Spiders, Vampires and Jail Keys by Brooke O'Neill is a compelling story of one woman's life with bipolar disorder. Like me, Brooke is a nurse. When she returned to work after her period of acute illness, she was able to have positive conversations self-disclosing to some of her patients who had bipolar disorder in addition … Continue reading Book Review: Spiders, Vampires and Jail Keys
Today is Pink Shirt Day in Canada, a day to stand up against bullying. It began when students in a Canadian high school wore pink in support of a male student who was bullied for wearing pink. Pink Shirt Day makes for a good time to talk about how bullying affects mental health. While bullying … Continue reading The Effects of Bullying on Mental Health
Role identity is a concept in sociology that refers to the identities that we build around the various socially defined roles that we fulfill. Identity shifts can occur over time based on a variety of factors, including the importance those roles play in our lives overall. Student was a key role identity for me for … Continue reading Mental Illness Disability & Identity Shifts
Here is a mini-review of Chapter One of “Managing The Depression Puzzle” by Ashley L. Peterson. This is Ashley’s third book on mental illness (with this book focusing on various types of depression, and the ways in which we treat the condition). Her writing style is conducive with someone who understands the subject matter, based […] … Continue reading Managing The Depression Puzzle By Ashley L. Peterson (A Mini-Review) — Mentally Ill In America
I stumbled across this gem courtesy of Kate et al. of Colour of Madness. It lists reasons people were admitted to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia in its first 25 years of existence, from 1864 to 1889. While they're all pretty special, these would be my top 10 picks (I apologize to … Continue reading What Made You Crazy in 1864?
The emerging blogger series is aimed at community building through giving mental health bloggers who are early in their blogging evolution the opportunity to have their work seen by a wider audience. It's also a way to introduce you as a reader to some newer members of our community. This post is by Rock Bollinger. … Continue reading Emerging Blogger Series: Rock
My new baby is now out in the world! Managing the Depression Puzzle takes a holistic view of how to deal with depression – holistic in the sense that it covers a whole whack of things. The idea is to give you a bunch of different pieces that you can pick from to put together … Continue reading Managing the Depression Puzzle is now available!
Not long ago someone left this comment on a post I'd written: "I guess you have to decide what you want. Money, hits, likes or trying to help others." This isn't the first time I've seen it cast in a somewhat negative light that people were trying to grow their blogs, so I thought it … Continue reading It’s Okay to Want to Grow (and Monetize) Your Blog
Here's what happened in my life over the past week: A big thank you to Tanya at The Phat Girl Blog and Skelly at Fabric That Made Me for nominating me for the Mystery Blogger award! Also thanks to Rory for A Guy Called Bloke for recognizing my post What Do You See In The … Continue reading Weekend wrap-up
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week we'll look at the Stanford prison experiment. The Stanford prison experiment was a social psychology study conducted at Stanford University in 1971. Male student volunteers were randomly assigned to be either "prisoners" or "guards" in a mock prison set … Continue reading What is… The Stanford Prison Experiment
Let's say you're scrolling through your Twitter feed. You see a tweet that makes it seem like that person intends to imminently act on suicidal thoughts. What do you do? Unfortunately, there isn't really a good answer. I've been on the reporting side on one occasion. Someone had posted on their blog, which was shared … Continue reading How Should Social Media Handle Reported Suicidal Posts?
We Hide What We Hate About Ourselves is written by Melody Finch, who blogs as Caramel (Learner at Love). This book is the first of her Learner at Love series, and it was initially published in serial form on her blog. The novel features protagonist Annabelle Riley as well as several significant men in her … Continue reading Book Review: We Hide What We Hate About Ourselves
The emerging blogger series is aimed at community building through giving mental health bloggers who are early in their blogging evolution the opportunity to have their work seen by a wider audience. It's also a way to introduce you as a reader to some newer members of our community. This post is by my name-sister … Continue reading Emerging Blogger Series: Ashley
What does the gate control theory of pain have to do with a mental health blog? Well, co-occurring mental illness and chronic pain are remarkably common. For example, among people with fibromyalgia, over 50% experience depression. The rates of anxiety disorders are also over 50%. People with depression and anxiety disorders are also at increased … Continue reading Gate Control Theory of Pain