are also the subject of a book by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny. From the exerts on the books website, it looks as though the book is primarily concerned with answering a few different questions; 1) Were the people at Willard justly committed? 2) How were the patients at Willard treated? 3) Who really, were these patients and what was there past like before they came to live at Willard?
The book focuses on 10 different patients and their histories through both medical records and suitcase contents.
One theme emerging from the website on this book and this display is that often times when patients were admitted to the hospital, the staff didn’t take the time to get to know anything about the person’s past. This often resulted in the hospital staff believing that the patient was hallucinating their past. Such is the case with one patient, whom the book refers to as “Theresa”. According to the research conducted by the books authors, Theresa had actually spent some of her past life as a nun. When she was admitted to the hospital, the staff seemed to believe that Theresa was hallucinating her religious past. This complete ignorance of a patient’s past seems to be the root cause for a lot of mistreatment which went on at Willard.
Sometimes it’s annoying to me how much time therapists spend delving into someone’s past. I posted a while back on “The Crutch of Why: How fixating on the source of mental illness can delay treatment”, which was essentially about how a patient can become preoccupied with their past and not focus enough on how to move forward. However, I can definitely see that having some insight on a person’s past can be useful for treatment especially after reading about Willard, in which case the staff had very little, if any information about a person’s past.
Psychological Interventions Are Effective In Mood Swings
January 17, 2008
Psychiatric Patients Often Have More Than One Diagnosis
January 14, 2008
A new study discovers a majority of psychiatry outpatients have more than one disorder, and more than one-third have at least three disorders.
Researchers found major depression as the most common diagnosis followed by social phobia.
Scientists hope the finding demonstrates the complexity of mental health care and the need for researchers and clinicians to acknowledge that an isolated diagnosis or disorder is not the norm.
The study of 2,300 individuals by Rhode Island Hospital researchers is published in the February 2008 edition of the journal Psychological Medicine. It is the largest study to date using standardized interviews to evaluate a wide range of psychiatric disorders in a general clinical outpatient practice.
Most patients had more than one diagnosis; on average, patients had 1.9 current diagnoses. Patients with principal diagnoses of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and bipolar disorder had the highest number of diagnoses.
Lead author Mark Zimmerman, M.D., director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School, said, “Based on the results of this study, clinicians should assume that in outpatients presenting for the treatment of mood or anxiety problems, the patients have more than one diagnosis.”
The study also examined which disorders were the most common reasons for seeking treatment. Major depressive disorder was most common, present in nearly half of the patients, and was usually the primary reason for seeking treatment.
In contrast, social phobia was the second most common diagnosis, present in approximately 25 percent of the patients. However, 95 percent of the patients diagnosed with social phobia came for treatment of another disorder.
Zimmerman noted, “For disorders like social phobia that are infrequently diagnosed as the principle disorder in clinical practice, it will be important for the next generation of treatment-efficacy studies to determine if treatment is effective when the disorder is a comorbid condition.”
Zimmerman, along with fellow researchers Joseph B. McGlinchey, Ph.D., Iwona Chelminski, Ph.D. and Diane Young, Ph.D., conclude that these results highlight the importance of conducting treatment research on patients with multiple disorders because this is the norm in clinical practice.
Most treatment studies exclude patients with multiple disorders. The authors said, “We hope that by documenting the high frequency of comorbidity in clinical practice, this will provide the impetus for modifying how treatment studies are conducted to allow patients with multiple disorders to be included and to determine the outcome of comorbid disorders as well as the primary disorder that is being treated.”
The report is from the Rhode Island Hospital Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services (MIDAS) Project, for which Zimmerman is the principal investigator. Zimmerman said, “The MIDAS project is unique in its integration of research quality diagnostic methods into a community-based outpatient practice affiliated with an academic medical center.”
Source: Lifespan
Most Psychiatric Patients Have More Than 1 Diagnosis, Study Finds
January 14, 2008
New Report Dispels Greatest Myths About Bipolar Disorder
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